YouTuber Zara Dar recently announced her decision to drop out of her PhD programme to pursue a career as an OnlyFans model. Zara, until recently an advocate for women in science and technology, made a video explaining why she decided to stop pursuing her doctorate to focus on OnlyFans.

“I’ve dropped out of my PhD”

In her YouTube video titled ‘PhD dropout to OnlyFans model’, Zara Dar said the decision to focus on OnlyFans was not made lightly. “I’ve cried so much over this decision to quit my PhD because it’s a stressful decision, not that I’m particularly sad,” she said in her YouTube video.

“Moving on to doing OnlyFans and content creation full-time it’s not just a career choice it feels kind of like a gamble on the direction of my entire life,” said Zara, who has over 1 lakh subscribers on YouTube, where her past videos included tutorials on machine learning and neural networks.

“Spend their lives working for a company”

Elaborating on her decision to drop out of her PhD, Zara said she had already spent a couple of years in graduate school but could imagine a future in academia. She said she could imagine herself wearing a polished suit and working with a team, or even the alternative route of becoming a professor and having students work under her.

However, that kind of lifestyle came with its own tradeoffs, which influenced her decision to drop out of her PhD.

“People whose lifestyles I thought I envied are tied to someone else’s vision. They’ll spend their lives working for a company and doing things they don’t necessarily enjoy,” she said, adding that these people would never get the recognition they deserve.

“Their work might win someone else’s wealth and fame while they stay in the background,” she said. “Expendable, they will constantly worry about getting laid off and planning their lives around their salaries, budgeting to pay bills and likely renting a place to live,” predicted Zara, who pursued a master’s in computer science at the University of Texas.

Zara said that she imagined a different life for herself where she was not bound by the “expectations of an academic institution or the constraints of a corporate office.”

By choosing not to pursue academia or a tech job, she explained that she could explore and learn about topics that interested her, not just those deemed important by a funding agency.

“I’ve made $1 million”

And then, of course, there is the financial angle.

In her video, Zara said she had taken up content creation on OnlyFans as a side project while she was pursuing her PhD. She earned $1 million through her OnlyFans gig – money that she used to pay off her family’s mortgage and buy a car for herself.

“Thankfully I avoided taking out any student loans. Now I have an investment portfolio and I am planning to buy my own house. All of these achievements are just reminders of the tangible rewards of carving my own path and the freedom that comes with it,” she said.

She ended her video by reiterating that most professors in America earn $100,000 a year and spend their time writing grant proposals instead of doing research. This is not the life she envisioned for herself.

Her video, reposted on X, has racked up nearly a million views and plenty of comments, with many shocked at how a career in adult content pays more than traditional choices.

(Also read: This adult actress earns over ₹30 crore per month, paid off her parents’ debt with newfound wealth)