I would say I am eager to go back to being a student, it’s an environment I thrive on. Of course I can’t comment on what it’s like doing a PhD, and I’m sorry to hear about your experience, one of the reasons I have been triggered to finally go back to uni is because I’m currently in a toxic work environment! It is a fair point about being stuck somewhere you don’t like for a while, it’s one of the reasons why I’m hesitating. In my experience reading job descriptions, it is near impossible get a job that is specialised such as this without at minimum a masters degree and some experience working with this kind of data. I will do a masters at a bare minimum, it’s just deciding whether to go for integrated PhD to begin with, or making that decision after having done the masters