I stutter and went to grad school, too. I think I got into geology partly because I thought I’d deal less with people and talking. Didn’t work out that way. I remember two guys in my office talking when I was working professionally in between semesters, and one said to the other, “It must be tough being a professional and stuttering.” They didn’t know I overheard this. In any case it wasn’t meant to be mean, just an observation. So by all this I can say I’ve been in your shoes. Your self esteem issues are real. You are identifying as a stutterer. I get it. I was there. How would I ever find love, etc. etc. you HAVE to redefine your self image. I went to years of psychotherapy dealing with this and some family issues. In hindsight only marginally useful. Perhaps I just had the wrong therapists (3 total, including a CBT). I have been to speech therapy for it. I found some of the tools very useful and they gave me a sense of being able to “defend myself”, like I was not total prey to the stutter. That was empowering. But it did not cure it. Still, I think all stutterers need to have some kind of speech therapy tools that work for them for the reason I stated. What is absolutely key is that you redefine and live by a different self image. I guarantee that will help you, and in many ways it is not too difficult, just taking time and focus. My psychotherapy, all psychotherapy, should include this as a component. In any case, the importance of self-image, and how you can redefine it, is laid out in the book Psycho-Cybernetics. Just shut up and get it. Ignore the stupid title and the fact that it’s old and that some of his theories are a bit out there. His diagnosis and basic treatment plan are right on. It deals with the core of how we deal with life. We are evolved animals. We are machines that are nearly on autopilot. Indeed, a lot of very well informed people think we have no free will at all, but I don’t / can’t buy that. In any case exertion of free will is limited and difficult. What this book helped me understand is that that our autopilot is “controlled” by our self-image. This was a simple but radical insight to me. Due to your stutter I can guarantee you self-image is highly distorted and non-productive. Change that and then you’ll be set on a new trajectory. The next step is to find therapeutic tools for your stutter. I liked the gentle onset target and stable first position that is used at HCRI in Virginia. When I practice my gentle onset intensive I am “naturally” fluent for several days. They wouldn’t like me saying that, they want to restructure all your speech, but that wasn’t for me. I have to say that some of the severe stutterers I was in therapy with did extremely well using their overall approach, but it was a bit too much for me. Not sure what else I can say. I get your pain. I was there. I gave you about all the insight I can from someone who has been down that path (I am retired now and had a very success career, although I didn’t see how successful until I re-examined and adjusted my self-image).