I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars.
I hadn't realized quite how intense the first few years of grad school would be. When you're being assigned 40 books a week... there's not much room for novels.