Is it stupid to quit graduate program after one year? As the title says, I'm thinking about quitting. Everyone I've spoken to seems to think this is a dumb idea (quitting after one year, at least), but I haven't talked to anyone who's actually gone through grad school and been in this position before. I've been having second thoughts about grad school since the month or two before I started, and now that I'm here I know it's not where I want to be at all. I'm in a philosophy PhD program, and I could take a master's degree and leave after two years in the program, but I'm deciding whether I even want to do that, or just leave after this year. I am a teaching assistant, which is why I can't quit before the end of the year.

Last year I had the chance to work abroad for a few months, and I could have prolonged that, but I went ahead and returned to my country because grad school was just what I had been expecting to do long-term. But now I really have no interest in getting an academic job. I don't really have a long-term plan now, I just want to go back abroad while I'm still young, become fluent in the language there, work on my own writing projects, and get broader experience. So that's the plan whether I stick around for a second year to get the master's or not. My classes are interesting enough (I still love philosophy), and the teaching is easy enough. So the issue isn't that I'm too stressed out because of the workload or anything. It's just because I know what I would rather be doing, so I feel stupid for being in this program at all. (When I say that, I always hear "If you weren't smart, you wouldn't have gotten into the program." Sure, but I've made a stupid decision starting this program.) So I am still anxious all the time, and for the last couple of weeks I've had an awful time trying to focus on anything. I'm working on getting help for that, but I'm still worried that being anxious and miserable while I'm here might keep me from learning as much as I otherwise could, even if I did stay.

So, my question is whether leaving after a year (rather than staying another for the MA) for reasons like these is a horrible idea, or how common it is. Since I don't plan on pursuing an academic job, the degree would just be a piece of paper; it's not like the philosophy MA is a hard requirement for anything else I plan to do (and it wouldn't be from one of the top ranked universities anyway), and I think the experience working abroad will be valuable in the long term too. I just really don't want to feel dumb and like I'm stuck in this program while I'm still young (in my early twenties), especially when I know what I would rather be doing.
Are you paying for this MA programme yourself (e.g. with student loans) or do you have a scholarship that pays for it? If you are about to walk away with debt but no degree, you should strongly consider sticking it out for the second year, especially if the issue isn't academic and you feel that you can continue to do well in your studies. Even if you are not going to be walking away with debt, consider staying on. 

While you may feel that you do not need a master's now and that it is just a piece of paper, you can't quite predict where your future will bring you. You might find yourself in a position where a master's degree (any master's degree!) will allow you to progress in you career in a way that is vastly more beneficial than if you only have a BA. To go a bit sociological on you and to whip out the Pierre Bourdieu, you are proposing you bank on your embodied cultural capital and are wanting to forgo the objectified manifestation of it; you are wanting to head off into the world without the degree. Yet this world likes degrees and may not always believe in you when you don't have them. In 10 years time, when you are somewhere in life that you can't predict now, how would you feel if not having the master's holds you back?

If you stick it out one more year you will be, at most, in you mid twenties if not still in your early twenties. You will still be young. Mid twenties abroad is just as good as early twenties abroad, and one year is not very much time to wait. Everything is the same, nothing is going anywhere, you'll just have a master's degree when you get back to it.