system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Leaving PhD after first year

I'm a few weeks into my second semester of a science PhD program and I'm thinking seriously about leaving. Personally, I think I'm just not a good fit for academia. The things most other students are excited for--e.g., going to conferences, doing fieldwork, socializing with colleagues on Fridays, etc--are the things that I don't really want to do, and it's starting to really take a toll on me. The politics of it all is also proving to be an issue, and certain things are increasingly hard for me to swallow. 

My plan right now is to wait until the end of the semester and see how things go over the next few months. However, I don't want to waste any more of my program or professors' time or money. I feel horrible and guilty that this program has invested in me and now I may be leaving. I don't even know how I'd start to explain why I'm leaving to them--especially my advisor and the director, both of whom have been supportive, generous and kind to me thus far. Who do I tell first? What's the best way to go about telling them that "it's just not for me"?

EDIT: follow up question put in the comments.
gpt
Academe is inherently political, as would be any workplace that is at least ostensibly a meritocracy with peer managers. Relationships and the balance of power between people are critical to its function and to individual success. This is a *serious* problem for junior faculty who don't understand that, and a significant mentoring issue for those of us charged with guiding them through the tenure process.

If you don't like the politics of grad school you'd *hate* the politics of the faculty, where huge battles occur over things as disparate as the brand of coffee used in the faculty lounge and the search for a grand unified theory.  There's nothing at all wrong with realizing you don't want to work in such an environment and taking your leave of academe-- much better to do it early than later in fact.