- How have your career goals changed in the past year? 5 years? 10 years?
- How has your perception of self changed in the past year? 5 years? 10 years?
- How is where you are now different from what you imagined for yourself as you worked toward this point?
- How much of a role have things outside of science had on your changing career goals?
These are the questions Flicka Mawa proposed for this months’ Scientiae carnival. If you removed “How . . . ” from all of those questions I would have to answer YES!
This morning I wrote a depressing post about my emotional breakdown yesterday. Then today I had my weekly meeting with my adviser and I feel much better (luckily I thought enough to save the post until after my meeting). I think a lot of growing as a person is perspective. Yesterday my world was ending because I thought I had to redo the analysis on a manuscript we have been working on for the past four years. Today after better understanding the e-mail my adviser sent me and having spoke with my adviser I am not going to redo the analysis, but the manuscript needs work. But my adviser also said that it was a great manuscript and it’s written so clearly now that he’s able to nitpick on the science.
So in answer to the first proposed question my career goals have changed over the course of a day. Yesterday, during my breakdown, I was looking for administrative assistant and receptionist jobs while today I’ve renewed my idea to be a professor. However, I think my stability as a scientist can’t be broken by one insignificant e-mail. I need to become a stronger person before I can mentor the next generation. Which brings me to the second proposed question. After 6 years of graduate school I feel that I am no better off than I was when I left undergrad, in fact, I feel worse off. I often feel like a failure, and this upsets me because as an undergrad I was a strong, athletic women who laughed in the face of adversity. I managed a 30-hr a week job, a full course load-which I did well in, I was captain of my rugby team and never felt burnt or overworked. I started graduate school enthusiastic, ready to learn and feeling like I knew what I was doing. How has graduate school broke me? Where is the hard working student that I was four, six years ago? Dammit where are you!!
I often think I don’t have the patience and discipline it takes to be a scientist. My adviser and I have been working on one manuscript for the past four years. I need to move on. I wonder, does this make me a bad scientist? Am I lazy to not want to analyze the data again? Would my life be different with another adviser? Did I need to have this experience to understand that I am not designed for academic science? I need structure, I need goals, I need support.
My long term goals have never been definite, I’ve just been cruising along going which ever direction my life takes me (re: question four, my husband has determined where I lived, am living and will live so that has shaped a lot of what I study/do). I enjoyed my undergraduate educational experience, my undergrad research project and my technician-type job at a government agency. I’ve wanted to be a scientist since I can remember. When I was in elementary school I wanted nothing more than to wear a white lab coat and make discoveries.
My goals have waiver from going into consulting (but then why did I get a Ph.D.), to government work to still the possibility of being a professor. But then I read articles that say things like this:
"Why did I wait so long to leave? Why did I do that second or third postdoc?" By and large, he says, the students are doing pretty well but are behind their peers in terms of
establishing careers and families.
and I have to admit that I'm not where I imagined myself to be when I'll be turning 30 this year. I see that Science Women will also be 30 this year, yet she has a beautiful daughter and a tenure-track job. I'm not saying that SW doesn't work her ass off and deserve where she is today or that I desire a tenure-track job but although I didn't have defined goals I did think that by 30 I would have a child, own a home and have an established career.
Am I crazy? I’d like to have a post-doctoral position, to torture test myself. I need to know if my painful experience at graduate school was a function of my adviser or myself. But as I said before I feel broken. I’ve gotten lazy working for my adviser, the one who could care less if I ever leave graduate school, the one who could spent another four years on this manuscript, the one who thinks I’m doing a great job.
5 comments:
"How has graduate school broke me? Where is the hard working student that I was four, six years ago? Dammit where are you!!"
Jennie, after reading this, I had to go back to a post I wrote (and didn't post) awhile back. The wording is different, but the feeling is the same! I think all the uncertainty is adding up, and I am not nearly as productive as I was as an undergrad. Thus the wondering if I will go back to the determined, enthusiastic person I used to be. I want me back! I hope we both get our former selves back!
Woah Jennie, I think I could have written, nearly word for word the same post. My science-women friends and I have talked about this ad nauseum. The ups and downs within hours make me so miss the undergrad me. Grad school broke me too. But for what it's worth my science-women friends that have managed to graduate, get great postdocs and leave this place are doing fantastic and are slowly seeing their old selves coming back... I'm hoping the same can happen for me, and for you too!
Thanks for a great post and a great blog. It's nice to know I'm not alone
I love this post.
You may not feel strong enough yet for mentoring the next generation- but I think you are doing an admirable job of helping out other students, just by posting this kind of thing. It's so helpful to know I'm not alone.
This post really struck a chord with me. I look back at my work ethic of when I was an undergrad and then look at me now. I'm much more cynical and less enthusiastic about my work. It's nice (and somewhat sad) to know that I'm not alone.
I've definitely had times like that. I think the hard-working undergrad is learning that the problems are much harder the higher up you go...and sometimes, I spend so much time doing things that I feel as if I'm getting nowhere. But in talking with my officemates, we all feel like that at times.
And don't feel bad about turning 30. Really. It isn't a race and you're not letting anyone down. Please don't compare yourself. I thought I'd have my PhD by 28 and kids at 30 and 32. I ended up with kids at 20 and 28, and I'm just going to start my PhD in the fall. I'll be 33 this summer, so I hope I can swing a tenure-track job by the time I'm 40. :-)
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