My job as a consultant

Psych Post Doc's question "why don't you tell us about being a consultant? What are the pros and cons (other than the crazy commute)? Are there any things about the job that surprise you? In a good way or a bad way? Do you think you'd want to do this long term?"

I do not think that being a consultant is my long-term goal. However, I fear that my options are limiting seeing that I'd like to work close to home. In terms of the quality of work done at the consulting firms near my house I’ve been told the one I work with is the best (by outside opinions).

To put being a consultant in context I want to inform you that I did not make a long-term employment goal before going to graduate school. I knew, as an undergrad, that I wanted to help the environment, but did not think about how I would do this. I thought being a soil scientist sounded good. The summer of my junior year I started working for a soil scientist at the US Geological Survey and continued this lab/field tech job for a year after I graduated. I would have likely continued in that group for all eternity, possibly working there and doing grad school part time, had it not been for my obnoxiously charming boyfriend who decided to move to the East Coast for graduate school. During our year apart I decided, "what the hell, I'll move out there and go to grad school." It was this stage that my career goals became esoteric and I just started to study the most interesting thing to me at his department. Turned out I really liked the work so not only did I get a master's degree but a Ph.D. in the process.

Ok, enough digression. I really had little idea of what a consultant did. My interactions with consultants while on the East Coast were people who did groundwater clean ups. My advisor interacted with a lot of consultants, I met many of these at local conferences, and when I was graduating my advisor encouraged me to apply for consulting jobs-stating that I would make much more money in consulting (which is not currently my case). Three of his master’s students that finished during my time there and one that finished shortly afterwards went into consulting, staying close to the University. I wish that while he was pushing consulting so much he would have advised his students to learn more about public policy, which is something I am highly lacking in my current job.

To sum up my job as a consultant I would say this is the process of what we do:
1) Do something marginally representing science, like a quick monitoring program or run some type of fancy model
2) Write a report about all the local, state and federal requirements of this small project you have been awarded and state how the little amount of data we collected fall within (or outside) these requirements
3) Make sure to include in the report all the future work that needs to be done, usually future monitoring or maybe a design to mitigate something, and hope you get awarded to the project to do this monitoring or to work up the design plan
4) Realizes while you are writing the report that you are out of budget and totally stress out and push that stress on to your fellow workers

The pros and cons list doesn’t reflect consulting in general but my specific company and my geographic location.

Pro: A paycheck
Con: We all took a pay-cut a few months back

Pro: I get to learn new things
Con: I have to learn new things in a short little time frame, within a tight budget that didn’t allocate for learning new things (i.e. learning should be done on my own time)

Pro: Everyone is generally friendly
Con: Everyone seems highly anal

Pro: I get to work outside some times
Con: No laboratory work, lots of writing

Pro: The projects we work on are diverse

Con: My boss seems to not realize what personal boundaries are

I just have to saw the honeymoon is over, I don’t seem to like consulting as much as I thought I would. I have to wonder if it’s my particular firm, my mindset or just my general attitude. Working on my Ph.D. taught me that one can spend 6 years dedicated to a project and still not know everything about it. As a consultant I feel like I have three weeks to become an expert on a particular subject. I constantly kick myself in the butt for wasting my time in academia when I could have been gaining work experience. I also feel way behind my co-workers who seem to know so much about the local area and while I grew up here I didn’t study the geology-hydrology-public policy here and fear my knowledge is lacking. If I gained something during my Ph.D. it should have been the process to learn all these new things. However, I became fairly bitter and cynical during my last year and I am just so dam tired of learning new things. I don’t know what my problem is, but I’m not highly motivated at this job.

I should try to get back into blogging more about life/job. This helped me write my dissertation and could possibly aid in balancing my life here. If you know of great blogs written by consultants please pass them along. I keep track of a few already.