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sunshine

like clockwork, my annual quarter-life crisis strikes each spring. daylight savings just gets my existential juices flowing.

this time, i thought i’d worry about skating to where the puck is going to be; instead of grieving over what i’m doing with my life in the present, i’d worry about what’s going to happen to me in the future. (hey, to become king geek in high school – chess captain – you need a little foresight.) now is as good as time as any to figure out what i want from my life & career.

[heh, shows how much foresight i've got, waiting until after entering a doctoral program to ask myself these questions. actually, that's unfair - i had thought about it before and simply given myself fluffy answers: "science," "doing good," etc. i couldn't help it: it's like grad schools have this colossal "hazy aspiration" magnet sitting deep beneath them. me < 1 ohm; i was unable to resist.]

upon further review, i’ve been able to wipe some of the dew off of the windshield. a partial list of things i’d like out of my future career:

  1. opportunity to explore off-the-beaten-track places and actually get to know the people who hang out there.
  2. first-hand knowledge that what i do actually improves someone’s life. [bonus points if that someone could really use the help, such as the philippines, where the average wage loiters around $100 a month.]
  3. science.

ok, well, clearing up 2 out of 3 isn’t so bad.

in any case, i was a bit shell-shocked to finally realize that my current trajectory – phd -> academia or research in industry – has me landing nowhere near (1) and (2). either professor or lab scientist means i get to sit in an office or lab for 10-12 hours a day. to provide my science experiments with a stable upbringing, i will have married a single research institution. poor ventilation and mis-hued fluorescent lights will have presided over the ceremony. i could elope and become a field-scientist (and get some vitamin D), but that still doesn’t really satisfy (2). who cares if some collection work i do ultimately leads to a useful drug 20 years from now? like any patriotic american, i want my reality-tv participants attractive and my professional gratification immediate.

and then there’re science’s hopeless dependency issues. “write this grant for me.” “have you read my latest papers?” they stick the adjective “cutting-edge” and the noun “research” together for a reason: no one cares about re-discovery of what’s already known. that puts the kibosh on any hopes of achieving (1) above via long-term vacation or sabbatical (estrangement). [for instance, mit is probably an extreme case, but a professor i know who's going on sabbatical is using his time to go: nowhere. his sabbatical will be used to catch up on research.]  there’s so much to see, inhale, smell, eat, drink, and regurgitate in the world. it took a while, but i think i’ve finally realized that although i’d rather take the pythagorean theorem over the empire state building, being able to say that i’ve made a lifelong friend and gone binge-drinking on every continent would probably trump both.

and then it hit me. i screwed up. i should have just gone to med school and done doctors without borders until i needed to start a family. or until i had grown so cynical by the poverty i was confronted with that i staved off insanity by starting a general practice in the countryside. whichever came first, i guess. either way, i’d have some good stories to tell my grandkids (and post to a blog!)

ok, too sleepy to finish this post. will hopefully upload putative resolution (now with 100% less phd-abandonment!) tomorrow.


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