This is about careers and work because of course it is. Barring a revolution, I will spend most of my life at work earning money. I better be able to fucking tolerate my job. Unfortunately for me I have spent the past 6 years training exclusively for a job I can no longer stand, which is any kind of lab or bench work. It turns out that when I was 16-22 and just doing bench work to support the experiments of others, everything was fine, but now that I'm expected to align that with current research and optimize experiments myself and navigate who to ask for help when they don't work, I hate it with every last fibre of my being.
An instructor (basically someone whose entire job is to teach at the post-secondary level) told me recently that if I wanted to test out if it was my lab or research in general that I hated, I could always take a post-doctoral fellowship somewhere else and just quit. I think I've been in school so long that I kind of forgot jobs are just kind of endless and you can decide when you're done with them. I'm so used to school and I'm so used to pushing myself through unpleasant things because I feel like I'm Supposed To that I forgot I get to actually have an opinion about what I want for my life. That being said, the idea of joining someone else's lab and generating data and trying to make experiments work to present at some regular meeting just fills me with sadness and dread and unhappiness so I think I have my answer.
Still it's hard to say no completely. It's hard enough to pick a path to commit to, let alone letting go of one entirely. When I leave my PhD, I don't think I'll ever do bench work again. I don't even know that I'll continue working as a scientist. There's a lot of identity wrapped up in that. This summer at work, being a PhD Candidate and one of the oldest ones there has gotten me a lot of respect and admiration. It's a nice ego boost for people to say wow, you must be smart. It feels like a waste to have put in all this time and effort and not actually use the training for its intended purpose. But if my husband came to me tomorrow and said hey forget all this nursing stuff, I want to pursue writing, I'd say of course, that's not a waste, let's find a way to get there. If any of my friends were to come to me and say hey I don't want to use this degree anymore but I feel like I wasted my time, I'd find something comforting to say. I'd encourage them to live their own lives. I may even tell them hey, what a flex that you can do an entire degree in that despite not wanting to spend your whole life in it. That's a level of commitment and drive and intelligence that haters want for themselves (haters being the mean voice in your head, primarily). So why is it suddenly not okay for me?
In any case it's not like I want to throw out everything. I've learned a lot of information throughout this degree. But when I saw an instagram micro-influencer (for lack of a better term and yes, I'm on instagram again, please don't say anything mean about it) say her dream was to discover a treatment for neurodegenerative disorders or whatever she studied in her PhD, I was like. well. Fuck. I have about the coolest PhD project anyone could work on, in my opinion, and yet I am not passionately dedicated to the cause of treating pediatric brain cancer. That obviously doesn't mean I think that's a stupid goal, or that I want children with brain cancer to just die, but I no longer want to actively participate in the research process.
The most value I've found is in my understanding of this process, and helping others understand. The best part of my degree was teaching despite all the hostility from students (almost exclusively men, but that's a rant for another time). My summer job involves a lot of teaching. I've even taught my coworkers things. I care about things being accurate when I teach, and that fuels my curiosity and drive to understand. I love when I can put something in simple terms so someone else gets it as much as they need to get it. I love when I inform someone about how something actually works. The someone can be a stranger on instagram, a stressed out biology undergrad, or a 6-year old. I've genuinely enjoyed myself so much this summer I've debated graduating and going straight into a B.Ed degree to be a teacher... if I can stand 2-3 more years of school with NO income and much more tuition and all the many downsides I've heard about teaching. Though to be honest... if I could go back in time to 2018 and have all my memories, experience, and knowledge from grad school, I'd just get an ed degree, so maybe that should be telling me something.
As it is I do have... well, a half assed plan. I've definitely hit the Final Point of Desperation. I hit that point months ago and told my supervisor I need to fucking graduate and I can't keep being here. My plan is to graduate April 2024, so hopefully that pans out. In the meantime, I've got about 3 "side hustles" for lack of a better term and have a lot more confidence after this summer job to volunteer and apply for things (after all, I have experience now... and I also have my police records check and first aid training, so let's just fucking go for it). I've been told I can definitely come back and do this job again next summer, so I have that ready and waiting just in case. But my real goal is to have some kind of job lined up for me next September. September 2024, I want to be starting work... somewhere. Or starting my fucking education degree if that's where life takes me. I feel like maybe I should have more of a plan but then again, this is more than I had about 5 months ago. It's definitely more than I had 5 years ago.
Maybe I'm posting this here in the hopes that someone will read it and in September 2024 will think "huh. I wonder if that random woman online ever met her goal" and come back here and check, or maybe not. But I want to be able to say I did. So I'll do my best to get there, understanding full well that it may take longer than expected, thanks to my fucking PhD.
