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It's freaking hot out. There's no wind. None at all.
And I'm unhappy.
In most facets of my life, I'm pretty content. I have awesome friends. My social life is incredibly stimulating. Photography keeps me sane, as does music.
But there's one thing that has the power to override all the happiness I get from those things. Grad school, aka my job. I don't like that it has such an emotional impact on me, but it does, and I don't know how to change this.
I set up an experiment this week. Plated out some cells into a 24-well plate on Wednesday. Added fluorescent dye to them yesterday. Today, I was supposed to start a 48-hour time lapse video that would hopefully give me some cell migration data before I left for Alaska.
I had a confluent monolayer of cells (the entire area of each well was covered in cells). I put a big scratch down the middle, so that the cells would have an empty space to migrate into. Washed the cells to get rid of the debris. Put new media back on, and looked at the cells in the microscope.
And the whole fucking monolayer of cells had come loose like a giant flake of sunburnt skin. In every single well out of 24. My experiment was fucked, and I don't have the heart to set it up again before leaving.
I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. I'm patient to a point, and I'm determined to an even further point, but when this shit consistently puts me in a bad mood on a Friday afternoon when so many other things in my life are going well, it's just not healthy.
I need a vacation. A break. Alaska can't come soon enough.
I need to clear my head and think about the implications of all this. And maybe an exit strategy.
Or, maybe things would be all better if somebody bought me this shirt. Oh sense of humor - you always know how to make me feel at least marginally better...
It's freaking hot out. There's no wind. None at all.
And I'm unhappy.
In most facets of my life, I'm pretty content. I have awesome friends. My social life is incredibly stimulating. Photography keeps me sane, as does music.
But there's one thing that has the power to override all the happiness I get from those things. Grad school, aka my job. I don't like that it has such an emotional impact on me, but it does, and I don't know how to change this.
I set up an experiment this week. Plated out some cells into a 24-well plate on Wednesday. Added fluorescent dye to them yesterday. Today, I was supposed to start a 48-hour time lapse video that would hopefully give me some cell migration data before I left for Alaska.
I had a confluent monolayer of cells (the entire area of each well was covered in cells). I put a big scratch down the middle, so that the cells would have an empty space to migrate into. Washed the cells to get rid of the debris. Put new media back on, and looked at the cells in the microscope.
And the whole fucking monolayer of cells had come loose like a giant flake of sunburnt skin. In every single well out of 24. My experiment was fucked, and I don't have the heart to set it up again before leaving.
I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. I'm patient to a point, and I'm determined to an even further point, but when this shit consistently puts me in a bad mood on a Friday afternoon when so many other things in my life are going well, it's just not healthy.
I need a vacation. A break. Alaska can't come soon enough.
I need to clear my head and think about the implications of all this. And maybe an exit strategy.
Or, maybe things would be all better if somebody bought me this shirt. Oh sense of humor - you always know how to make me feel at least marginally better...
Sometimes at work I glance over at the senior scientists, all of whom are PhDs, discussing this or that current issue with a product and I think "Hell, why did I ever leave grad school? It wasn't so bad..." Then I read posts like this and remember how anxious/depressed I was most of the time. No one can tell you which way to go, sticking it out is the right thing for a lot of people.
ReplyDeleteWhile that shirt is totally awesome, I was expecting something more like this or perhaps this. At least you have other interests and a strong social network for support.
Those shirts are equally awesome.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is partly that I have other interests. I don't care enough to dedicate myself enough to science to be REALLY good at it.
On the other hand, I've never had a "real" job. And my skill set involves mostly just science, which is what I don't want to do anymore. Or maybe I could, if it just involved sequencing DNA. I was good at that in undergrad...
I am seven months in to my first "real job". It's sort of like grad school in that you do some bench work and some data analysis and present at lab meeting and everyone around you is pretty geeky. However, it's rarely more than a 40 hrs/week and there is minimal emotional tax. Work is fine, but when I walk out the door at five I don't think about it again until I step back in the next morning. No self-loathing over failed experiments, no anxiety dreams, it's just work.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side, the consequence of a position like this is that with minimal responsibility comes limited opportunity to advance. It'll be a glorious (and relatively well-paid) respite, but I realize that I'll have to go back to school in a year if I ever expect to support a family.
I guess there's always the option of taking a year off, then coming back if I want to. Or taking the extra time and money from a biotech job and investing it into trying to make something of this photography thing.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Why are these days always Fridays?
Also, how fucked is it that we work in a field where having a master's degree doesn't get you a good enough job to support a family? And post-docs with PhD's make $35K?
ReplyDeletei hear you can make close to $20/hour as a checker in many CA groceries....
ReplyDelete