It’s so surreal. I am done. I finished writing and have handed my completed dissertation (all 230 pages of it) to my examiners. I will defend in less than two weeks and then I am completely done. Done done. It’s just not computing. Seven years of my life are coming to a close. I never expected to get nostalgic at this point. I have been dying to get out of academia and out of labs for at least half of my seven years in school. Now that it’s actually happening, I find the moment to be bittersweet.
I realize now what happened in my graduate career. I went down to the wrong path. It was no one’s fault, it just happened, as it so often does in science. I came to grad school a devout cell biologist with a strong interest in cell signaling (feel free to gag. Most people do) and of course, viruses. I love the stuff. I read signaling papers like candy, like little logic puzzles that fit together into a giant signaling poster from Cell Signaling Technologies. I worked on neurotrophin signaling and NF-κB, until the former failed and the latter was published out from under me.
I was left with gene expression, promoter bashing, and a cloning-based project that I swore would never be my fate in life. Here’s the thing though – I hate gene expression, I am not interested in it in the slightest, I find some of the approaches taken to assay it (especially in the herpes field) to be somewhere left of physiological. Annoyingly (is that a word? Richard?), I had no choice but work on if I wanted to graduate in any sensible amount of time. So here I am, three years and 230 pages deep into a gene expression thesis. I think the process drained me a little, not to sound dramatic. I didn’t like the work, I didn’t like the subject. I am now starting to think that had I been able to work on something I love, I would not have been running for shelter from lab life as I have been the last couple of years. That makes me really sad.
I came upon this grand realization as I was writing the last chapter of my thesis, the out-of-nowhere chapter that summarizes the first three years of my work on a partially-failed neurotrophin/HSV-1 reactivation project. Sick as it may sound, I actually enjoyed writing that chapter. I loved reading the background papers and let my discussion get longer and longer as I rhapsodized about all the possible pathways leading to HSV-1 reactivation. Importantly, I did not feel a single tooth being pulled in the writing process, as I had with the other two chapters and two appendices of my oversized monograph.
So maybe I am not leaving for good. Maybe one day I will pull a Jennifer and return to science. Lord knows I never thought those words would come out of my mouth. Right now though, I need some recovery and recuperation. Maybe now the real world will become my temporary shelter from the scientific one.
Well Done!
Now go and get insanely drunk, and don’t sober up until 3 days before your defence.
The good news is that if you decide to return to science, you won’t have to spend 3 years on a topic you hate: because there’s no thesis at the end, you can escape half way through.
Thank you! Get insanely drunk : check. I actually turned the thesis in on Tuesday. I am just now able to concentrate enough to write a blog post. My liver hurts.
That is one thing that’s appealing about a post-doc – there is no sense of feeling trapped. If I don’t like it, I can leave or change fields/subjects. You’re right, one doesn’t have that freedom in grad school. It’s oppressive!
Many, many congratulations, Anna. As I read your post I relived every darksome minute of my own hideous experience and empathise fully with the mixture of joy and disorientation at the end. Remember, if you are wise, nothing you do is ever wasted.
Woohoo! Congratulations!
I am a few months behind you – finishing the last of my lab stuff and hopefully getting the go ahead to start writing by June – but I already notice I have the same bittersweet feelings about finishing:
I also don’t like how I’ve ended up in a certain part of research, it doesn’t really match what I want. I’ve started to tell people that I won’t do a postdoc and not have my own lab, and everyone who knows me has been very supportive and thinks I’ll do well in whatever I end up doing (people who don’t know me think I’m doomed and/or insane) but I’m already starting to wonder if I’m making the right decision.
So I’m going to give myself one year, starting on the day after my defense, to decide whether or not I want to do a postdoc (and if yes, in what). I asked around, and even the most die-hard proponents of pure ResearchresearchRESEARCH agree that people would still hire someone who has been out of the lab for a year (especially if I will somehow be involved in science, and not just go on a year-long vacation). So that’ll be my year of reflection, in which I hope to do lots of different science-related things other than research, to figure out if I really don’t like research, or if I just needed to refocus and take a break.
Well done you.
Impossible for me to comprehend such a situation but so glad to hear that you’ve completed and handed it over.
Great job! Having just gone through it, I can completely sympathize with the emotions you’re feeling. Just wait until the defense, which is more exhausting that you think but less rewarding…
But on the positive side, the defense is an excuse to get really, really drunk. :)
That is one thing that’s appealing about a post-doc – there is no sense of feeling trapped
Ah, sweet, naive innocent child.
CONGRATULATIONS! and good luck with the defense, which I’m sure will go fine. I actually quite enjoyed mine – no-one before or since has ever paid quite so much attention to my work.
I also got sucked into transcriptional regulation during my PhD. I hated the basal stuff at first, but learned to appreciate it eventually! I even ended up doing my postdoc on the evolution of transcriptional regulation, which uses similar techniques but is much more interesting.
And don’t listen to Neil – doing a postdoc isn’t all roses and sunshine, but it’s nowhere near as bad as doing a PhD!
Congrats :)
(I see my pedantry precedes me. sniff )
Congratulations! You have given me a lot to think about, since I am just about to start my own PhD experience. I hope that you keep on blogging, even if you decide to leave the shelter of a laboratory for the “real world.”
Congratulations!!!
Don’t be thinking you will be free from science.. perhaps a little burnout is speaking.
I distinctly remember saying some of the same things after I defended! It only took a couple of years for me to come back…
Henry – I seem to bring all your bad memories to the surface! I am sorry for that. I think my grad school years were far from wasted. They weren’t all happy years, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Maybe at a different institution, but I would absolutely do it over again.
Eva – I think that’s such a great idea! I am glad to hear that a year out is not enough to give anyone pause about hiring a bench scientist back. I am 90% sure that the life is not for me, but it’s something I want to allow myself to think about for some time. Yes, a year. I like your plan. Good luck with your dissertation process! It’s really was not as bad as I had expected. I may be speaking too soon…
Graham – Thank you! It did seem so amazingly daunting before I got into the writing. I think that was the hardest part – actually starting. After that, it was all downhill. A bumpy, spiky hill, but sloping down nonetheless.
Nicholas – I am absolutely freaked out over the defense. Part of the not liking my thesis project was not keeping up with the literature. I have a feeling it’s about to bite me in the you-know-what. There will be drinking. Oh, there will be drinking.
Neil – Ha! Yes, as I read my own comment over again I gag on waves of naivety and blindness. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Science exerts a funny grip on all, doesn’t it…
Cath – You are not the first person I have heard say that they enjoyed the defense – the conversation, the discussion was all interesting to them. I envy that. I still gag every time I have to say the word “promoter”. But maybe, just maybe, I will get to enjoy it a little as well. That would be wonderful.
Richard – No no! My comment was made with the highest regard for you and your pedantry :) I envy it, in fact. I should know better than to use a word I am not certain of. Unless I just made that word up, in which case it’s ok.
Naveen – No worries. I am a blogger till the end at this point. I didn’t blog for a while in the midst of all the writing and I thought my head was going to explode from all the unshared ideas. Apparently, I need an audience! Who would’ve thunk it… Good luck with starting school! When will you be in Boston? We should meet up!
Helene – Thank you! Burnout is the key word here! I need some down time before I can even consider going back to lab. I need some time to get to like science again.
I also got sucked into transcriptional regulation during my PhD.
.. a risk from which palaeontology is strangely free. Had someone ever come down to the museum basement and wiuttered on about la-de-dah your-mother-was-a-hamster donkey-bottom-biter transcriptional regulation, they’d have been hit over the head with one of these also got sucked into transcriptional regulation during my PhD. Not surprisingly most people stayed away. No wonder it was lonely.
Henry – I seem to bring all your bad memories to the surface! I am sorry for that. Yup, Anna, it’s all your fault. Those kittens are really in for it today. :)
Well done! It’s been 11 years since I was in your place, and it still feels like yesterday.
xxx
You don’t look old enough to be 35, Jenny.
Congratulations!
As someone who still occasionally thinks of doing a PhD, but who hasn’t done one, I can’t fully empathise with you. But I think you should feel happy, overall. Plain chocolate’s bittersweet too. Maybe that will help?
As someone who still occasionally thinks of doing a PhD, but who hasn’t done one
Don’t.
Q: How many
Vietnam vetsgraduate students does it take to change a light bulb?A: If you don’t know, man, you weren’t there.
Don’t.
SRSLY? Presumably you’d advise against anyone being a Nature editor too?
Au contraire. Being a Nature editor is a blast. Unfortunately you probably need to have a Ph.D. first.
Unfortunately you probably need to have a Ph.D. first.
Is the past pain of a phd counterbalanced by the present pleasure?
No.
HTH, HAND.
Anna, congratulations for finishing that dissertation. I’m looking forward to what you do next. I’ve seen a few people considering quitting science because of a particularly bad experience with either the supervisor or simply the way the research projct was moving along. But a positive experience in the next lab can dramatically change that. I have been at a point where I wanted to go in a very different direction out of frustration at least twice. Giving yourself some time is a very good idea.
Congratulations! I am doing the endless experiments to get some good datas. Experiments is all my life. I also hope to change. Good luck to you, and me. haha.
Many congrats Anna. I look forward to my day…way, way forward.