After my previous experience in India, with my Masters Program in Nutrition, I should have learned better. Must have curiosity has a way of bringing you inexorably back to school. Want. to. know. more. UGH! And here I am.

Look at me, at home on the weekend. Not that I was ever a party animal, but surely I never spent long periods of time only with myself, shunning company, finding other people invasive and abrasive?

Three years in graduate school seems to have done the trick. I find myself totally unsociable, finding it a huge burden to associate with people at any level. Notwithstanding the hard times I went through last year, with a study that did not work out too well and my subsequent journey down the corrosive tunnels of severe depression, which my mothers death last year finally pushed me into, I find it unusual that someone with my capacity for pragmatism should find it so difficult to heave myself out of this abyss.

Here I am attempting to write my thesis, after I finally decided to give myself a time out for recovery, some breathing space while I decided, what next?

For there will be a next, my passion for my work has always defined my personality, I love the exploration, the science, the pieces of puzzle falling into place.

And after taking some trouble to talk to other people, I realised I’m not the only misfit around. Learn to play the system, I hear from friends and advisors. I’m puzzled. Its not about the science? What am I doing wrong?

Time to rejoin the real world, methinks. Looking into jobs as a lab assistant while I peruse programs to continue where I left off. Here’s to the future.

And gosh darn it, I still want to do my PhD.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to learn from the system. What better place than Nature? Feel free to tell me what a complete [insert expletive] I am.

Sam