Nerd Sarah dares to think of a career path...Here's what I'd really like to know:
What is there to being a researcher?
What are the bad bits? The frustrations, the knock-backs, the pressures and deadlines? Is social climbing, office politics and arse-kissing a requisite skill like it is for so many other jobs? I'd love to get by in life without having to engage in that kind of crap.
What are the good bits? The triumphs, the breaking of new ground, the contribution to the greater social good, the influence on government policy and funding- are they a myth? Would I do more good by working on the ground, in the community?
Will I be able to earn a steady income, even if only a modest one? I'm not ambitious and I don't feel the need to 'keep up with the Joneses' when it comes to material possessions- certainly I don't aspire to be some nouveau-riche cashed-up bogan. But I do want us to be able to afford to keep a roof over our head and not be paying such a huge proportion of our combined incomes to do so that we are unable to weather the odd financial storm. I also want us to start a family in around 5 years- no getting to 35, realising my fertility is on the wane and squeezing out however many little brats so close in age that I'm unable to keep them under control on a simple trip to the supermarket. Not to mention I don't intend for Gam and I to dump responsibility for their upbringing onto some underpaid stranger at a childcare centre. But having kids costs money too. So is a career as a researcher a sound option financially, if not a lucrative one? Will it allow for some flexibility in the hours or location of my work when, sometime down the road, we decide to have kids?
I worry that I lean towards research as the 'safe' option. I'm a reader, a sponge for knowledge and I love learning. I also find interacting with people very stressful and draining if I am unable to take a break from it. Research in the field I love- nutrition- sounds like the perfect career for someone like me. Oh and I'm not immune to the idea of getting a little ego-boost out of the prospect of being 'Dr Sarah'. Hell yeah. On the other hand, a good community health nutritionist with or without 'Dr' in front of their name, can achieve a lot of good. I have no doubt that it would be a really satisfying job in a lot of ways. And both options would have their frustrations, I just don't know how to work out which of them I would be best-equipped to handle.
Looking online I've found some good general stuff about things to think about when doing a PhD (although I don't understand the importance of Myers Briggs 'personality tests'- it's not like they tell a person much about themselves that they don't already know).
I'm going to email a few people in the relevant fields and ask them their opinions and experiences on certain things... but I don't really know most of them well enough to be blunt enough to use words like 'arse-kissing'.
In the end, I suppose if I did a PhD I could volunteer or work 1 or 2 days a week over the 3 years in order to get valuable experience in a 'real' job anyway- and then cut and run from academia after 3 years if I decided it wasn't for me or if I needed a change. But I do worry that I'm leaning towards the academic option at the moment because I'm in a relatively unstressful position right now, with my results for last semester (so far) being quite good and my project going smoothly. If I was making this decision during a stressful period of late nights and repeat drafts and the inevitable brain-blocks that occur with getting stuff on paper, would I be thinking differently?
4 comments:
You don't need to use the word arse-kissing. Ask them how much your success will depend on your relationships with more senior researchers, and how much workplace politics there is in most labs.
My experience has been that when you have a structure that encourages competition, you get politics, arse-kissery, and bitchiness. When you have a structure that encourages cooperation, you don't. Academia is in the first category, unfortunately - getting ahead is dependent on publishing, publishing is very competitive, arse-kissery ensues to get your name on papers, ditto politics.
My guess is that you'll see a nicer workplace culture working in the community.
Perhaps you want to find something where you can do both? Community nutritionist where you're doing community-based research perhaps? That way you'd still have the challenges of research, while having the pleasant working environment as well.
See, I've definitely heard about bitchiness and politics in academia, but I've seen absolutely no evidence of it where I work or even in the field I'm in (with a single exception back in February of this year). I'm not afraid of the workplace environment I'd be in if I went the PhD route at the place I'm in now. If I did wind up at a place in the future with bitchy colleagues like the woman in the example I referred to, I know I wouldn't be able to hack it. But I've met academics involved in community health nutrition research and community health nutritionists involved in the same research, and they have all struck me as exceptionally well-motivated people. That doesn't mean I have ever been privy to the finer details of office politics, ass-kissery or anything, which is why I suppose I'd like to know about the extent of that before I take a plunge...
Sounds like a question for a forum on http://network.nature.com/people (the blogs/fora/socialnetwork site from the people who bring you.... well, you know the domain name!) I note in Social networking, but not for dummies..
And politics screwed my lab career long before epilepsy did. "Michael Briggs" was my Dean (google "scientific fraud" with his name), and my wannabe supervisor (who had based my hons work project on an undergrad essay of mine, wanting me not just as an unpaid RA, and even got NHMRC funding) got stomped on because she was "outing" the Dean's falsified (but good guess as it turns out) data. So I had to do pharmacology hons (as basically an unpaid RA) under a couple of his "pets" rather than path hons.
Dave- yikes. Sometimes I feel so sheltered when I hear about stuff like that. It would definitely be enough to turn me off an academic career forever if it happened to me.
Post a Comment