Now that I am entering my final year of the Ph.D., I need to really figure out what to do next. In the past, my answer to inquisitive friends and relatives interested in my post-Ph.D. plans has always been, "I'll let you know when I get there." But now that I am almost "there," I have run out of excuses to evade their queries.
I have spent nearly seven years in the lab working on a doctorate in cancer cell biology at Harvard University. As one of the permanent fixtures in the lab, I have seen more than 20 postdocs and students come and go. Seven years is the longest stretch of time I have ever spent in one place. The only greater constant in this sea of change is my partner, who has stood by me in a relationship spanning two states, four institutions, five apartments, and three cats.
I used to be proud to say that I was a career student who had not yet worked a day of my life in a "real" job. Now in my late 20's, I see my student status and lack of work experience as a liability as I prepare to leave the ivory tower. While I don't yet know what I want to do after graduating, I do know it won't be in academic research. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the science and I think I'm pretty good at it. I just don't love the science or the lifestyle of an academic enough to pursue a career in it. I also find it very frustrating to actually do science in an academic environment, where you simultaneously have to play the tenure and grantsmanship games. Academe, for me, is a nice place to visit but I would never want to live there.
Getting lost is often the best way to find yourself, or so the adage goes. Not knowing what I wanted to do with my life while I was an undergraduate led me to grad school. I started out at a major technical university on the East Coast, intending to become a chemical engineer. I was good at chemistry and had always been taught by my working-class Chinese immigrant parents that engineering was a noble and stable profession. I'm still a bit embarrassed to admit it now, but the real reason I chose that major was a salary chart I had found, which listed chemical engineering as the highest-paying job for graduates from my school.
To my parents' chagrin, my career as a chemical-engineering student lasted just five days -- long enough for me to realize that engineers worked with a lot of math and physics and that I didn't care for either of those subjects. By the second week of college I had become a chemistry major. That came to an end during my second year of college when I switched my major to biology. Ultimately, I switched institutions altogether and transferred to a small liberal-arts college where I planned to explore a nonscientific course of study and ended up leaving with a degree in biochemistry and an idealistic passion for biomedical research as a means of helping the people of the world.
I entered my Ph.D. program fresh out of college, idealistic, and naïve. My bubble burst when I realized that my thesis wasn't going to contribute greatly toward finding a cure for cancer. In fact, I soon learned that entire decades of basic research often led to the solution of only small pieces of a very large puzzle. And the more we learned about the puzzle, the bigger it became. I have always preferred the broad brushstrokes of an Impressionist painter to the detailed etchings of a master woodworker. The slow pace of research was frustrating, and I discovered that I lacked the patience to take the baby steps required to excel as a scientist.
I became even more disillusioned with academe as I learned about the business of academic research and the motivations that drive university scientists. At one level, the job was all about securing grants. At another level, the name of the game was to publish enough papers to land a job. Whatever happened to doing basic research for the sheer joy of scientific discovery? I soon found myself mired in the paper chase while desperately seeking to rediscover the scientific joie de vivre that I possessed during college. The middle years were full of questions like, "What am I doing in grad school?" and "What do I hope to gain with a Ph.D.?"
Like most other doctoral students, I thought seriously about dropping out. My partner had a real-world job in the software industry, meaning that we had enough money to not have to live like students. Still, it was hard to shake the feeling that life was somehow passing me by as I languished in the lab. Then there was the ever-present hurdle of not knowing what else there was I could do outside of research. Now that I am near the end of grad school, I am glad that I decided to complete the Ph.D. Otherwise I would have probably spent the rest of my life regretting my unfinished business.
So here I am, at a crossroads of sorts. Thankfully, there are now many more opportunities for, and greater acceptance of, Ph.D.'s outside of academe. In the upcoming months I plan to do a lot of self-exploration, data gathering, and informational networking (in a nutshell: research!) to find a career that fits my needs, skills, and values. To be honest, I am a bit afraid to leave the cloisters of the ivory tower. Stereotypically, one of my greatest fears is of entering an environment that is not intellectually stimulating or challenging. However, when I think of all the people I knew in college I realize that the fact that they are not in academe does not make them any less smart than they were before. Perhaps they were the smarter ones for knowing to stay away from grad school.
I am also fearful of entering a new environment where I may be judged more on who I am rather than on what I know or how I think. Scientists and academics are already subject to preconceived notions and stereotyping by the general public. Being gay and Asian American, I am only too aware of the potential hurdles I may face in the professional world. It will be challenging to enter an environment where the clothes I wear, the color of my skin, or the amount of money I make will actually matter. You can work on a cure for Alzheimer's disease while wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and cutoff shorts, but try arguing a case before a jury or speaking to a roomful of venture capitalists while wearing that outfit.
Perhaps the thing I fear most of all is leaving the comfortable life of an academic. We all complain about the lousy pay, but the perks more than make up for it. It will be difficult to leave a lifestyle in which I can afford the time to make midday vet appointments for my cats or wait five hours for the cable repairman to show up. How does one shift to a 9-to-5 existence where your vacation and sick days are actually recorded or adapt to a world where you can't take a stack of papers to "read" on the beach whenever your boss goes out of town?
I'll let you know when I get there.
