Fat girl with the cookie

I realize that it is way too early (and most likely wrong) to say something like “I’ve made a mistake” when it comes to job choices and reality. However, the last couple of weeks have been like a fat girl trying to defend the choice of eating a cookie in front of a swim suit collection and other people trying them on, trying to suck their stomachs in and telling everyone else that they are fat although everyone knows it the fat girl who can’t have the cookie since she is the one who is fat.

Bad analogy probably but that is sort of how it feels, looking back. I don’t have a good name for what I am doing now. I don’t have a fancy title. I am not tenure-tracked. I don’t really do research, as far as “real” researchers see it, but as far as Joe Schmo looks at it I am. As of now, there is no “professorship in the future”. There is “an unknown future, with more open doors” though.

I think half of this strange feeling would never been here if my papers/articles were done, written and accepted. If the old place was “done”. If I was sure that my name would be the first one in line of the authors, even if it looks a lot like the remaining experiments (done by someone else) will give excellent data that fits in perfectly in what I have done so far… and I am not in the lab anymore and last time that happened, well – I wasn’t on the paper in the end. I don’t think that will happen now, but the order of the names may or may not be as I want them. And my paranoia is increased due to lack of addressing the questions that are sent in emails… however, I would think that it’s just me and not real. And when the writing process starts I would assume it will feel better…

And in any event, this is not as much a question of “did I do the right choice here” but “what is it really that I am feeling missing?”.

Partly what I am missing is the same thing that I didn’t like before. Working with driven people: driven people who want to publish, to contribute to the larger field (they want fame and fortune too) and can plan their own stuff and are not only at work to sit out time. Of course, I feel more like (again) I am the one who is naïve since I know that this is not the “truth” of science in Academia today. I know that my main reason to leave my post doc, at the time I did, was because it would’ve been up within the year anyway and the job I got wasn’t going to be around in a year. It was other things too. Like a little nagging feeling that however much I wanted to do science, I wouldn’t be the recipient of the ever so needed grants…. Not within the next couple of years anyway. And the whole “buddy complex” is not including me as much, I haven’t been involved in major collaborations where people seek out me or where I did seek out other people. I was quite happy in my little lab with my bench and my research on a smaller scale trying to sort out my problems.

And then of course it was the “outside circumstances” like visa and living in another country and personal life etc. all adding up to thinking “new avenues to pursue might not be that bad. After all, another route gives more options later in life”.

However, after being questioned for a number of times “oh, you couldn’t hack it” and “what is that” [as a response to my current job title] I have the fat girl feeling… and I have “defended” myself. All this tells me that I am much vainer that I would’ve hoped for. And that I am one of those who places emphasis on job title, professor title, research fame and glory … that it makes me feel important and worth something. And now, being in a middle ground for research I realize that my thinking is actually pretty disgusting and pathetic. I have somewhat become what I didn’t like in all these “slightly arrogant professorship aspiring people I have met during my years as a post doc”.

And I need to reconnect with myself and realize that I miss research, the Academia, the 10% when the experiments did work and everything was hunky dory glory with sugar on top. And this is OK and valid. However, I need to remember the other things too; the not having time for friends and family, not sleeping that much, feeling sad when the four weeks of experiments did not work and threw it all in a fit, never knowing when I could go home since it depended on when the bacteria had reached their good OD… etc. etc…

For right now, after the talk I just listened to, I realize that I crave the attention of giving a good talk based on my research that I devoted a lot of my time to over the last 4 years and hearing people applaud it and ask questions to me, since my opinion matters.

Attention whore. My secret persona… good thing I didn’t expect Santa to bring me lots of gifts this year anyway :)