by FineyMcFine » Sun Oct 09, 2005 8:36 am
Back in 1995, I entered a Ph.D. program in biology, studying cell polarity in a bacterial system. In 1999, I graduated with a terminal master's after having passed my prelims and becoming a Ph.D. candidate.
While in graduate school, I had a lot of other hobbies and interests, and was also going through some really challenging personal stuff that took up a great deal of my time and attention. Toward the end, I was very frustrated with research and was often heard to say that molecular biology was all about transferring small amounts of liquid from one tube to another. It's something that the scientists I hung around with said as a joke, because it's true, but I meant it derisively.
My mom was distressed when I announced my plans to leave, and she tried to convince me that I should stick it out and get the doctorate since I had passed my prelims. However, that would have involved doing at least 3 and probably more like 5 more years of research and writing a thesis. The prospect was pretty daunting to me at the time because I had never put anywhere near the proper amount of attention and care into my experiments. Small wonder none of them ever worked.
Anyway, it was the right decision for me at the time to leave graduate school. I moved and got my dream job at the time, and have been working at the same place ever since. It's been over 6 years now and I've been quite successful. I've gotten a promotion every year that I've been here, and am now in management. I've tripled my salary since I started. By all accounts, I could continue on this path and probably do fairly well for myself, either at my current place of employ or a similar one.
However, lately thoughts of graduate school have been nagging at me again. I could hardly believe it at first. Part of it is that I'm getting a little bored with what I'm doing - there's repetition in any field, of course. But part of it is also that I feel like I have unfinished business. I contacted my old P.I. (Principal Investigator, the biology way of saying the prof whose lab I did my research in) recently to say hi, and she said "You were either the best or the worst graduate student I ever had. I don't know which it is. I'm not sure I'll ever know." She was always a straight shooter, and her comment has stuck with me over the last couple of months.
Thoughts of returning to graduate school and finishing my Ph.D. started to rear their heads in earnest when, silly as it may sound, I saw a recent sci-fi movie, and saw various sci-fi TV shows that feature a character working in a lab. It got me thinking: part of why I went into science was that I wanted to help unlock the mysteries of the universe. That sounds pretentious, but it was attractive to me. I was so fascinated with DNA and cells - how do they know when to divide? How do they know when to make more or less of certain proteins? How are all of the thousands of events crucial to preserving and growing life coordinated in such a delicate but resilient and even adaptable fashion?
That's not to say that my current work isn't important. In some ways, I could argue that it's MORE important because it affects people more immediately and directly. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm not sure that my heart is in it anymore, and that someone else with new energy and new ideas might be able to do my job a heck of a lot better than I'm currently doing it.
But back to science. So I've been having these thoughts, and they won't leave me alone. I'm afraid of several things, though - what if it's a "grass is greener" episode that I'm going through? Academia looks pretty attractive after 6 years in politics, but what if the reality of the university-lab grind wears me down? I always used to say that all the graduate students I knew in biology acted clinically depressed. Perhaps I was projecting.
What if I get a year or two into it and regret my decision? It's certainly possible. What if they don't accept me back? I'm assuming that I'll get in where I want to go, but maybe betting on a horse that failed once already isn't a risk this university wants to take. And I can't deny that there is some element of vanity in all this - the prospect of being Dr. McFine is much more appealing to me than going through the rest of my life without a doctorate-level degree. Is vanity an appropriate reason to return to graduate school? (Although some of the egomaniacs I've encountered in the science field would argue that it's the best reason to be a scientist, frankly. Where is the :snark emoticon when you need it?)
And then, the mundane but important life concerns. Am I ready to commit so much time to an endeavor like this? Can my wife and I afford the cut in pay that I will certainly have to take? We just bought a house a year ago. Am I ready for the lifestyle change - less vacation, less personal freedom, more being tied to a lab?
I'm not sure yet. I think maybe - there's something appealing about the perceived intellectual freedom that would come with eventually running my own lab. I've always loved teaching. But I've also loved having four weeks of vacation and taking days off here and there for concerts, family visits, or just messing around at home. Those things wouldn't have to stop, but they would definitely be reduced. I have to believe that the intellectual fulfillment I'd get would make up for it - sometimes now I feel like I'm experiencing an existential crisis or malaise anyway when my current job frustrates or bores me.
I decided that one way I'd get some clarity is to download the last 5 years of literature on the microorganisms that I was most interested in and read them. Reading articles from the Journal of Bacteriology and Molecular Microbiology will definitely evoke memories of what graduate school and life in the lab was like, as well as seeing if I remember any of it.
The first article took me a while to read, but the second was easier. All of these terms and genes and proteins came flooding back to me. The lacZ promoter, beta-galactosidase, SDS-PAGE, flagellins, conjugation, integration, RNA polymerase, sigma-54 as both a transcription factor and inhibitor, WOW! I know that not only would I have a lot to remember and relearn, I would have 6 or more years of literature to catch up on, if I went back. Not so different from any fresh-out-of-undergrad student, I suppose.
I went down to the basement this morning and was hoping beyond hope that I still had my textbooks from graduate school and hadn't thrown them away during the last 6 years, in which I have moved no less than 6 times. I looked through some boxes, and lo and behold, I still had them. I guess some part of me was unable to part with them. I can't explain the thrill that went through my heart when I saw these textbooks: A Genetic Switch (about bacteriophage), Prokaryotic Genetics, Biology of Microorganisms, Microbial Genetics, and my beloved Recombinant DNA.
I have anywhere from 45 to 75 more days to mull it over before the application deadline is past to enter graduate school next fall. Would I have to retake the GREs, or will they accept my 10-year-old results, I wonder? Would I have to take all the core Ph.D. courses or would my previous Ph.D. candidacy count for anything? Not that I would complain, I'm sure that a few courses would be excellent for me and whip me right into shape. But most of all, what about entering an unfamiliar environment - a new university, a new lab, new people, a new organism? I'm scared.
I'm not full decided one way or the other yet, but this journal article reading project is helping. I'm reading these articles like I've never read them before - making sure I fully understand the figures, checking the references to get some of the history, rereading sentences 5 and 6 times to get it, studying the DNA sequences, etc. It's exhilarating, and nerve-wracking.
watty asked me: if the deadline goes by and you don't apply, will you regret it? I'm not sure yet. But I'm trying to figure it out.
Great to see so many of you in grad schools (or graduated - congrats!), and in such interesting fields!
