Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Ramblings of a slow day

Do you ever feel like you should be doing something else with your life?
Today I was speaking to another scientist friend of mine about what normal people (aka non-scientists) perceive us as. There are the ones that see us as parasites, they argue that we are twenty something and we still are students. I still hold no proof that this student condition is not eternal, I know so many things but still I remain ignorant about so many others and trust me I have yet to find a PI that does not treat you as a student and thinks he knows it best. But getting back to the point,  I have been asked when I started the postdoc, if this was like a real job and I was finally getting paid. Their surprised look when I informed them that even during my PhD I was being paid, was priceless. The follow up reply was something like: you are being paid to study? This why the country is as it is.
There are others who think my life is the best in the world: every couple of years I get to go to another city/country, meet new people, party all the time, play with stuff in a lab, discover the cure for cancer. Let me be clear, it is great to travel, but it is not that cool that all your belongings can (or must) be packed in two bags, it is not cool to say goodbye to your friends, it is not that cool to not know where you will be in a couple of months. Sure you can argue, that the last part is actually common to almost every single job, but I have lived in 4 different places in the last 5 years, I had 6 different houses, I have a contract that ends in the end of this year, and trust me if my boss is not pleased with my work, than I will have to move again. And even if he is pleased in 2 to 3 years I will have for sure to move again to God knows where, to do God knows what, because in science the big positions, the principal investigator, are almost impossible to reach.
All this to get to my point that sometimes I just feel like I am wasting my time as a postdoc. Today I randomly typed something like alternative jobs to academia. I wasn't pleased with what I found, than I started thinking about things I really like.
The 2 first things were good food and traveling which would make me very suitable for Mr. Bourdain's job. That is a job I wouldn't mind having but I am sure I will never get...
But the problem is that I am not very good with people. Actually, most people think I am very talkative but the truth is that I am super shy and the fact that I talk a lot is just result of necessity specially when you are living abroad and you need to meet new people.
I am super good at remembering random facts, usually geek, interesting stuff (the interesting part depends on the listener obviously). I am pretty good at science stuff, just because I was trained to do so, I suppose. But the objective would be a normal job so not sure where this is helpful.
So far I got to I like good food and traveling, I am as antisocial as they come, I am a freaking wikipedia and I am good at lab stuff. If you by any chance know of any alternative job for which I could qualify, just let me know...

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