Life of a Lab Rat

Ian seems to be having his midlife crisis a little early.

Being visited by my ex-boss brought similar questions in my mind to a focus a couple of weeks ago. I too have had an 'eclectic' career — not that it's bad, just unconventional. Being the eternal postdoc might be fun, but it's unsupportable for much longer. I need to be finding a real job, with some degree of security, whether in academic science or out of it. That thought does exercise me somewhat.

And by making that thought public I might be breaking ranks with the essence of postdoc-hood. Ian raises questions that we all should be facing, yet there seems to be very little discussion of them. The unspoken rule is that you get your PhD, you publish lots during one or two postdoc positions, and you get tenure. That's the career track for this trade, and many people, good people are failing to achieve this.

Lots of people go into publishing or pharma or whatever, but the feeling from this side of the fence is that they have somehow failed. That is patently unfair. But for a postdoc to admit that s/he is not happy with science, is seriously considering a change , is seen as an admission of failure (if this happens after a reasonably successful career to date — it's expected that a newly-minted PhD will go through this).

Add to this the shark-like instincts of the turbo-nutter gunners to sense weakness and to hunt and destroy anyone going through a 'difficult' patch and it would not surprise me if there are a lot of scientists out there wondering just what the hell they are doing, and not being able to talk to anyone.

This is all just preamble. I think we need a True Scientist Confessions to complement True Mom Confessions*. Not just a place for "I hate my boss"-type whinges, but somewhere we can say "I know it's weird, but I really get a kick out of cell culture" as well. And have other people agree that maybe we don't quite classify as 'normal', but that we're not completely 'odd'.

Be quiet at the back.

* I think 'True Dad Confessions' would probably work, too.