m****x
发帖数: 2506 | 1 http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/
One of my first memories is myself, 5 years old, going to my mother and
declare to her, as serious as only children can be: “I will be a scientist.”
Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the
University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back to
research again -at least not in the shortcoming future.
What has gone wrong?
Not exactly my pathway (I finished Ph.D. quite well), but well, you get the
meaning.
I could write in detail what was horribly wrong with my project, and for
sure having a lousy project played a big part in deciding to stop and change
my path. You for sure want to change your path if you find yourself in a
mosquito-ridden swamp.
But if this was the only problem, I would have simply switched to another
lab. That’s what I thought until not too long ago (even if the idea of
quitting was really in my mind since a lot of time). But the problem is the
practice of science itself.
Don’t get me wrong. Every scientist goes on to do science for a single
reason: the love of science. Science doesn’t make you rich, it doesn’t
make you famous (can you tell me the last 5 Nobel Prizes for chemistry
without looking on Wikipedia? I can’t either) and doesn’t make you
comfortable. The only sane reason for starting to do science is the
dispassionate love of science itself. And I loved science. Like nothing else
. Since I was 5 years old. And I still love it.
But one thing is to love science; a completely different one is doing it.
Like the proverbial sausage, you don’t want to know how it’s done.
Actually, doing science per se is great. Doing experiments, analyzing data,
making calculations, programming code: I loved it all immensely.
However, with the partial exception of mathematics and theoretical physics,
you can’t be a lone wolf in science. You need funding, you need instruments
, you need resources. You need other people. And here’s where the problems
lie. You basically face two choices.
No, it's not a satire or an exaggeration.
The first is going for the sky: doing great science in a first-class place,
make a great curriculum and look for a tenured position in the end. The
problem is that a lot of clever people want to go for the sky, and there is
much more people who want the sky compared to the available positions. In
general, science career is a race, where three people go to the podium and
all the others sooner or later will go back home (See also this article from
the Economist on the problem). The competition for funding and positions
means that not only the hopes of getting a job are really lousy, but that
people become nasty. Like, really nasty.
I know of people that have given a purportedly crippled software to a
collegue to sabotage his project. I’ve been violently attacked verbally for
having dared talking with my supervisor of a project I was collaborating
with, because she feared that I wanted to “steal” her credit. I’ve seen
more than once people “helped” during a project, only to find all credit
for their work taken by the nice and smiling people who scammed them by “
helping” them. There are endless horror stories like that. Everywhere. Now,
do you want to work in a place full of insanely clever people who are also
insanely cynical and determined to do everything to get on top of you? If so
, you can do top level science.
It’s not all, of course. Top level science requires also an absolutely mind
-boggling determination and, overall, confidence in yourself. To properly do
science you must be absolutely sure that, whatever you have in mind, you
will do it, no matter what, and that you’re doing it right, to the point of
almost self-delusion. This is so important that who wins in science is
regularly not the most brilliant but the most determined (I’ve seen Nobel
prizes speaking and half of the times they didn’t look much more brilliant
than your average professor. Most of them were just lucky, and overall were
incredibly, monolithically determined). Combined with the above, this means
working 24/7, basically leaving behind everything in your life, without any
doubt on your skills and abilities and most importantly on your project,
while fencing off a competition of equally tough, confident and skilled guys.
A friendly post-doctoral scientist in your group asking for a scientific
collaboration.
The ones I’ve seen thriving in Cambridge, apart from geniuses (there are a
few), are the guys who cling to a simple ecological tenet: Find your niche,
where you are indispensable, and keep it in your claws at all costs. This
means basically that these people do always the same thing, over and over
again, simply because it’s the lowest-risk option. I could have done the
same (I was pretty skilled during my Ph.D. in a quite obscure but
interesting biophysics experimental technique) but I thought that doing
science properly was also about learning and broadening your expertise. How
wrong I was.
You can imagine yourself what does it mean also for research in general:
Nobody takes risks anymore. Nobody young jumps and tries totally new things,
because it’s almost surely a noble way to suicide your career.
There is a second option, which is bare survival. You go from postdoc to
postdoc, perhaps end up as a long-term researcher somewhere in some tiny
university or irrelevant research center (like CNR in Italy) and basically
spend your time with a low pay, working on boring projects, crippled by lack
of funding and without any hope of a reasonable career (because the career
path is taken over by the hawks above described), nor any hope of stability
in your life.
Notice that, again, both paths do not offer you any guarantee of sort. You
can arrive to tenure track (itself an achievement) and being kicked out
after a few years, thus ending up as a jobless 40-year something, with a
family probably, too old to compete in the market of real jobs. And bare
survival is not easy as well.
So basically, if you are not cut for this kind of life, your chances are
zero. I tried, believe me. I tried hard. What happened during my research
career is that I spent 6 months on antidepressants, I got a permanent
gastritis, I wasted at least two important sentimental relationships, and I
found all my interests and social life going down the drain.
All of this for having a couple papers about modeling obscure aspects of
protein behaviour, papers that will be probably lost within the literally
thousands of papers that come out every day? Until not so long, I thought
that it was worth it. It was something that I had never questioned so far. I
wanted to be a scientist since when I was five. I had done everything to
become a scientist. I was a scientist in one of the top universities of the
world, in one of the top five research groups on the subject. I had won a
personal fellowship to fund myself. Most of my self-esteem, of my very
concept of self-realization, relied on myself being a scientist. The very
idea of quitting academia was a synonim of personal failure.
It has been long and painful to discover that it was just an illusion. When
I found that academia was not working for me, I got immediately depressed -
my whole worldview was crumbling. Then I remembered that I had a life. I
liked my life. I had a billion things that I loved to do. I want to do them
again. Quitting and reclaiming back your life is not failing. It is waking
up and winning.
A week ago I was with friends, talking about my job, and I found myself
comparing science to a drug addiction. Being a scientist, from the brain
chemicals point of view, is one week of adrenaline rush when you’re finally
on to something and pieces go together -followed by six months (if you are
lucky) of pain and suffering, only to get again that adrenaline shot.
Well, noble addiction as it is, it is toxic the same. The next month I’ll
be 30. It’s really time to get my life back. | J******r
发帖数: 2806 | 2 这篇文章总结了一些残酷的“真相”
但是其他的领域也会有她们自己的残酷“真相”吧
我很喜欢他的那个career plan v.s. career reality
真的就是我的写照 | y***i
发帖数: 11639 | 3 有些东西写得太过了。至少我自己只遇见过坏老板（one good/one bad），但没遇见
那么mean的同事和合作者。
scientist.”
the
【在 m****x 的大作中提到】
: http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/
: One of my first memories is myself, 5 years old, going to my mother and
: declare to her, as serious as only children can be: “I will be a scientist.”
: Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the
: University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back to
: research again -at least not in the shortcoming future.
: What has gone wrong?
: Not exactly my pathway (I finished Ph.D. quite well), but well, you get the
: meaning.
: I could write in detail what was horribly wrong with my project, and for
| S**********l
发帖数: 3835 | 4 那个career plan跟我老板一模一样。。。。连生小孩的岁数都一样。。。
scientist.”
the
【在 m****x 的大作中提到】
: http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/
: One of my first memories is myself, 5 years old, going to my mother and
: declare to her, as serious as only children can be: “I will be a scientist.”
: Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the
: University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back to
: research again -at least not in the shortcoming future.
: What has gone wrong?
: Not exactly my pathway (I finished Ph.D. quite well), but well, you get the
: meaning.
: I could write in detail what was horribly wrong with my project, and for
| y**u
发帖数: 7459 | 5 也和我老板一样，他30出头就有ro1了。
时代不同了。。。
【在 S**********l 的大作中提到】
: 那个career plan跟我老板一模一样。。。。连生小孩的岁数都一样。。。
:
: scientist.”
: the
| s***o
发帖数: 1189 | 6 i experienced 那么mean的同事和合作者......
It happens.
【在 y***i 的大作中提到】
: 有些东西写得太过了。至少我自己只遇见过坏老板（one good/one bad），但没遇见
: 那么mean的同事和合作者。
:
: scientist.”
: the
| a*********g
发帖数: 8087 | |
|
