I'm just the way that the doctor made me
I have been questioning, for some time, my current path on the way to acquiring a PhD in biochemistry or some related field. That has always seemed to be the ultimate goal, and a very easy one to say, as people will nod and smile and think that's perfectly reasonable and logical and impressive. However, it's never something I've particularly desired, in any kind of heartfelt way. I have now done two summers of research and am underway on my third (the first was very biologically oriented, the second and third pure organic chemistry), and while I find the overall ideas of both of the projects I have worked on quite fascinating, the actual day-to-day work I find rather stultifying and frustrating. The prospect of spending five years on one project terrifies me, and is rather distasteful to boot. I doubt my own abilities quite severely to be anything more than an average chemist. I learn very quickly when I am taught specific things, but general application and synthesis of everything I've learned I find much more difficult, and I constantly disappoint myself with my inability to bring things I already learned to the table and apply them to a new situation.
So that is all a long way of saying that I have been reconsidering, in a very vague and general way, my future course. I keep mentioning to my dad sort of semi-seriously that I don't know if chemistry is for me, and he says well, then, you need to think about your options. Tonight I was sort of whining halfheartedly at unamaga about how I don't really want to do grad school in chemistry, and instead of just patting me on the head, she started suggesting alternatives and got my brain a-whirring.
This brought to the front of my mind something I've thought about fleetingly a lot before - science writing. I am a very good writer, not to toot my own horn or anything, but professors in every class that I have ever had in which essay writing was involved (english, philosophy, sociology, even a class on mathematics and art) have expressed astonishment and great praise for my level of writing skill. It's something I've always prided myself on, but I didn't know how to use it.
Every time I start thinking along these lines, I then veer off onto "But I don't want to leave science behind!" Because science is AWESOME. I understand it very well, and I am frequently fascinated and enthralled by the things I learn.
So how do I combine those? Well, I write about science! And I wasn't sure what kind of field there was for that, so I went Googling. What I found kind of made me flail my hands in the air: the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT. It's a one year masters program. That whole website just made me want to jump out of my chair and go do it RIGHT NOW. This is a complete contrast to when I picked up a book on chemistry graduate programs the other day - that made me wince and was rather terrifying. This website... I kept going YES. YES THAT'S IT EXACTLY. They described science writers as "humanists, one foot in the sciences, the other in the arts, as apt to be seduced by a shapely sentence as by an elegant scientific idea." They also proposed that people who might like to study science writing are "working scientists and engineers perhaps more drawn to the intellectual excitement of science and technology than to its day-to-day practice." *flaps hands* THAT'S ME, YOU GUYS. ME. I love WORDS but I also love SCIENCE, and to get to squish them together.... ack. The intensive seminar they described sounded SO fascinating, and you get to do any sort of elective you want! Someone took "Writing Science Fiction"!! I just... I can't even. This sounds incredible. The thesis excerpts are fascinating, and read more like a good book than a boring old science paper. I HATE reading chemistry journal articles, but I love news articles ABOUT chemistry, or TV programs, or books.
Now obviously there's a very slim chance that I'd get into MIT's program. And after poking around the internet a little more, it's obvious that it's not all sunshine and rainbows like the website made it out to be. However, it is far far FAR more appealing to me than spending the rest of my life in labs.
There's also the practical fact that.. well, you get PAID to go to graduate school in chemistry. This is because they know it is brutal and impossible and you cannot possibly have a job at the same time, so basically that's the only way they'll ever get anybody to do it. It was a significant motivating factor in keeping that as my goal. However, a writing science masters is only a year long, and while expensive I'm sure I could get grants and scholarships, and also since I'm pretty much definitely taking at least a year off before I do any grad school, I could get a job and save up to put myself through the program.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Advice? Am I being completely batty? It's kind of... novel, and exciting, and scary to have a different possible path in front of me. Meep!
So that is all a long way of saying that I have been reconsidering, in a very vague and general way, my future course. I keep mentioning to my dad sort of semi-seriously that I don't know if chemistry is for me, and he says well, then, you need to think about your options. Tonight I was sort of whining halfheartedly at unamaga about how I don't really want to do grad school in chemistry, and instead of just patting me on the head, she started suggesting alternatives and got my brain a-whirring.
This brought to the front of my mind something I've thought about fleetingly a lot before - science writing. I am a very good writer, not to toot my own horn or anything, but professors in every class that I have ever had in which essay writing was involved (english, philosophy, sociology, even a class on mathematics and art) have expressed astonishment and great praise for my level of writing skill. It's something I've always prided myself on, but I didn't know how to use it.
Every time I start thinking along these lines, I then veer off onto "But I don't want to leave science behind!" Because science is AWESOME. I understand it very well, and I am frequently fascinated and enthralled by the things I learn.
So how do I combine those? Well, I write about science! And I wasn't sure what kind of field there was for that, so I went Googling. What I found kind of made me flail my hands in the air: the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT. It's a one year masters program. That whole website just made me want to jump out of my chair and go do it RIGHT NOW. This is a complete contrast to when I picked up a book on chemistry graduate programs the other day - that made me wince and was rather terrifying. This website... I kept going YES. YES THAT'S IT EXACTLY. They described science writers as "humanists, one foot in the sciences, the other in the arts, as apt to be seduced by a shapely sentence as by an elegant scientific idea." They also proposed that people who might like to study science writing are "working scientists and engineers perhaps more drawn to the intellectual excitement of science and technology than to its day-to-day practice." *flaps hands* THAT'S ME, YOU GUYS. ME. I love WORDS but I also love SCIENCE, and to get to squish them together.... ack. The intensive seminar they described sounded SO fascinating, and you get to do any sort of elective you want! Someone took "Writing Science Fiction"!! I just... I can't even. This sounds incredible. The thesis excerpts are fascinating, and read more like a good book than a boring old science paper. I HATE reading chemistry journal articles, but I love news articles ABOUT chemistry, or TV programs, or books.
Now obviously there's a very slim chance that I'd get into MIT's program. And after poking around the internet a little more, it's obvious that it's not all sunshine and rainbows like the website made it out to be. However, it is far far FAR more appealing to me than spending the rest of my life in labs.
There's also the practical fact that.. well, you get PAID to go to graduate school in chemistry. This is because they know it is brutal and impossible and you cannot possibly have a job at the same time, so basically that's the only way they'll ever get anybody to do it. It was a significant motivating factor in keeping that as my goal. However, a writing science masters is only a year long, and while expensive I'm sure I could get grants and scholarships, and also since I'm pretty much definitely taking at least a year off before I do any grad school, I could get a job and save up to put myself through the program.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Advice? Am I being completely batty? It's kind of... novel, and exciting, and scary to have a different possible path in front of me. Meep!