On wretched jobs.
For some perspective, today also happens to be my birthday. My plans for today?
Stay at work until some ridiculous hour, performing inherently flawed science that I haven't the slightest interest in, and doing it again for the next couple of days.
I have been working as a research assistant for the neurosciences department for the past couple of months. This is quite possibly one of the worst jobs that I have ever taken. I will readily admit that I needed this job when I was applying for grad schools, but now that those applications are all done, I not only want to quit, I need to quit. I honestly feel like my well being is at jeopardy if I stay at this job for much longer.
In terms of research goals, it sounds noble. I work essentially as a contract worker for a lab to a pharmaceutical company, where I test their compounds to see if they alleviate severe respiratory symptoms associated with Rett Syndrome, a neurological disease. Do these theraputic agents work? No.
Actually, no conclusions can be drawn. This is because we use mice as our simulated Rett patients. And to administer these drugs, we have to inject it. So to set things straight: I stab mice in the stomach (twice a day), place them in a recording chamber the equivalent of a human and a closet, and expect to see some sort of positive change in their breathing.
This would be all fine and dandy if it wasn't nearly so time consuming. But Since coming back from vacation the day after New Years, I have been forced to go into work every day (including weekends and MLK) to inject animals. This means coming into work at 8:00 in the morning, injecting for ~2 hours, and then coming back in later in the day at around 5:00 to repeat.
And here I am today, on a day where I record the mice breathing patterns. And wouldn't you know, they have no periods of quiet breathing that are valid. I wonder why.
Ugh. I'm just so messed up right now. I cannot wait for this weekend, since I get to interview at Johns Hopkins and get out of this wretched environment. And then the following weekend, I have an interview at USC. Regardless if I get into any school or not, I think I'm going to force myself to confront my boss and say, "This job makes me miserable and no longer has any potential gain for me. I can make ends meet by going back to waitering. Please find a replacement for me."
I'm being such a bitch, though. I know people have worse hours than me. I'm an exceptionally fragile person, though. More to come in a later entry. Maybe.
Stay at work until some ridiculous hour, performing inherently flawed science that I haven't the slightest interest in, and doing it again for the next couple of days.
I have been working as a research assistant for the neurosciences department for the past couple of months. This is quite possibly one of the worst jobs that I have ever taken. I will readily admit that I needed this job when I was applying for grad schools, but now that those applications are all done, I not only want to quit, I need to quit. I honestly feel like my well being is at jeopardy if I stay at this job for much longer.
In terms of research goals, it sounds noble. I work essentially as a contract worker for a lab to a pharmaceutical company, where I test their compounds to see if they alleviate severe respiratory symptoms associated with Rett Syndrome, a neurological disease. Do these theraputic agents work? No.
Actually, no conclusions can be drawn. This is because we use mice as our simulated Rett patients. And to administer these drugs, we have to inject it. So to set things straight: I stab mice in the stomach (twice a day), place them in a recording chamber the equivalent of a human and a closet, and expect to see some sort of positive change in their breathing.
This would be all fine and dandy if it wasn't nearly so time consuming. But Since coming back from vacation the day after New Years, I have been forced to go into work every day (including weekends and MLK) to inject animals. This means coming into work at 8:00 in the morning, injecting for ~2 hours, and then coming back in later in the day at around 5:00 to repeat.
And here I am today, on a day where I record the mice breathing patterns. And wouldn't you know, they have no periods of quiet breathing that are valid. I wonder why.
Ugh. I'm just so messed up right now. I cannot wait for this weekend, since I get to interview at Johns Hopkins and get out of this wretched environment. And then the following weekend, I have an interview at USC. Regardless if I get into any school or not, I think I'm going to force myself to confront my boss and say, "This job makes me miserable and no longer has any potential gain for me. I can make ends meet by going back to waitering. Please find a replacement for me."
I'm being such a bitch, though. I know people have worse hours than me. I'm an exceptionally fragile person, though. More to come in a later entry. Maybe.