Tuesday, October 5, 2010

I thought about this question probably everyday of my graduate school career.  My days usually went like this:

1. Get to lab at 7am
2. Start 12hr experiment
3. 7pm, experiment failed
4. 7:15pm set it all up again for tomorrow

Eventually I got everything to work but that 12hr period in the middle was filled with:

"I bet me engineer friends don't have to deal with this shit, and they're getting paid 6 times as much as me."
"I should have just become a web designer. I have fun doing that AND things usually work the first time."
"I want to run away to the cirus and become a Barker."

My PhD mentor once told me that I was the weirdest person he'd ever met because I have too many hobbies.  He didn't think I could be successful in lab if I ran a website, went to the gym for two hours in the middle of the day, maintained my saltwater fish tank etc.  I think he saw all of these things as distractions, or more like, "If he spent that energy in lab, he'd have a billion papers by now."  Well, Honestly I can only take so much science and I need all of these hobbies to keep me sane.  Further, I think I could turn any of my hobbies into careers.

In middle school, my mom worked for a computer training company and I took my first webdesign class there for free using Microsoft FrontPage (what a piece of shit).  I was excited about computer programming after that and one of the first classes I took in high school was a C++ class.  It was the driest most boring class I had ever experienced.  I dropped it after the first test because it just couldn't catch my interest.  It wasn't taught from a practical use perspective.  It was like theory and math and...ZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZ.  So I switched to a science track and just kept web programming in my spare time.  Today of course all of that hobby time programming websites has birthed LabSpaces, but what a lot of people don't know is that I also code webpages for a good friend of mine back in Iowa City who runs a photography business.  He's always joked about stealing me away from science to help him full time, but I'm not sure it'd be as much fun if this was my JOB.

My old boss was right.  I did spend a lot of my time at the gym back in graduate school, but it was mostly to get away from the lab to clear my brain.  That lab was exceedingly stressful and to stay my mellow and unstressed self I had to find a release and that came in the form of a 2 hour or so trip to the gym everyday.  I almost always had a massive gel or a PCR reaction to run, so I timed them so that I could use that incubation/gel run as my gym break.  The system worked out really well.  I've always been an active person.  I enjoy wieghtlifting, running, and mountain biking.  If I ever became independently wealthy, I might toy with the idea of opening a gym or becoming a personal trainer.  Then my job would be at the gym, and I could kill two birds with one stone!

Finally, if I wasn't having so much fun being a scientist, I'd love to open a saltwater fish store.  I'm sure you have seen me gushing over my fish or posting pictures of my lab tank on twitter.  I think everyone should own a saltwater fish tank because they're both beautiful and challenging.  The thing that I really hate about the trade though is that it's full of stupidity and misinformation.  I have yet to find a truly honest vendor who cares about the customers they service or the livestock they sell.  Fish shops will prescribe the wrong medication for diseases or suggest anecdotal remedies when there is a know cure.  I'd love to bring simple, easy to understand solutions to people without just trying to sell everything in the store to them.

I guess I'm still relatively young and haven't found my "Real" career yet.  These are all potential possibilites for the future.  I keep telling my Fianceé that I want to be a stay at home dad ;)  I could certainly do programming from a home office...