Is there life after science?
Guest post by Nik Papageorgiou
Having read some recent pieces on the age-related disorders and pass-the-pie funding patterns that punctuate the modern scientific landscape, it struck me that the biggest challenge to Science today isn’t cloning, stem cells, climate change, invisible particles or perfect tea-making. No, friends, what whitecoats should be preoccupied with at the moment is solving the inscrutable puzzle of Science Money: whither, to whom and for what.
I have no pretensions that anyone’s having an epiphany here. In the whole Science Funding bandwagon (and I’m using that term only positively), I’m the guy who’s running behind, shouting ‘HEY! WAIT UP!’ I can hardly believe that I’m writing something for LabLit that isn’t a short story or a PowerPoint cartoon with delusions of subtlety. Last time I did that – well, let’s just say it made some people cry. Myself included.
But as funding stands, we are faced with a sad reality: most of those who venture into the straits of research will not get far. The bottleneck squeezes and the sails hang limp for lack of wind. I know; like most scientists, I’ve been there and back. More than once.
Which raises the question, one I have asked myself many times and for many different reasons: at what point do you call it quits? At what point do you say, ‘Wow, I actually can’t do this anymore – not because of science, but because of the business of science’?
Scientists are a peculiar breed, and we ought to be glad for it. No matter how heroically we try to communicate our arcane trade to the public – and rightly so – we will always stand a bit apart from popular embrace. Why? Just add up the hours you’ve spent in some cold, lonely, white room and it’ll tell you something. Obsessing over some fluorescent colours at 3 AM on a weekend is not normal for the rest of the world. Blu-tacking pictures of cells over your family desk photo does not fall in the middle of the world’s bell-shape curve. I doubt it even falls at the edges. Oh – you know what a bell-shaped curve is? Guess who doesn’t.
We do it ‘cos we love it. But the numbers say that most of us simply won’t be able to do it. What then? I’m all for fighting it. But as an old soldier, I know that there comes a critical point in every fight when the fight isn’t worth it anymore; it’s not, as they say, cost-effective. Too few papers. Too few – ahem – good papers. Not enough postdoc experience. Too much postdoc experience. Too few places. Too young. Too old. And of course, that never-abetting curse: no money.
So, at the risk of demoralizing everyone (again), I just wanted to ask: when the music ends, how do scientists go out? With a bang or a whimper? Do they bow out or something less graceful? And, of course, what can they do when they have shuffled off the mortal coat?
I went out with a bang.
I fought my ‘mentor’ to get out of his lab once I realized the jig was up. I went to the Office of Research and spoke with the Vice-Chancellor and asked for help. That got me an internship in admin, which I turned into a postdoc, which i fought to get funded so it became a staff position…and now, well, we’ll see but there are even more options on my horizon.
deciding when to turn away is impossible for anyone but you to judge, but when you realise your dance is up you need to fight tooth and claw for your next step. Think about your options, think about your skills, identify your weaknesses and bolster your CV. no one cares that you do a mean western blot. They care that you can commnicate, multi-task, fine focus, broad thinking etc.
And when it finally comes time to go, be like Gibson in Braveheart…wholeheartedly charge down the enemy wearing nothing but your pride and your gut instinct, screaming “FREEEDOM!” all the way.
Gut instinct, or guts twizzled round on a stick while some fat bastard sneers at you?
Nik, thanks for the post which resonates a little too closely with me right now. Problem is, for me, that I’ve already called it quits once. It’s sort of like being married multiple times – divorce loses its melodramatic impact on repetition.
All of it true. I’m 29, spent almost 6 yrs doing a PhD, I’m doing a postdoc because I thought that the academic route was the only way to go and now I realise I don’t really care for academy. I can’t go back and get an MS and erase the PhD from any and all records. Partly it’s why I wrote this: http://twentysevenandaphd.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/why-i-did-a-phd-and-why-i-may-not-become-a-faculty-member-like-at-all/
Loved this and loved the piece you reference here. Like what Tideliar says: “deciding when to turn away is impossible for anyone but you to judge, but when you realise your dance is up you need to fight tooth and claw for your next step.”
I’m all for bowing out gracefully, unless it can’t be helped. No point in burning bridges… well, most of the time.
Then again, I can fully understand Tideliar’s Braveheart thing.
When did Science become so complicated…?
“how do scientists go out?” as for me, I’m in denial about if I’ve stopped being a scientist since I’m doing “science” although not for paper publishing as much…
I guess I will know more once I move to my next job – what will it be? More sciency (as in moving back) or less sciency (moving in the direction I did from my post doc)?? Knowing me though, I probably will wake up one day realising that I haven’t done science for a long time, but not seeing it as I am moving away…. the feelings are not really on board if I see myself as a “non-scientist” (although, I guess it depends on what you put in the word… (see, already in the grey zone and trying tio muddle the waters ^^ )
[…] Papageorgiou takes LabLit on a detour from faithful-to-laboratory-scene literature to ask Is there life after science? Only a science writer would close with this line: what can they do when they have shuffled off the […]