Six more months to go, and I will finally get away from this school. I should know what studies to pursue, shouldn’t I? At least everyone else seems to think that I should. The truth is that it has been at least one year since the first time I contemplated the idea of going to University, and I am no closer to deciding. Perhaps I should just take a break before going to University, you know, to clear my head. But, how on earth would I explain this monstrous decision during interviews? How could I possibly justify such a selfish decision? No, recruiters will not have it, “higher” education it is.
As soon as this thought quiets down, a stampede of doubts rushes inside my head. Which university offers the best program?, and more importantly, which university has the higher “chance” of accepting me? The choice needs to be just right, a plan needs to be laid out and followed with military precision, deviations from it are unacceptable. This was the sequence of thoughts that steamed my brain in a matter of seconds as I waited for a bus to take me to School in 2009. It was only years later that I realized how wrong I was about the whole thing, down to the last bit of it.
At the end of 2009 I decided that I would study Physics at University, something that did not come as a surprise given that I was heavily involved in a specialized project for young students where physics was my main study. The reason I chose that path was not because I thought I would eventually do some service to humanity, I hardly ever thought about what dwelled beyond my hobbies back then. No, the reason was much more mundane, I simply thought that it was “cool”, and let’s face it, I also didn’t give it much thought. Back then I was under the impression that this is how life works: choose a path, follow the path, and eventually arrive at the desired destination. As I later discovered, the path is more treacherous than that, there are roadblocks, dead ends, highways as well as back alleys. To me, that path doesn’t really look like a path anymore, it is more like looking at a map through a frosted glass.
And so, I charged forward, towards a windmill that spitted out lessons of quantum field theory and nuclear physics. That incredible battle lasted for several years, until I triumphed and claimed my DIN A4 reward. I would like to claim that at this point something awoke in me that made me realize what my purpose in life was; that would imply that this part of me was always there, and it only needed a little push. It wasn’t. I was somehow disappointed, not heartbroken though, that would come later. I decided that I needed a career change, at least a light turn of scenery. This time I was ready though, having “learned” from my past decision, I knew that I just needed to find a career that was “cooler” than the one before. And soon, my heart and mind found themselves busy with physical chemistry, a field that, I thought, might bring me a little more satisfaction, who knows, perhaps even a bit more swag in the scientific community. As a physicist, accustomed to working at a desk, complaining about not having enough support on my 360 degree reclinable chair, I was ill-equipped for lab work. Luckily, this adventure went on for only one and a half years, until I got my second price, although in DIN A2, a most deserved upgrade.
At this point, it felt like I couldn’t see a way forward anymore, I was walking a path that I no longer recognized. For the first time since I started studying, I did a sensible thing regarding my career choices, I stopped moving forward. I took a one-year “break” before deciding my next move. Having to pay for my bills got me into teaching during that year. I hated parts of it, and I loved others, which made it worth it. I think that the reason I liked it was that I could see my efforts amounting to something, even if it was something small, I was doing something that I felt good about. This thought carried me to my next decision, perhaps the biggest one yet, the PhD fantasy. This was a particularly difficult decision for me because it involved getting far away from my comfort zone and into the world of computational sciences, a field where I had little experience. The reason I jumped to a very different field was because I wanted to work on a project where the chances of creating something I was proud of were higher.
I think that life as a PhD student could fill volumes in a library, so I will keep it down to what, I believe, was the core of my experience. Doing a PhD is like being a dog owner, experiments being the dog. You have to spend a lot of time with them, they might get you to places that you didn’t think possible, they are stubborn and don’t always do what you want them to do, and your friends and family don’t understand why you don’t have time to attend the same events you could before.
If I could give someone and advice, it would be that learning to filter all the noise that we are subjected to in academia is a crucial skill. People absolutely love to tell you what you should do, “you should become a teacher”, “you should be a professor, you would be good at it”, “have you thought about becoming a consultant?” … But none of it matters, if you don’t believe in what you are doing. I mean truly believe, not just repeat university slogans, “we believe in addressing the issues of humanity …”. If you take something from here, let it be this. As a physicist turned chemist, turned teacher and turned into data scientist, I can tell you that you don’t have to be just one thing, pretty much like photons, you can be multiple things at the same time. Would you look at that, perhaps I did learn something from my quantum mechanics lessons. You can be a biologist/teacher/scientific reporter, or a clinician/programmer/project manager. As Stephen King put it:
I will live my life until my life runs out. I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes.
— Stephen King (If it bleeds)
