I’m a year from completing a PhD in genomic science. I am now completely disillusioned with my field, and indeed professional life in general. I entered with ambition, and have been cleansed of it. I didn’t quit early on because I lost all my self esteem and assumed the problem lay with me, and that I would be equally unhappy elsewhere. I’m now almost sure this is wrong, but I only have about a year to go, and no idea what to do next, and am fairly well paid, so quitting seems imprudent.
I have basic statistical and coding skills (whose usefullness in the real world I cannot assess) and honestly no idea what i want to do with my life. I cannot imagine enjoying a job anymore, but intellectually, I’m aware this is probably just a result of my present, rather toxic environment. I would like something socially valuable and/or lucrative, but will settle for something which has normal work hours and doesn’t drain all the life out of me. My definition of socially valuable aligns well with that of the LW community, though I place much lower credence on a near term Singularity than most here, I think.
I imagine this is a common ish situation, and advice to me would be generally relevant.
1) Tell me if this is the wrong place for this kind of moaning
2) Advice? Sources thereof? Finding a job? Overcoming apathy?
3) How to assess the usefullness of ones skills? Low hanging ways of improving them?
Coding + stats skills + some biology = the world is your oyster (pharma, research labs/institutes, postdocing if you aren’t sick of academia yet, bio startups if you feel you can get invested in something again, etc). I am sorry you had a toxic experience in graduate school. I know this does not help, but I can tell you these are very common, especially in your field.
Just wanted to say good job for realizing the problem was probably with this job, not with you. You may find it helpful, motivationally, to talk to friends/acquaintances and ask them what they like best about their job, so that “a job that doesn’t make you miserable” feels more achievable and you feel more hopeful/driven about pursuing it.
I say this b/c a friend of mine was miserable at his job, and I realized how miserable when I told one funny story about my workplace, and he wondered if he could work there, specifically, because I didn’t seem unhappy. It was clear he didn’t alieve that you could be less unhappy than he was (throwing up every day) at most jobs. In that state of mind, it’s hard to get excited about applying!
Also, try to do nice things for yourself, generally. Being as unhappy as you sound in your job is kind of like having walking pneumonia—it’s a big energy drain on everything else you’re doing. You may find it helpful to ask “What would I do to be kind to a friend who had walking pneumonia?” and then do those things for yourself. You’ll wind up in a new job eventually, but, in the interim, you may want to make sure you treat the symptoms, as well as the root problem.
Ask your professors and school career services and fellow students what are some good non-academia career options. Most people who get a PhD in your field aren’t going into academia, so where are they going?
Research Labs and Pharma/other medical companies (which I imagine are your major prospective employers), or some bio-oriented software companies will have wildly varying work environments. Do your best to choose one that seems to have a friendly, lower-pressure environment. Cultivate your life outside of work, and make friends inside. Save some money.
There’s good odds that the professional world will treat you better and demand less than your PhD program.
As a fellow biology PhD student with a somewhat different experience (with you on the work hours, but I’m really glad I’m here), I hope you don’t mind me asking what has been so draining about the experience?
There are a lot of things wrong, I don’t know which of them is the most important...
1)I have zero control over my own work. I am working frantically all the time to complete analyses requested by other people, most of which turn out to be useless or ill thought out. People generally don’t understand programming and stats enough to know how long things should take.
2)My boss is widely regarded as a bit of a tyrant. I have a powerful aversion to interacting with her in any way, and she has extremely poor communication skills. Our relationship is terrible. I think this is my fault as well, I work a lot but seem to get little done, and whenever I’m around her I feel a crushing sense of guilt and insecurity (this is all pretty melodramatic and childish—any my issue more than hers, but there it is).
3)The culture in my lab is about producing papers, not discovering things. I have the impression that almost none really give a crap about what we’re studying.
4)I’m in a small town in a foreign country which I hate.
5)I have no belief in the value of the work we do. Nor do many of the smart people I’ve talked to. Many of these smart people have quit the lab recently. I was attracted to the lab by work that I didn’t have skills to fully understand at the time. Knowing what i know now, I’d never have come. Our results take the form of vague correlations, and have no practical relevance to anyone.
6) Because I transferred into statistics from wet work a year into my PhD, my boss has been reluctant to give me any real responsibility. she’s given me these vague, ill thought out side projects (other people’s opinions, not my own), which has yielded dead end after dead end.
7) I generally have the impression that I am bad at my job. I have extreme difficultly focusing on my work and I make a lot of embarrassing bugs and errors. Part of this may be due to diagnosed attention difficulties, but I think most of it is just a total lack of interest. Forcing yourself to do something well when you don’t care about it is difficult.
I think overall it’s not so much the negative stuff as it is the total lack of positive reinforcement. Aside from a few brief false alarms, I have literally never had any success. I know there must be parts of the job that other people find rewarding, but i simply haven’t experienced them.
If you need a plan to improve your situation you might consider Athol Kay for advice. He is not uncontroversial (see this thread), but he provides you with a clear tested plan to deal with your situation (the book is not only about person-relationships but also written if you are attached to a job).
From what I’ve seen people who have been wasting away in academia and described their position much like yours have become WAY happier when transitioning to the private sector.
A response from someone, who is happy in research of biosciences:
The personality of your boss is very important. I always payed a lot of attention to my emotional responses to potential bosses during interviews. Privately asking for the opinions of their subordinates can also help. As you write below, your boss “is widely regarded as a bit of a tyrant”. There must be a way to find out in advance next time.
For me, the meaningful topic is not enough to save the job, if the boss is a toxic person. On the other hand, the less sexy topic can become meaningful, if the boss lets you follow your curiosity and your ideas (within the constraints of the budget). The working hours are also boss-dependent.
However, I must make one point—I am not saving the world or hitting for the Nobel price. My goal is to play and be somewhat useful to society while doing that. None of my papers is a dramatic thing, it rather feels like a tiny drop into the ocean of knowledge.
Some people at lesswrong say: if you do not perceive your topic as the most important issue of the world, change the topic. This is the test I would not pass. I just hope to be a little helpful.
Yes, ignoring this advice was in retrospect very foolish. I badly underestimated how important the supervisor/student relationship is. I’m going to be a lot more careful next time.
I don’t know what the academic job market is like in genomic science, but if you would take pleasure in teaching you might enjoy working at a liberal arts college, which would likely be a very different environment then being in a PhD program.
It depends on the field and the school. If you don’t care about status, you will have a much easier time finding an academic job where teaching undergrads is considered an important part of your job.
I’m a year from completing a PhD in genomic science. I am now completely disillusioned with my field, and indeed professional life in general. I entered with ambition, and have been cleansed of it. I didn’t quit early on because I lost all my self esteem and assumed the problem lay with me, and that I would be equally unhappy elsewhere. I’m now almost sure this is wrong, but I only have about a year to go, and no idea what to do next, and am fairly well paid, so quitting seems imprudent.
I have basic statistical and coding skills (whose usefullness in the real world I cannot assess) and honestly no idea what i want to do with my life. I cannot imagine enjoying a job anymore, but intellectually, I’m aware this is probably just a result of my present, rather toxic environment. I would like something socially valuable and/or lucrative, but will settle for something which has normal work hours and doesn’t drain all the life out of me. My definition of socially valuable aligns well with that of the LW community, though I place much lower credence on a near term Singularity than most here, I think.
I imagine this is a common ish situation, and advice to me would be generally relevant.
1) Tell me if this is the wrong place for this kind of moaning 2) Advice? Sources thereof? Finding a job? Overcoming apathy? 3) How to assess the usefullness of ones skills? Low hanging ways of improving them?
Coding + stats skills + some biology = the world is your oyster (pharma, research labs/institutes, postdocing if you aren’t sick of academia yet, bio startups if you feel you can get invested in something again, etc). I am sorry you had a toxic experience in graduate school. I know this does not help, but I can tell you these are very common, especially in your field.
Just wanted to say good job for realizing the problem was probably with this job, not with you. You may find it helpful, motivationally, to talk to friends/acquaintances and ask them what they like best about their job, so that “a job that doesn’t make you miserable” feels more achievable and you feel more hopeful/driven about pursuing it.
I say this b/c a friend of mine was miserable at his job, and I realized how miserable when I told one funny story about my workplace, and he wondered if he could work there, specifically, because I didn’t seem unhappy. It was clear he didn’t alieve that you could be less unhappy than he was (throwing up every day) at most jobs. In that state of mind, it’s hard to get excited about applying!
Also, try to do nice things for yourself, generally. Being as unhappy as you sound in your job is kind of like having walking pneumonia—it’s a big energy drain on everything else you’re doing. You may find it helpful to ask “What would I do to be kind to a friend who had walking pneumonia?” and then do those things for yourself. You’ll wind up in a new job eventually, but, in the interim, you may want to make sure you treat the symptoms, as well as the root problem.
Ask your professors and school career services and fellow students what are some good non-academia career options. Most people who get a PhD in your field aren’t going into academia, so where are they going?
Research Labs and Pharma/other medical companies (which I imagine are your major prospective employers), or some bio-oriented software companies will have wildly varying work environments. Do your best to choose one that seems to have a friendly, lower-pressure environment. Cultivate your life outside of work, and make friends inside. Save some money.
There’s good odds that the professional world will treat you better and demand less than your PhD program.
Then figure out where you want to go from there.
As a fellow biology PhD student with a somewhat different experience (with you on the work hours, but I’m really glad I’m here), I hope you don’t mind me asking what has been so draining about the experience?
There are a lot of things wrong, I don’t know which of them is the most important...
1)I have zero control over my own work. I am working frantically all the time to complete analyses requested by other people, most of which turn out to be useless or ill thought out. People generally don’t understand programming and stats enough to know how long things should take.
2)My boss is widely regarded as a bit of a tyrant. I have a powerful aversion to interacting with her in any way, and she has extremely poor communication skills. Our relationship is terrible. I think this is my fault as well, I work a lot but seem to get little done, and whenever I’m around her I feel a crushing sense of guilt and insecurity (this is all pretty melodramatic and childish—any my issue more than hers, but there it is).
3)The culture in my lab is about producing papers, not discovering things. I have the impression that almost none really give a crap about what we’re studying.
4)I’m in a small town in a foreign country which I hate.
5)I have no belief in the value of the work we do. Nor do many of the smart people I’ve talked to. Many of these smart people have quit the lab recently. I was attracted to the lab by work that I didn’t have skills to fully understand at the time. Knowing what i know now, I’d never have come. Our results take the form of vague correlations, and have no practical relevance to anyone.
6) Because I transferred into statistics from wet work a year into my PhD, my boss has been reluctant to give me any real responsibility. she’s given me these vague, ill thought out side projects (other people’s opinions, not my own), which has yielded dead end after dead end.
7) I generally have the impression that I am bad at my job. I have extreme difficultly focusing on my work and I make a lot of embarrassing bugs and errors. Part of this may be due to diagnosed attention difficulties, but I think most of it is just a total lack of interest. Forcing yourself to do something well when you don’t care about it is difficult.
I think overall it’s not so much the negative stuff as it is the total lack of positive reinforcement. Aside from a few brief false alarms, I have literally never had any success. I know there must be parts of the job that other people find rewarding, but i simply haven’t experienced them.
Get in touch with them. They’ll understand your frustration, and might sympathize enough to give you better help than we can.
If you need a plan to improve your situation you might consider Athol Kay for advice. He is not uncontroversial (see this thread), but he provides you with a clear tested plan to deal with your situation (the book is not only about person-relationships but also written if you are attached to a job).
From what I’ve seen people who have been wasting away in academia and described their position much like yours have become WAY happier when transitioning to the private sector.
A response from someone, who is happy in research of biosciences:
The personality of your boss is very important. I always payed a lot of attention to my emotional responses to potential bosses during interviews. Privately asking for the opinions of their subordinates can also help. As you write below, your boss “is widely regarded as a bit of a tyrant”. There must be a way to find out in advance next time. For me, the meaningful topic is not enough to save the job, if the boss is a toxic person. On the other hand, the less sexy topic can become meaningful, if the boss lets you follow your curiosity and your ideas (within the constraints of the budget). The working hours are also boss-dependent.
However, I must make one point—I am not saving the world or hitting for the Nobel price. My goal is to play and be somewhat useful to society while doing that. None of my papers is a dramatic thing, it rather feels like a tiny drop into the ocean of knowledge. Some people at lesswrong say: if you do not perceive your topic as the most important issue of the world, change the topic. This is the test I would not pass. I just hope to be a little helpful.
Yes, ignoring this advice was in retrospect very foolish. I badly underestimated how important the supervisor/student relationship is. I’m going to be a lot more careful next time.
I don’t know what the academic job market is like in genomic science, but if you would take pleasure in teaching you might enjoy working at a liberal arts college, which would likely be a very different environment then being in a PhD program.
Teaching is something I would love to do, but I was given to understand that you basically have to do research nowadays, due to the glut of academics.
It depends on the field and the school. If you don’t care about status, you will have a much easier time finding an academic job where teaching undergrads is considered an important part of your job.