I am a graduate student. I am doing a masters degree. I have ambitions to continue on and get a PhD, and the potentially do a post-doc, and hopefully, if I can find the right skills along the way, become a professor of biology. I have chosen this road, knowing very well that it will be hard, and not terribly glamorous. I chose this road because it is my dream. It is the one constant thing that I have wanted to do since I was a youngster. I recognize that I may not drastically change the world, or save a life, or be recognized as meaningful and important by the masses of humanity. But you know what? I don’t care. If I can find out one new thing about nature or life or anything, then my life will have been worth it. I’ll have been truly creative, and will have stood alone in knowing something that no one else has ever known, if only for a brief moment. So to all you condescending, asshole, pricks out there, who feel the need to lecture me and advise me on my future and how I should make something out of myself and get a job ... go fuck yourselves!
Seriously, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of people asking me when I’m going to get a real job, or when am I ever going to be done school. I’m tired of people patting me on the back for all my progress with one hand, and wagging there finger at me because I don’t have a firmly thought out career path. I’m also tired of those graduate students who bitch about grad school because its hard and boring and they don’t have a good supervisor and how they should have just gone and got a job. Seriously, why are there so many haters out there?
I make approximately $13000 a year being in grad school, which I think means I qualify as poor. But I couldn’t be happier. If money wasn’t an option, I would be doing exactly what I’m doing now (with maybe a few more trips to warm places ... winter is a bitch). I love what I am doing. I love the freedom of research, and the excitement of discovery. I love learning about how everything works, and how things have evolved over time. I love being a grad student, and I love research and science. And I shouldn’t have to defend myself, and I shouldn’t have to apologize for what I am doing, and I shouldn’t be made to feel inferior or like a failure because of it. I have a chosen to go after my dreams and live the best life I can think of, and shame on anyone who tries to ruin that. Yeah, maybe I don’t make a lot of money. And maybe my job isn’t easily associated with glamor and respectability like some other jobs. But you know what? I love it. I love every day of it. And I will not apologize for that!
(P.S. I think I’m going to get away from using the song titles as titles for the posts. Maybe not for all the posts but at least for some.)
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People criticize you for being an academic? Holy shit, they can go fuck themselves!
ReplyDeletehahahah... If you've got it hard in terms of the litany of 'why don't you get a real job,' etc., etc.... imagine how it is for a graduate student in the humanities.
ReplyDeleteAt least most people - well, people who aren't fun-dumb-entalists - recognize that there is some value in training scientists, even if they don't really 'get it.' We all depend too much on the products of science. But training Ph.Ds in obscure European philosophy and social theory? "What's that? What are you going to do with that? You get money from the government for this?" I think most people would rather see our funding go to a new hockey arena or parking garage.
At least I can get some mileage out of my 'science and technology studies' program by claiming some vague affiliation with science. Because if there's anything people like more than playing with the products made possibly by contemporary science, it's complaining about perceived problems with 'science in general' - reductionism, materialism, atomic bombs, boo hoo hoo!
So yeah, I concur wholeheartedly: fuck 'em!