What I'm doing this summer
Jul. 19th, 2010 03:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mechanosapienceStarting this fall, I'll be enrolled in the BA/MA program at Wesleyan. Essentially, this entails staying for a fifth year and getting a Master's in the natural science of my choice (biology). The catch is that because the program is only a year long, students in the program are expected to begin their research as early as possible. Some begin relatively early in their undergraduate careers. I started less than a month before the end of my last spring semester.
I'm workingwith in the lab of a biology professor who focuses on community ecology and entomology; he is generally known as the caterpillar guy. Essentially, my research involves raising caterpillars of various sorts on plants of various sorts; the idea is to see if species that specialize on a specific plant for food grow bigger/faster/better than generalist caterpillars raised on the same plant. In spring, my work consisted of raising caterpillars from eggs collected from moths in the field, the advantage being absolute control over what a given caterpillar ate over its entire lifespan. However, I was only able to raise three species, all of which were generalists, from eggs. Meanwhile, a few other students who were on campus for summer research were going into the field with the Doc and collecting caterpillars, as well as spiders and ants (both of which are known to feed on caterpillars). Thus, for most of June and a week of July, I went into the field with them, armed with a sheet and a club. Collecting caterpillars entails going up to a tree, holding a flat, rigid surface (like a sheet stretched over a PVC frame) underneath a low branch, and bludgeoning said branch like it owes you money. Field days usually ended for me around 7, after having identified the catch of the day and fed my stock. Fortunately, there were only 2-3 a week.
Weirdly enough, this experience has made my future plans less certain. I had been expecting to go to grad school and ultimately end up in research/academia. Now I'm questioning that plan. For one thing, I'm realizing just how long getting to be a tenured professor would take and the instability of that career path. Being a Cancer, I like stability, and want to be able to put down roots. Spending the next ten to twenty years getting a PhD, post-doc-ing in a lab, and scrambling for tenure does not strike me as conducive to this.
I also feel continually behind the curve, which is something of a neurosis/deep-seated fear for me. I know just enough to realize how little I know, and that wouldn't be so bad were there not an undergrad in the lab who was much more knowledgeable and much more adept at talking ecology.
I'm liking my advisor less and less. His discomfort with social interaction translates into me rarely talking to him--partly because of how uncomfortable the process is--and him rarely giving me any indication of what expectations I should be meeting, which is a problem, considering that he came up with the project I'm working on. He generally expects his students to take the initiative to a degree that is frankly unrealistic. First year grad students need guidance. I hear that some professors are downright chummy with their students, and this notion is completely foreign to me.
A lot of the problems I'm having are related to the specific environment. In a lab that focused on a more interesting study system/topic that was run by a professor who was more hands-on--and if not chummy with hir students, then at least not palpably uncomfortable interacting with them--then I might be having a lot fewer issues. There'd still be the instability issue, but I'm not sure how much I would be bothered by that if that were the only problem. I also should probably not be archive-binging on Piled Higher and Deeper.
I've been going to the campus version of the guidance counselor, hoping to figure out what I want to do. I've even taken one of those fancy career assessment tests. I've gotten some leads and advice, but I keep coming to the fact that aside from research, my interests don't really jive with a realistic career path. I like to write, but I have difficulty getting into the right head space and I can't do length. I'm interested in gaming, but since all of the pen-and-paper systems I play are outdated (Old World of Darkness and D&D 3.5), that's unlikely, and I fail to see how anything to do with LARPing could be a career. A career involving sexual health or kink is intriguing, but sex-positive sex-ed is sort of like baby-sitting, insofar as few people are comfortable with men performing those verbs, and the only jobs involving kink that I can think of are incompatible with a monogamous LTR.
To put it simply, I'm without a clue.
I'm working
Weirdly enough, this experience has made my future plans less certain. I had been expecting to go to grad school and ultimately end up in research/academia. Now I'm questioning that plan. For one thing, I'm realizing just how long getting to be a tenured professor would take and the instability of that career path. Being a Cancer, I like stability, and want to be able to put down roots. Spending the next ten to twenty years getting a PhD, post-doc-ing in a lab, and scrambling for tenure does not strike me as conducive to this.
I also feel continually behind the curve, which is something of a neurosis/deep-seated fear for me. I know just enough to realize how little I know, and that wouldn't be so bad were there not an undergrad in the lab who was much more knowledgeable and much more adept at talking ecology.
I'm liking my advisor less and less. His discomfort with social interaction translates into me rarely talking to him--partly because of how uncomfortable the process is--and him rarely giving me any indication of what expectations I should be meeting, which is a problem, considering that he came up with the project I'm working on. He generally expects his students to take the initiative to a degree that is frankly unrealistic. First year grad students need guidance. I hear that some professors are downright chummy with their students, and this notion is completely foreign to me.
A lot of the problems I'm having are related to the specific environment. In a lab that focused on a more interesting study system/topic that was run by a professor who was more hands-on--and if not chummy with hir students, then at least not palpably uncomfortable interacting with them--then I might be having a lot fewer issues. There'd still be the instability issue, but I'm not sure how much I would be bothered by that if that were the only problem. I also should probably not be archive-binging on Piled Higher and Deeper.
I've been going to the campus version of the guidance counselor, hoping to figure out what I want to do. I've even taken one of those fancy career assessment tests. I've gotten some leads and advice, but I keep coming to the fact that aside from research, my interests don't really jive with a realistic career path. I like to write, but I have difficulty getting into the right head space and I can't do length. I'm interested in gaming, but since all of the pen-and-paper systems I play are outdated (Old World of Darkness and D&D 3.5), that's unlikely, and I fail to see how anything to do with LARPing could be a career. A career involving sexual health or kink is intriguing, but sex-positive sex-ed is sort of like baby-sitting, insofar as few people are comfortable with men performing those verbs, and the only jobs involving kink that I can think of are incompatible with a monogamous LTR.
To put it simply, I'm without a clue.
