So, of all my career options, picking the postdoc wasn't a particularly good choice, I believe.
Well, I pretty much did not have much choice since I cannot get into academia without
a postdoc.
However, postdoc, it seems is the best way to ensure that you die starving and in depression. :-)
And dude, looks like I am in good company!! :-)
I was searching for the term "post doc blogs" on google, and horror story after horror story popped up like
this and
this and several, several others.
For me, the horror stories are beginning to come true. I accepted a position at a mediocre university, I am trying to turn my project from experimental to a theoretical one, and that is
not quite going well.
So, I did my PhD in experiment, whereas my academic inclinations are clearly more
theoretical and numerical. However, I could not change my advisor after discovering experiments are not for me. So, I was stuck with a PhD I did not love. And oh boy! what a horror story that turned out to be. Looks like the horror is stil not over with my advisor
still haggling on my PhD papers, which are essential to my academic survival.
My postdoc advisor is not a bad person, but I always feel I am trapped in a mediocre lab, which will not really help me get into academia. My PhD advisor dislikes me. She even did not give me a reco for a postdoc for a long time. So, I have zero connections in the academia, and being the inrovert that I am, I am pretty bad at networking.
So, basically, I am stuck at this postdoc. If I leave, again, I will leave behind a bloody trail with
another spoiled relationship with my present advisor, and no recommendation. Again, I will also not be able to find a numerical/theoretical postdoc. So, stuck here.
Again, it looks like a dead end postdoc to me, and exit from the postdoc means exit from the academia which is a part and parcel of my identity. Therefore, I do not know where to go to, in terms of career. I don't see myself very successful in the industry. Also, I do not want to
do hands on engineering jobs, which I will get. I am much better at programming, data analysis etc, but don't have much of that on my CV. So the doors are shut on me in terms of career.
It does not help that I am still single, and without any hopes.
Sometimes, I look around me, and ask myself, what is it that I have done wrong, and everybody else has done right. I have been a sincere student from my childhood, always been among the top few in class, attended the most prestigious undergraduate college in the country, did my PhD in the one of the top ten univs in the US, and here I am, a postdoc pauper at a mediocre U, wih a dead end career, and no significant other. My friends are mostly in the managerial and financial world. They are raking millions, doing prestigious jobs, have already married. Thats how it was supposed to be.I had also done the right things, and in most cases much better than them. Yes, that my accomplishments speak for. But where do I stand now?
hahaha! I am probably laughing at where I have pulled myself down at. Sometimes I see myself in this ditch, and probably my other friends, with their smiling honeymoon pictures in Europe laugh at me, at this unfortunate guy, who has fallen behind.
What I earn is pennies compared to my friends who even haven't done a masters degree. A school friend of mine was doing a job at my city for a while. I had caught up with him and his wife, and it was great to meet and chat with a childhood friend. But after we met a couple of times, and he had come to my place, they sort of started avoiding me. They lived in a much better Apt, drove a much more expensive car and of course, they had a family. Whereas, here I was, a single guy, who still lives in the dorm style way, does not yet have a car etc. I could figure out that they were thinking this guy is a weirdo.
Well, after that he did not pick up my calls for a while, and thats how that ended. Another episode in a postdoc's life, right. :)
and then people around you don't even understand what a postdoc is. they are like, so what do you do. Well, I am a postdoc. What's that?
Seriously guys? that's all there is at the end of the tunnel?
Whatever happened to the promises of success that my parents made, when I used to slog for grades as a kid. I still slog from 10-7 everyday, but without any promises. Maybe a paper in an obscure journal on some shitty experiments I never cared about, and never did well anyway.
P.S. :And please do not leave mean idiotic remarks. I will just delete it, end of story, period. I am not trying to play nice here in this blog, atleast.
