Thursday, June 07, 2007
Senior Scientist
I've been totally anxious all day for various reasons but today I got thinking about my current fairly haphazard career so far and that of my peers. One of the thing which has been really different for me compared to everyone else I know still heading the academic route is that they have had so much more support throughout their projects. I drastically changed fields (unintentionally but impossible to change without scuppering my chances of ever getting PhD funding again) and was the senior person in the lab after the PI, and again I'm in the same situation. Sometimes I think it's OK and think "wow - I am doing a great job getting all this sorted and understood in my head on my own" but at the same time it is really hard as there are no other groups in the university doing the same techniques as me and that being spread across several departments makes it hard to have a good support network and close friends and people to ask troubleshooting questions and really stupid clarifications. Mostly my bosses are fine but sometimes I don't want to bother them or feel like the question is way too stupid and I don't want to look like even more of a dunce to them than they think of me already.
Labels: interdisciplinary perils, lab stuff
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