Scientist

Reality check - I'm already three years into my straight-PhD career in chemistry, but I'm still feeling rather lost about my life. Where am I really going? Am I really fully decided on fulfilling my childhood dream of becoming a scientist?

I remember way back in elementary school when people always ask you what you want to be when you grow up. "To be a scientist" was always my ready answer since I was a very curious child, always wanting to know the why and the how about stuff. I thought it would be fun being a scientist, inventing stuff and mixing chemicals. Discovering new things and winning Nobel prizes. But now that I am really on that path (too late) I realized something - it is not that easy. Not at all.

There are two major things wannabe scientists have to go through - the course work and the research. The former, I can handle well enough. It is a passive thing. You go to class, you listen, you study, and you pass the exams. That's it. But conducting your own research is... umm... quite beyond me, at present. I'm the laziest person in the world, even eating is a chore for me.

In doing research, you have to set a rigid schedule, do experiments on time, buy your own reagents, arrange stuff... Just the thought of meeting deadlines, having no time for yourself strangles me. What if, in the middle of the experiment, I felt like resting a bit? What if suddenly, I felt like I'm not enjoying what I'm doing anymore? What will my adviser say?

Rhay knows I only went through my undergraduate thesis because of her rigid time frame. Left to myself, I would probably leave everything undone til March, postponing every activity, procrastinating everything I might not have graduated on time.

With exams, you can cram. And you can think on the spot while taking it. But experiments cannot be crammed - procedures take time, instruments have to be conditioned, etc. etc! I'm just not organized enough for it.

Recently, I've been attending seminars by scientists who have gone abroad where they studied and did their research, and one of them said that if, at this age, we haven't started our own researches yet then we're going nowhere.

So that means I am going nowhere?

Frustration. The drive is there within me. I know it. I still have that childhood thirst to study about something and do actual experiments and learn something new. But I do not have the initiative. I need somebody to force me to do it, like what Rhay did on our theses. But isn't that what the Institute is already doing to us graduate students?

I've taken it easy since I graduated from college. I needed to take a step back from busyness and enjoy my life a little. But now that I've been to the other side of life, I feel like I don't want to go back to the rigid world of science anymore.

But time is running out. I have to go back. Maybe three years of resting is enough.

I want to be a scientist. I want to be called a doctor. I can do what needs to be done.