Happy Birthday to my Ph.D.

I've been dreading writing this post.  Today marks 1 year since I defended my Ph.D., 1 year since I started introducing myself as "Dr. Sandlin" (I'm kidding, I never do that).  It's been a year since the idea of finishing grad school stopped being abstract.  A year ago today, I gathered all my favorite people around and enjoyed a fantastic party to celebrate all the hard work and good friends that got me to the magnificent point of potential that is graduation day.  I remember thinking that nothing could ever be as hard as graduate school was.

Confession: I did not love my dissertation project with my whole heart and soul.  It was a good project, and it was important work, and it gave me some great training opportunities, but I had not always dreamed of being a polyomavirus researcher.  As a result of my work, the world has not responded with a greater need for polyomavirologists.  So I always knew that what I was doing would be confined to my graduate school experience and that I needed to find some other way to make something of my career.  I wanted to be able to transition away smoothly, and look back confidently and say "I was right, I didn't need a post-doc to do what I wanted to do."

This marks a big day for me.  I don't have a real job yet.  I don't know what I want to do with my career, and I don't know if it will be possible to do in Seattle, even though I knew I would have this problem.  That sucks.

On the one hand, it's been a good year.  I've done a lot of things I couldn't have done if I hadn't gone to graduate school (Scientist in Residence at the Carnegie Science Center, STEM panelist, instructional design, and I get to meet people all the time).  Sometimes I hate living in the shadow of this degree, but it has helped me open doors for myself.  And I get to live in Washington, where my family and friends are (not the ones I went to grad school with-but they'll all be moved in another year or so anyway).

On the other hand, this isn't what I wanted for myself.  I freelance because it's a kind of work I can do that helps pay the bills, not because it's what I aspire to do.  After a year of looking for my dream job, it's about time to get real, and just get a real job.  To me, this doesn't mean finding a post-doc, it means settling into some non-dream career path with full-time work and waiting for the economy to turn around.  I guess it's time to admit that my aspirations are getting in the way of having any form of success.  I met someone at the UW who is looking for a virologist to help their drug discovery project.  It's not a post-doc position, it's a scientist job and I applied.

So what else have I learned?  I've tried lots of things- that's what the blog was meant to cover.  Not all these experiments have panned out.  Blogging has not made me some important voice for my peers, but it has given me a nice outlet for some of these ideas.  The same for Twitter.  I'm generally too embarrassed to tell people I meet in person about either, so it's hard to connect these to my real life.  Volunteering and interning have felt useful, but neither has led to job offers.  I didn't want to become the blogger for the struggles of the underemployed PhD.  It's time to think a bit more about how some of these activities fit into my ultimate goal of being employed, and how to best use my energy to get there.