Having worked in this lab at University of Pittsburgh for only two weeks, I am already certain that I do not want to do research for the rest of my life. I had the sneaking suspicion that this would be the case even before I took the internship, particularly because I always dreaded doing labs in my high school science classes. I hated performing the experiments. Writing up the lab, however, was another story. I did not mind explaining what had been done or why it had been done at all. The conceptual part of the assignments did not usually faze me.
Now, at my summer internship, I find myself writing everything out so that I know I understand it. The best parts of my day are when I am explaining something to myself via the computer keyboard and watching the ideas take form on screen. I cannot stand reading the scientific papers (despite this necessity, since I need to know background information on the experiment I am creating), yet I can easily see myself writing them. I already write summaries about them, for crying out loud.
Writing my blog entries comprises my daily break. Either that, or studying for the GREs. I have reached the sentence completion section, and I am finding myself enjoying it. What a dork. Meanwhile, I know math is coming soon, and I am not looking forward to studying that. Nevertheless, it is the section I need the most brush-up on, so I will simply have to persevere.
That is what this entire summer feels like, so far: one big exercise in perseverance. I am persevering through jobs I don’t enjoy very much. I am persevering through being forced to drive everywhere in order to get anything done. I am persevering through this sense of un-belonging, of different-ness, of dissatisfaction with the places and people around me. I only hope something is waiting at the end of the tunnel!
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2 comments:
I have reached the sentence completion section, and I am finding myself enjoying it. What a dork.
That reminds me of what I did junior/senior year of high school, except in the opposite subject. I would do SAT math problems, just for the fun of it, even after knowing that I would never take the SAT's again. We're all a little bit dorky. And insane.
I also understand what you're saying about perseverance. I also do not like my job. I don't even think I like my career path. I find myself constantly dreaming about my ultimate life goal of owning my own bowling alley--which I hope to accomplish by the time I'm 30.
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