3: so-called career

As requested, I will now chronicle my post-student days in Australia.

First, there came the job in the lab. It was really good, mostly. I liked pretty much everyone I worked with. People were friendly and helpful. I felt respected, and my extra efforts were rewarded with praise and appreciation. When I stayed late, people thanked me and meant it. When I worked hard and delivered something, people thanked me. I got to start (within reason and with notice) anytime between 7 and 10 am, and finish 8 hours later. I got tea breaks and a lunch break. I could opt to work an extra 1/2 hour every day in return for a 9-day fortnight. 

The best part about that job was that I got to spend hours looking down a microscope at all the nifty little things that live in Sydney's water supplies. Most of it was dead, but occasionally there would be times when I got to spy on the intimate, under-appreciated lives of tiny critters. It was awesome! And I literally got to learn something new almost every day. Well, at least every day where I was working the 'scopes. But there were other days where all I did was extract chlorophyll from algae, batch after batch after batch, and my mind would go a bit numb with boredom. Either that, or from the acetone fumes. Still, it wasn't a bad gig at all, and in retrospect, sometimes I wish I hadn't quit.

I left that job thinking that I could do better with my mind, thinking that I would like to work on my writing skills and perhaps develop my potential for leadership into something more solid. I kind of felt that working in a lab might be a pretty dead-end sort of place to be, unless I got extremely lucky. I left the lab for the world of private consulting in contaminated land, and by goodness, I think that was the dumbest thing I may have ever done. At the time, it seemed like a really good idea. A lot of cringe-worth stories start that way, don't they?

Consulting is pretty crap, and I don't really recommend it to anyone who doesn't love money more than their personal time, hobbies, family members, and health. I think it could have been a rewarding career for someone else, but not for me. I'm not sure what exactly made it so horrible, but I think it was a combination of the unpredictability of both the hours and the location of my work, the random and unforeseen long days, the filth and smut of the construction sites and construction workers I was around, and the boys-club culture of the company. The work wasn't hard, but all those other things wore me down big time, and after six months I had had enough. I think I lost it one day when I was counting trucks of contaminated dirt and made up my mind that I was done. My last day was right before the wedding, and I started a new life with the same old retailing gig that got me through uni. Ah, the smell of leather boots in the morning.

Sadly, my old stand-by couldn't give me enough casual shifts to keep me and the kitty in a respectable state, so I picked up a full-time job in a competing outdoor retailer and have been there since September. I think I will be there until March-ish, when I hopefully start my PhD. It's a bit of a tight squeeze with the PR paperwork, but hopefully it will all work out. If not, I'll have to figure out something else. 

And there is the state of my career... pretty sad when I write it all out! I guess I gave it my best shot, but I have yet to figure out something that works for me. At least I know biology is where I belong now, and I learned a lot about what I really value. I guess it's not all bad if I learned something from it, right?

(images from http://www.nps.gov/sitk/naturescience/stream-ecology-autochthonous-input.htm and  http://www.camillatraining.co.uk/Articulated%20Dumptruck.htm, if you care to learn about freshwater ecology and dump truck sales)