Apparently, I’m not the only person who has ever considered quitting and doing something else. I enjoy science (well, not as much recently), but, as I’ve been told, Science is Not A Care Bear Tea Party. I think that comment is supposed mean that if you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen or some other (similar) cliche. Well, let me tell you I’m definitely not too happy with the heat right now. The whole non-progress issue is coupled with Advisor having been gone (and by gone, I mean no contact with anyone) for the past 6-8 weeks.
Advisor is normally pretty good. He’s around often and will help with the whole troubleshooting process. He does well on the mentoring front, too. The only downside of this is that I’m not good at scavenging for help. Usually how this goes is that I scour the internet (and books and articles) to find a possible solution. Then, I try it. When that doesn’t work, I’ll repeat the aforementioned scouring. After a couple of tries at this, I’ll knock on Advisor’s door and ask for help. Having another set of eyes look at my problem (or just to tell me to trust the data I’m getting), not to mention encouragement, is helpful. So, now I’m trying to get other people to help me and it’s just been strange (on the plus side I’ve gotten a bit over my shyness).
Let me tell you, though, this perseverance thing is tough. The getting out of bed in the morning to face the day thing becomes tough, too. Because I know that I’m heading into lab to either (a)tweak something and that may not (or may– I’m just not too optimistic right now) solve my problem or (b) find out that what I did in (a) didn’t solve my problem. This pretty much sucks all the joy out of science-ing. Never fear, though, I’m continuing to show up, try things, and pester Prof-that-is-intimidating-and-his-grad-students-haven’t-a-clue-as-to-what-I’m-doing-wrong.
Anyhow, where does this leave me? I mean, besides the extra wine that I’ve been drinking and the running I’ve been taking. (As an aside, it was once suggested that we change the motto of our program to: “Don’t drink? Well, [Program] is a great time to start!.”) Well, I know that I won’t quit until I get this experiment to work. After that I may not want to quit (as Scicurious noted, the getting of data usually provides a boost) and that’s a likely outcome. But it may mean that this life isn’t for me.
Amen on not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. Everyday when my alarm goes off sometime before the sun has risen, my thought process goes something like this:
Why am I getting up today? Oh, right, I have to purify Protein X. Okay, that’s not so bad, that actually works. But wait, why am I purifying it? So I can use 1 of the 2 mL fractions to aliquot into 4 250uL attempts at dialysis, all of which I guarantee will precipitate tomorrow, because over 3 years I have yet to come up with a way to dialyze out the imidazole without precipitation, and the other mL fraction will be used for fluorescence polarization, which isn’t going to work, because I constantly get inconstant results because the imidazole concentration is too high. So why am I getting out of bed again? Can I just take the next month off? Will anyone notice? If I just come back in a month and say that all my dialysis attempts failed and my FP never worked, it would still be exactly the same as me actually going in and doing the experiments, so what’s the point?
Every. freaking. morning. For roughly the past year and a half. (The years before that weren’t so bad, though.)
I do think that everyone goes through a “I just want to quit” phase or they come up with some fantasy career they could/will have instead/when this is over. For me it was my dissertation. I became convinced this wasn’t what I really wanted but damned if I was going to quit (my mother actually did). I was going to finish and then move to the hills teaching martial arts to the local children, writing poetry and baking. I do all of those things to an extent now but I also still love science. Now more than over. Hope the same happens for you. No matter what I hope you love what comes next, whatever it is.
You are totally not alone in the wanting to quit arena. EVERYONE goes through it. The trick is to figuring out how to few the “negative” or non-results. The other day I was looking at images and realized that when I knocked protein x, our protein of interest is unaffected – not the result I wanted. I was pretty bummed. Awesome advisor’s attitude? Excellent, we now know that protein x does not affect our protein. Very good. Its all how you approach it I guess. I’m not really good at it, but I’m getting there.
Have you ever seen a Care Bear movie? They are darn scary. Like too scary for a six year old. Yes they look cute on the outside but in reality they do some downright scary stuff.
I wanted to quit so so many times. But I didn’t. Now I still fantasize about a time when I might not have to work, but fortunately there’s more joy in the day to day. It comes, it’s a slow painful process at times, but getting over the humps is what it’s all about.
Set the alarm, get up, try to do a sun salutation or some other such way to welcome the morning (Girl Scout cookies for breakfast maybe?) and then get back in the race. You can do it…
oh. I hear you. Ever morning… get up, go to lab… try to make mutant/inoculate the mice/fix protein purification…. well, out of three things one should work right? I guess I inoculate my mice but they don’t give the reuslts they should so….. try again… repeat… hope for the best… and so on.
I hope you can take a weekend off and maybe recharge batteries. That is what I am doing this weekend. I am going to leave lab early tomorrow and not set foot there for more than 48 hours. Then I magically think things will work next week.
haha… maybe? right? hope and all.
I wish you the best and hope for your advisor to come back soon!!!
Maybe it was the failure of every attempt at my project, maybe it was the terrible advisor that never helped in any way, maybe I was just a quitter…but I mastered out. {it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make} I got a pretty amazing job and I have been so much happier! I even love research again! I think that a lot of it has to do with the people that I’m surrounded with now. They are helpfully and good at teaching…everything that my graduate school experience was not.
Good luck with your projects and your decision!
It is sooo difficult to go to lab when things are consistently not working. Most of the time I can get out of bed, but leaving the apt. is a different matter.
I agree that almost everyone wants to quit at some time or other in their grad school career. I’ve heard that from a variety of students, some of whom go on to do a post-doc and are perfectly happy.
I know it’s hard, but hang in there!
My grad school friends and I had a whole elaborate fantasy of the store we were going to open together. My friend and I were going to run the used bookstore section, someone else was going to bake cakes for the cafe, another guy was going to DJ in the bar… yet we all ended up finishing our PhDs and getting jobs in science.
I do know what you’re saying though. Is there any chance of starting a side-project (or getting in on someone else’s, if they need a spare pair of hands) that is likely to yield easy results? I struggled again and again with my initial project, but was much happier when my supervisor and I came up with a second related project. After that I always made sure I had at least 2 projects going at the same time – the odds of both being stuck and bogged down at the same time are pretty low.
EtBr: That's pretty much what runs through my head as I get up in the morning, but substitute Yeast for Protein X. I don't know if I would have lasted for 1.5 years, though. I'm about two months in and ready to pull my hair out!
Brigindo: I've considered becoming a variety of different things. I understand the damned if I'm going to quit thinking. I feel like I've got to beat this project.
Scientist Mother: True. I've found about 101 different ways not to do this project. I'm also thinking about Labmate. She's supposed to pick up a part of this project in the next year. So, I do want to make it work for her.
Kristin: That made me laugh! It's true! I was scared of some Care Bear movie about a camp with a totem pole (or something like that). And I think Girl Scout cookies for breakfast is what tomorrow calls for!
Chall: A lot can change in 48 hours. So, I don't think that it's just wishful thinking 😉 I'm taking every evening off this weekend and not think about lab!
Jennifer: I definitely think that environment has a lot to do with things. Prior to this, failure didn't seem so bad (or at least it could be reframed into a success). Recently it's been hard. And I don't think you're a quitter. You made a difficult, but great for you decision. It's a very hard one to make.
Mrs Whatsit: Bed is hard for me because it's that vertical transition that gets me going. Thanks for the encouragement. I've been following your blog and it's really been encouraging for me to see you do so well!
Cath: For us it's a B&B in the northeast or northwest. I do have another project that's sort of a side project. Advisor doesn't really want me working on it too much because it "distracts from the main goal." Still, you're right. I may just start working on it mainly, again. That way I can get some successes and that should help with the wanting to quit thing. It's a difficult thing, though, to ignore Advisor's wishes. Then, again, having me quit wouldn't be helpful, either (or at least I'd like to think so).
I had the same problems with nursing school. I *knew* it wasn’t for me the entire time that I was enrolled. But I did it. And I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not since I don’t use it except to minorly freak about medical issues that I know too much about.
Aunt Becky: I wouldn’t discount the ability to minorly freak out people. In fact, that would be reason enough for me 😉
Right there with you. I’m starting to think that the real test of when you become a PhD is when you finally become an alcoholic. At least half the people who’ve graduated my program have been drinking too much.
I can get out of bed and get to work. It’s doing things AT work that throws me.
I’m with Cath on having alternative careers. I never searched for jobs as often as I did when preparing for quals. Eventually, a labmate was going to start a wedding planning business and I was going to do all the craftiness involved with invites, decorations, favors whatever.
Also wanted to share that a recently retired prof pointed out to me how much less he was drinking these days…