The washed-up reality of a mid-studies ecologist

A word of advice before you get caught up in your hopes and dreams to save the planet, or apply for grad-school, it might be time for someone to tell you a hard truth. You can't always pursue what you want in science.

I feel jaded even as I write it, but that's been the unfortunate reality I've lived in for the last three-and-a-half years as an undergraduate / now masters student in behavioral ecology. As things currently stand, a year-and-a-half into my graduate program, I should be rounding the final bend of thesis writing and defense, but instead I've watched three fully formulated research projects starve before even being able to get started on them. In fact, I now live in a different country, burnt out, and with zero prospects of finishing my degree until I finally stumble upon a magical project.

Now, the reason I write this is not *just* to bitch about my bad luck, but to try and prevent someone, anyone, from repeating the same mistakes I made. And I believe all my mistakes were simple ones, one's that just about anybody could make, and so I leave you with my cautionary tale:

1) I was told all throughout highschool and undergrad, by scientists doing great and interesting work that they dreamed up by their own passion and expertise, that I too could stand in their shoes someday. Clearly that was a biased sample though because I certainly never heard from the biologists who didn't work on what they loved, or who had to change their career plans, or who after failure after failure just finally stopped trying. I shouldn't have been so naïve as to believe that if I simply studied and got good grades that I could pursue whatever I wanted in science. And, as it turns out, what I wanted were some of the most exlusive, coveted, and regulated areas of research an animal biologist could aspire to.

2) Part of my specific conundrum, becuase it is multifaceted, started as it does for many of us... I got distacted by a new relationship the year I took organic chemistry, and for the first time in my life I skated by on C's. I still had an average GPA overall, but it wasn't anything great after that. By the time I got around to applying for grad-school the next year, I realized that the few programs I was even interested in had strict "genius only" policies. Simply put, my very average GPA, GRE, and limited reserach experience wasn't going to warant even an email reply from the labs I wanted to be in. And so, I settled.

3) I settled on the first oportunity that presented itself because, after all the rejection, I still had a friend who could get me into his lab past the application deadline. And so, I thought that I could put my plans on hold for a bit, breeze through a masters, and start my PhD with a comeback a few years later. Turns out that having big aspirations gets even harder when you attend a mediocre university though. As benevolent as my mentor was, the fact that she had recently moved on from active research to purely academic administration and had no contrete research opportunities for me in her "lab" was a something I should have recognized as a problem sooner. Being generally optimistic however, having to outsource my research was something I took in stride as a unique opportunity. That however lead to being at the mercy of some interesting charaters...

4) I put up with way too much shit. I wish I could say that that meant I was analyzing exotic animal poop or something, but alas I mean it in the traditional way. I won't go into specifics of the myriad of ridiculous and unprofessional things these few individuals exhibited throughout the time I tried to market my research to them, but it generally involved the worst communication skills I have every been privy too. The first time, I decided it wasn't for me after a few months. Despite the repeated verbalized interest in working together, after getting nowhere with feedback on my proposal, hearing that this woman's house had burned down, and then finally that she took on a horrific amount of work due to changes in her organization, I realized it proabbly wasn't a good time for that opportunity. So I went back to the drawing board and moved on. The second time something similar happened I was less wary, since there weren't any red flags, and so over the period of nine months (extended because of COVID lockdowns) I get led on like a lovesick idiot. In the end, two weeks before I was to start fieldwork, I got ghosted. Like actually ghosted. Becuase of the world falling apart, I had A LOT of grace for this person and thought that he might just be having a hard time like everybody else. But after a month of pestering him (knowing that he was alive, well, and pretending to still be interested in working together but blocking all of my calls and emails) and then eventually getting my mentor to pester him, we decided to draw a line and end it.

And so that leaves me here. After three renditions of my thesis, two dysfunctional working relationships, COVID isolation / depression, multiple family deaths, and a long distance marriage, I decided to pull the plug on life for a while and move to Europe to be with my husband. Not a bad deal overall, but I'm still at a loss for what comes next. I'm hoping that some of the peace and positive changes I've gained over the last few months will manifest in my dream thesis project, but I'm starting to realize that that's still just my idealism at play. I'd love to follow the type of work I'm interested in and ascertain knowlege that will benefit nature, but I honestly don't know if it's worth me pushing for, if it will ever get me anywhere. Maybe I should give it all up; the years of fantasy, work, and knowledge acquisition, and just study insects like everyone tells me I should.

It's up to you whether you'll follow a similar path... Or maybe you could just try being a little more cautious and open-minded about different plans than I've been ;)