http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=17
My experience in research has been pretty brief. A mere 69 days (chortle chortle).
Nevertheless it has definitely been an enjoyable and insightful, if infuriating, time.
One of the best things is having a project that is yours. Ownership of anything work related makes it so much more bearable. It depreciates the sentiment that you’re doing it for someone else and that you could care so much less. The fact that it’s yours means you take pride in it, because ultimately it is YOUR work and people will judge YOU on it, no one else.
However, academia itself can be, predictably, infuriating.
Researchers have a euphemism for “infuriating”.
It’s “interesting”.
“Those results are…interesting”
It’s almost like a defence mechanism against the constant barrage of unclear, confusing and, occasionally, just damn wrong results. According to my results at times I’ve violated such laws as the Conservation of Mass and Gravity. I’ll just assume that the Noble Prize is in the post for these advances…
Eventually though, those good results do come around then it’s fantastic. But it’s made all the more fantastic because of all those terrible results. Those supposed straight lines of data points that instead look a bowl of spaghetti.
That’s something true about life, that we cannot have Good without Bad. We all wish to nullify all the unpleasant experiences in life but without them, what’s left? If everything in our life was good then the thing that was “least Good” would become, by definition, Bad. Good and Bad are not absolutes, but are relatives. It’s the same reason that finding a pound coin on the street would inspire nothing but a passing smile. However, if someone in the depths of poverty found one, then it would be almost a miracle.
Hence as we gather experiences we begin to reassess what is “Good” and “Bad”.
Just one of the reasons that we’re in a constant state of flux. People don’t suddenly “change”; they accumulate change, which we don’t notice until something triggers our acknowledgement. Why so often outgrow people for seemingly no reason. We are merely an accumulation of experiences.
Finally, there is one more advantage to working in academia.
When it’s 30oC outside, you can make ice cream using liquid nitrogen.
-170oC of pure joy.
[DAS ENDE]
A Scottish Idiot Abroad (ASIA) 