I am not ashamed to admit it. I am head over heels. I am riding a high. I am optimistic it is going to work out. And guess what!? – it has been the OPPOSITE of distracting. Being in love has had the effect of extreme focus in the workplace and pretty substantial scientific progress. I am in love… with my job.
Maintaining a loving and healthy relationship definitely takes some work. I know I am not always going to express these emotions about work – things will get challenging. People, policies, and black voodoo magic that causes instruments and reagents to mysteriously malfunction will cause some turmoil. But this feels right.
The objective for this post is not to rehash all the #distractinglysexy topics, although it has been wonderfully amusing and strangely encouraging. Instead, my thoughts were to just share some of my recent experiences as it relates to the themes of this blog – the adventures of being trained scientist who is figuring out her niche. That could be supporting other scientists, teaching, raising kids, developing a kick-ass product/therapy, or wining a Nobel prize.
And perhaps a selfish objective is to provide an amusing account for myself to flip back to years in the future when I am frustrated or hopeless. Seriously, though, I have had so many conversations with friends and colleagues about emotions as they relate to our respective career paths. I don’t always know what to say or how to encourage someone. There was a period of time where I felt all I did was dim the mood. Sometimes navigating a path is rough (especially when you can’t see the way ahead). Sometimes it is exciting. Sometimes it is scary. Sometimes it is boring. Sometimes it has you swooning (remember that feeling of being accepted to grad school?).
This has me thinking about ways that we all relate to each other, and effects we can have on one another.
One of the things that has me so giddy right now is the interaction I have been having with people outside my lab, outside my agency, outside my state and outside the country. That influx of ideas and opinions is so refreshing. I have had the extremely good fortune of getting to attend three very interesting meetings in a very short amount of time.
So, something I want to remind my future self: opportunities to go to meetings, trainings or conferences sponsored by work may not always come up. But there is almost always the flexibility to spend work TIME elsewhere even if the costs for transportation, lodging and registration aren’t covered. Some of my recent travels required me to pay out of my own pocket. I cannot think of a better way I could have spent that money.
At the moment, I am inspired. I am seeing how a scientific field is growing, changing, and making progress. I also see so much further down my current path right now! I see a role that I can play in this field. Meetings have always generally had a good effect on me. I do find some contrast, though, in attending meetings as an academic scientist compared to a more applied scientist. As an academic scientist, I was always trying to find the things I could do to make my individual projects more innovative. The things that would help me outline my next grant. Sometimes I came back frantic with all these things I might do, and companies I might contact. I had a hard time handling that pressure. Now, I don’t have the freedom or responsibility of an individual research project. For the most part, people in my lab are all working toward the same thing. This work is spilt up, and the overall goal is to provide a service. But the ways that we provide this service advance with technology. The lab has projects to keep up with that change in technology in an efficient way, while at the same time making sure that technology (and personel’s expertise in how that technology is working) be solid enough to testify to results in court. So, now, when I am at meetings, I focus on those projects, and ways the lab can keep up with the changes in technology in efficient ways, providing ideas where I can.
Getting back to the idea of why meetings and groups are money well spent – it fosters ideas. There are so many ideas I have – things I can do at work that would benefit my current workplace – these are things other people across the country and the world are already doing and work well. I may not have a position to change policies where I work, but I can certainly provide ideas to the people who do.
I also get to hear about how other people landed in the positions they are in. I find it very interesting to hear about other people’s backgrounds. I helps me realize that opportunities come up all the time that are un-forseeable. Perhaps I am even impacting my future path in ways that are not visible yet. Maybe some of these people that I interacted with at these meetings will remember me and invite me to participate in other opportunites in the future.
Conferences or not, interacting with other people I have noticed has been generally helpful. When I have gotten anxiety or fear about where I was headed, my first instinct is to hide that feeling. I feel I need to figure it out myself before I have another conversation about it. It was easy for me to avoid those conversations or change the subject quickly. But, when I did open up and share how I was feeling about where I was going, or not knowing what I wanted next, it usually had a positive effect on me. Sometimes that is easier to do with people you don’t know. A friend recently told me about a set of interactions that the career center strongly advised them to have. Using linkedIn and other websites, they got an idea of what type of positions were available at differently companies, schools, etc. This helped to see all the different roles that a PhD scientist can have. To get a better idea of what these positions were like, this person contacted these people for the sole purpose of doing a little mini-interview about what their job entailed. They said it was a very awkward experience at times, but was so helpful for guiding what niche they would be excited and interested about.
So, I feel fortunate right now to have benefited from so many helpful interactions. I am wondering if there is a way be on the flip side of that. I am extremely interested in maximizing the effects of being in love with my job. I am so motivated and constantly thinking of ways that I can positively impact my workplace. I strongly believe there is a place for love at work.
