Salmon Ella has left a new comment on your post "Hypocrisy!":
Do you think you'll never have time to be a mentor? Or do you assume that your kid(s) will be older by the time you're a PI, and then it will all be manageable?
If you can't put in the time to figure it out the hard way, you're not going to make it in science.
I have bent over backwards to try to make my schedule correspond with the new grad student's schedule so that I can be in the lab at the same time as she is, which is hard when she's only willing to put in three or four hours a week and is not flexible at all. Why is it my problem and not hers? I consider it my problem if I can't be in the lab at the same time as my advisor because he is the one doing the favor. In this situation, I'm the one doing the favor.
I don't expect to 'make it' in science to any degree that people here would find acceptable, but thanks for pointing that out to me anyway. I don't expect to ever be a PI because that isn't what I want to do. But for the record, yes, I do think that it gets easier when your kids get older; in fact, it is already easier for me now than it was a year ago. Eventually they start going to school and by the time you're a PI you actually get paid for your time, so you can afford childcare.
So here's my final secret, because I really think I need to stop posting here. I don't even want to get a Ph.D. anymore, but I do want to finish my Master's because I have put way too much work into going back to school to not have something to show for it. Plus I really enjoy teaching, which I can do with a Master's. I don't have any delusions of getting a Ph.D. or a tenure-track position or becoming a PI or whatever, but I don't think that makes my grad school experience any less legitimate. However, people here seem to have one-track minds, and I'm starting to feel a little out of place.
Goodbye.
Posted by Salmon Ella to academicsecret at 6/04/2007 5:31 AM
