How I Stopped Worrying and Decided to Get Out of the Lab
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| Title: | How I Stopped Worrying and Decided to Get Out of the Lab | |
| Author: | Tina Hesman Saey, PhD | |
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People often ask what “made” me leave the laboratory and go into journalism. The question is often phrased as if I were forced out of science, but that`s not an accurate description. It`s true that I was compelled to go, but only by my own interests.
I`d decided early on that I was going to be a scientist. When I was little kid, I was fascinated by dinosaurs and thought paleontology would be my bag. In high school, I was introduced to the wonderful world of bacteriology and decided microbiology would be more to my liking.
And when I read an excerpt in my grandparent`s Reader`s Digest from the book Alex: The Life of a Child by Frank Deford, it changed my focus yet again. The book is a memoir of his daughter`s struggle with cystic fibrosis. I decided I was going to find a cure for it, specifically for the bacterial infections that kill most people with the disease.
In college, I worked in a lab that studied an ethanol-producing bacterium. I wrote my honor`s thesis and published three papers in the Journal of Bacteriology from my undergraduate work in that lab. I was named Student of the Year for the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska and won a Barry M. Goldwater fellowship. Only two people in each state receive that award to study math or science.
After undergraduate, I spent a year in Germany as a Fulbright scholar studying microbiology and biochemistry. And then I made my way back to the States to start my Ph.D. work at Washington University in St. Louis.
I rotated through a couple of labs and quickly decided I`d focus on gene expression in yeast for my thesis. My plan was to do well, find a great post-doc position and then get my own lab.
About three years into my graduate work – after I`d finished my classes and passed my qualifying exam to reach all but dissertation status – I realized that I was deeply unhappy. Holding a pipette in my hand and working long hours at the bench had always brought me joy and solace. But suddenly it didn`t, and that life I`d so carefully planned out for myself began to seem more like a trap.
It took a while to figure out what had changed. Finally I realized that I was just plain bored. I`d stopped learning new things. I found myself repeating the same experiments over and over again in slightly different variations. I made progress, but it was slow and painstaking. I was discouraged that only I and a handful of other people in the world cared about the gene I was working on. I didn`t feel like what I did was important or helped anyone.
When they asked me to organize a journal club, I agreed, but only on the condition that people would present research in a field different from their own. My colleagues grumbled mightily, but I relished the fact that this gave me an excuse to read all the papers I wanted to read in the journals instead of having to stick to papers in my field.
Gradually, I began to understand that what I loved most about science was that sense of discovery and wonder I got with each new thing I learned. I still loved science, but I also realized I didn`t particularly like doing it.
The most disturbing thought I had was that the thing I enjoyed most in my graduate career was writing the grant proposal for my qualifying exam. Something clicked for me. I realized that I`d enjoyed learning about new science, gathering the information and then tying it all together in the paper I wrote. Luckily, I was smart enough to realize that I didn`t want to write grant proposals for the rest of my life. Somehow I put it all together for myself and realized that those were the same skills a journalist uses.
I was so torn at that point. I was unhappy in the lab and I knew what else I wanted to do, but how could I possibly abandon the dream I`d been working toward for so long? Maybe I was just giving up because my project was too hard, and I was too scared and weak to complete it. That was something of a reverse coward psychology argument. I wasn`t scared to stay in science. I was scared to leave.
I worried what my family would think if I changed careers. I worried what my colleagues would think. But then when I actually got up the courage to tell them my dilemma, they were, almost to a person, supportive.
But I stuck with graduate school. I still felt I had something to prove – to myself more than anyone else.
I`ll never be sorry I finished my Ph.D., but sometimes I think about how much further along I`d be in my journalism career if hadn`t completed graduate school. Still the degree gives me instant credibility with the scientists I interview.
People ask if I miss bench work. I have to tell them that I honestly don`t. I admit that once early in my journalism career I visited a lab where a graduate student was doing plasmid minipreps. I had a moment of panic when I couldn`t recall the exact measurements of the solutions at each step. Then I realized that I no longer need to know those mundane details. I get to focus on the big picture and leave those boring minutiae to others.
So now when people ask me why I left bench science, I tell them it was a “need to know” decision. I need to know all sorts of things about science. I learn something new every day in my job as journalist and life is certainly never boring.
Yes, I “had” to leave the bench behind, but I`m very glad I did. |
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Tina Hesman Saey, PhD is the medical science reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Washington University and Master's degree in Science Journalism from Boston University. Tina also studied microbiology as a Fulbright scholar in Germany. She now lives in St. Louis with her husband, Rob. |
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Copyright, 2006, Tina Hesman Saey, PhD Published with permission |
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