One of the major things that I have been doing here at the conference is trying to decide what I want to do with my life. More specifically, I have been trying to decide a) what I should study in graduate school, b) if I want to go into into industry or academia (or a government lab, which I recently discovered is about halfway in between) and c) what field of chemistry I want to go into after I graduate (which I also recently discovered can be a completely different question than a). To this end, I have been focusing on networking activities and career/grad school fairs, and trying to talk to professors and professionals in different disciplines; hopefully, I will be able get a feel for what professional chemists do with their lives. Unfortunately, all that this has done for me is make me more indecisive. While there are a couple of things that I know that I don't want to do, I have absolutely NO idea what I actually want to do. So, here are my random musings on this subject.
I know for sure that I don't want to go into analytical or physical chemistry. This is partially because I dislike math, and partially because I love reaction chemistry. That's all I really have to say about that.
My biggest fear is unintentionally closing doors. This is my worst-case-scenario: I go to graduate school in a subject that I think I like. After graduating, and working (in academia or industry) for a couple of years, I realize that I don't really like it, and I would like to do something else. Unfortunately, my current training/education has not prepared me for a career in that something else, and I either cannot enter that something else, or have to go back to school for another 6 years in order to do that.
Right now I'm leaning towards industry instead of academia, mainly because the one thing that I do know about what I want is that I want to make something cool. I don't know what it is or how to do it, but I know that I want to make it.
I'm currently working in an organic synthesis laboratory. I don't want to base any decisions from my current work to date, simply because I haven't been working in Dr. Castle's lab very long, and because, for a variety of reasons (schoolwork, appendicitis, etc.), I haven't be able to dedicate as much time to the lab as I have likes; that being said, I don't think I want to go into natural products synthesis. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I easily get frustrated working at the bleeding edge of a reaction, where things don't work more often than they do (I may be naive in hoping that this will be different in a different field). Second, most natural products are synthesized for their possible biological properties (mostly anti-cancer); quite frankly, I have no interest in biology and biochemistry, and so I have a hard making a connection with the products I've synthesized.
Organic methodology looks interesting. However, I say this with the admission that I really have absolutely no idea what is involved in methodology studies, or how it would be different than total synthesis.
Polymer chemistry looks really interesting. I talked to a polymer chemist from . . . I can't remember what grad school (don't worry, I kept all the SWAG, so I can find it after I empty out my backpack). What interest me about polymer chemistry is that you get to deal with both bulk properties and molecular-level theory.
Biofuels/alternate fuels also looks interesting. I'm doing a paper on bioethanol for my pchem class right now, and the things that I've learned about it are really cool. I just hope that there's more to bioethanol than thermodynamics, because, as I mentioned above, that would be a deal-breaker.
So there's my wheneverly brain-dump. Oh, I forgot to mention my dream job:
Hollywood science consultant- working with Hollywood movie producers to make sure that their movies won't make scientists cringe when they watch them (think Spiderman 2's idea of 'tritium').
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