Monetary woes

First grant rejection received last week! Not the last I'm sure...

Why do I follow that statement with a tone of excitement, you may ask? Because I'm entering the world of quiet hysteria, where I realise that for the rest of my scientific career (as short as that may be), I will have to beg for money at regular intervals. This will take up large amounts of time, so that if I should ever be successful in my pursuits of a more comfortable income, then I then have to complete a sufficient amount of work in the remainder of the year to satisfy the next year's funding body. A never ending cycle...

The concept of 'permanent position' seems foreign to me. If I'd been intelligent enough to think about this before entering my university degree, then life may be different right now.

I look at the undergraduates at uni and try and place myself back in their shoes. When I was that age, I was too naive to think comprehensively about my future career. "I'll just do science, because that's what I'm interterested in." That's what all the teachers say to do anyway...

But 98% of my peers were doing science as a precursor for 'greater things'. eg. Medicine. (with a capital 'M'). Unlike me, they clearly had thought forward to the future, and were looking for the capital 'P'. 'Prestige' (drawling tone). Well, personally I don't know if Medicine gives you that, but I do know that it gives you a regular 6-figure income, with the capabilities of taking time off and still being able to support yourself (and probably an entire village of starving children).

For some reason I shied away from that, and instead am battling towards becoming a different sort of doctor. One who, when I tell people what I do, they look at me blankly and don't know what to say. One who earns far less that the average person my age, and has to regulate the number of coffees she can buy in a week.

But I'm not the prestigious type. I couldn't make decisions for other people, or tell them that I know best and to 'take two of these twice a day'. They'd laugh at me, in my ludicrous clothing that I can wear to uni but couldn't in a hospital, and ask to see someone else. And whilst a 6-figure salary sounds great, the truth is that I'm way to comfortable in my tracksuit pants.

I'll stick to science I think. Sigh... back to grant writing.