Did the pay ever impact the choices you've made so far? Where are you at on this timeline? I just realized I know nothing about what you do and the world/industry you're in. And I want to know more. From the little I've read, it seems so political and ridiculous but you seem to love it. I guess I'm wondering: How did you figure out what you were going to do with your life? And how much of that life plan have you achieved? And what's next?We all know what we're going to get paid going in, and we all hope that we can make it to a staff position one day.
I never hesitated because of the money. Being poor kind of sucks, but it's more than offset by the fact that you get up and are excited to go to work everyday. It took me five years to do my PhD, at which time I never made more than $24,000, then I spent two years as a post-doc at about $40,000. The great thing about a science PhD, however, is that it's not an expense. The school pretty much always picks up the tab, so at least there's no debt to contend with. I didn't know that I would basically end up a biologist, but I was reasonably certain from a young age that I wanted to be a scientist. My grandfather worked as an engineer for the Navy and then was a high level administrator at NASA back before it was even called NASA (started as NACA). I always heard his stories about building and testing rockets ("We were literally writing the textbooks," is what he always said), and it made me want to be a physicist. When I finally went to grad school for physics, I went for biophysics, because I serendipitously discovered a love for biology when during a gen ed bio requirement, I came across a book called Full House by Stephen Jay Gould, which is one of my favorite books of all time. I haven't accomplished nearly what I'd like to, and I hope I don't until I die. I want to keep researching, and making interesting observations. It's what makes me tick. It's frustrating at times, because you can go for months with nothing interesting happening, but then shit like getting your study featured on the cover of the largest cancer publication happens (a work mk and I did together) and it's the greatest feeling in the world (he would never brag about it, but I don't mind ;): The great thing is that no matter how awesome your discovery, there's always more work to be done.