truth or consequences
Sep. 5th, 2002 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraLying in interviews sucks. Does this make honesty worthwhile?
To elaborate: I had a job interview. This turned out not to consist of being considered for an actual position, but was more of a "you contacted me directly so I will take the time to talk to you and give you a bunch of advice" situation. That's not a complaint; I got some very useful information out of it (more on that). However, I got most of it as the converse of the advice he was actually giving me, because of, to be blunt, my intentional misrepresentation of my situation.
To review: my job search isn't exactly voluntary. I was requested by my advisor to take a year leave from graduate school to get my act together, having been unable to keep it together enough for even a light, simple schedule of experiments, due to reasons that can be lumped under "depression". No reason exists that I would rather be looking for a job than in graduate school, because no such preference exists. Yesterday, as previously, when answering the inevitable interview questions as to why I'm not in grad school right now, I chose to misrepresent the situation as something voluntary: I felt I needed more experience before continuing with self-directed thesis research, I wanted to try out the commercial biotech environment, etc.
These statements are in fact true: I *would* like to see what it's like working in industry as opposed to university, and I *do* think that more experience would help keep me on track - despite not having chosen it, I actually think this year off and my work during it could end up being beneficial, and I *could* have come to a mutual agreement with my advisor about that... in fact, if you disregard my internal feelings of rejection and helplessness, that's a reasonable description of what happened. Call it the empowered reading. Given this, it does not offend my sense of honesty to claim to be job searching as a pro-active choice (it's not like *anybody* writes "I need the money" for their resume objective...).
However, on Wednesday, as he asked more questions about my goals and motivations, I managed to dig myself deeper and deeper into this misrepresentation. In my efforts to avoid "I'm taking this year to work out some personal problems", I was suddenly considering staying in industry and not going back to graduate school at all; I was a sort of laboratory dilettante jumping around picking up techniques without any well-formulated interests or goals. I ended up having to thank him for the piece of advice that "if you're not passionate about science, if you just want a steady lab job to put meat on the table, don't get a Ph.D."
And what was I supposed to say, that I am passionate about science? If I was passionate about science, wouldn't I be in graduate school right this minute working on my research instead of applying for a motley slew of miscellaneous tech jobs? Well, no. I could be someone who is passionate about science who just happened to have some personal issues get the best of her for a little while.
So would it be worthwhile just to say that? I don't ever want to have another conversation about my doing science to put meat on the table. The way I'm feeling right now is that if I have to lie about my emotional health status, I'm not in fact qualified for that job, and I should just try to find something science-or-not where I can practice showing up on time and keeping regular hours and not freaking out and other useful skills that come automatically to normal people.
As it happens, it sounds from his advice like I've been chasing an impossible goal anyways in hoping to work in the biotech industry for a year; he advised me to be willing to make a two-year commitment. Which I *can't*, if I want to return from my leave and not drop out. So now I'm kicking myself for not following up my interview at BU (they never called me back, but I never called them either), and planning on scouring the university listings. And then falling back on general office jobs; I'm not kidding when I say that just *holding a job* for a solid block of time would probably be a good thing for me (aside from that whole "food&rent" issue), and it won't be a waste if I can just go back to grad school next year and get to work.
Because I admit that I've really let that part of my life sit on hold lately, for months really... (I really ought to catch up and keep up with literature reading)...but I do *not* just do science to put meat on the table. And I'll be damned if I can't someday get back the right to say that.
But meanwhile, there is still the problem of explaining to these PIs looking for lab assistants why I want to work in *their* lab at *their* university instead of in my own...
To elaborate: I had a job interview. This turned out not to consist of being considered for an actual position, but was more of a "you contacted me directly so I will take the time to talk to you and give you a bunch of advice" situation. That's not a complaint; I got some very useful information out of it (more on that). However, I got most of it as the converse of the advice he was actually giving me, because of, to be blunt, my intentional misrepresentation of my situation.
To review: my job search isn't exactly voluntary. I was requested by my advisor to take a year leave from graduate school to get my act together, having been unable to keep it together enough for even a light, simple schedule of experiments, due to reasons that can be lumped under "depression". No reason exists that I would rather be looking for a job than in graduate school, because no such preference exists. Yesterday, as previously, when answering the inevitable interview questions as to why I'm not in grad school right now, I chose to misrepresent the situation as something voluntary: I felt I needed more experience before continuing with self-directed thesis research, I wanted to try out the commercial biotech environment, etc.
These statements are in fact true: I *would* like to see what it's like working in industry as opposed to university, and I *do* think that more experience would help keep me on track - despite not having chosen it, I actually think this year off and my work during it could end up being beneficial, and I *could* have come to a mutual agreement with my advisor about that... in fact, if you disregard my internal feelings of rejection and helplessness, that's a reasonable description of what happened. Call it the empowered reading. Given this, it does not offend my sense of honesty to claim to be job searching as a pro-active choice (it's not like *anybody* writes "I need the money" for their resume objective...).
However, on Wednesday, as he asked more questions about my goals and motivations, I managed to dig myself deeper and deeper into this misrepresentation. In my efforts to avoid "I'm taking this year to work out some personal problems", I was suddenly considering staying in industry and not going back to graduate school at all; I was a sort of laboratory dilettante jumping around picking up techniques without any well-formulated interests or goals. I ended up having to thank him for the piece of advice that "if you're not passionate about science, if you just want a steady lab job to put meat on the table, don't get a Ph.D."
And what was I supposed to say, that I am passionate about science? If I was passionate about science, wouldn't I be in graduate school right this minute working on my research instead of applying for a motley slew of miscellaneous tech jobs? Well, no. I could be someone who is passionate about science who just happened to have some personal issues get the best of her for a little while.
So would it be worthwhile just to say that? I don't ever want to have another conversation about my doing science to put meat on the table. The way I'm feeling right now is that if I have to lie about my emotional health status, I'm not in fact qualified for that job, and I should just try to find something science-or-not where I can practice showing up on time and keeping regular hours and not freaking out and other useful skills that come automatically to normal people.
As it happens, it sounds from his advice like I've been chasing an impossible goal anyways in hoping to work in the biotech industry for a year; he advised me to be willing to make a two-year commitment. Which I *can't*, if I want to return from my leave and not drop out. So now I'm kicking myself for not following up my interview at BU (they never called me back, but I never called them either), and planning on scouring the university listings. And then falling back on general office jobs; I'm not kidding when I say that just *holding a job* for a solid block of time would probably be a good thing for me (aside from that whole "food&rent" issue), and it won't be a waste if I can just go back to grad school next year and get to work.
Because I admit that I've really let that part of my life sit on hold lately, for months really... (I really ought to catch up and keep up with literature reading)...but I do *not* just do science to put meat on the table. And I'll be damned if I can't someday get back the right to say that.
But meanwhile, there is still the problem of explaining to these PIs looking for lab assistants why I want to work in *their* lab at *their* university instead of in my own...
