Chapter 23: Settling in (and a belated cri de coeur).

If you had told me, back when I graduated from Cal three years ago, that I'd be working a bona fide job now, I wouldn't have believed you--even I couldn't have finished a Ph.D. in less than three years. And if you had continued to say that a prestigious law firm would hire me before I had even received my doctorate, I would have nodded politely, knocked you out when you weren't looking, and made an urgent call for the men in white to cart you off to a padded cell somewhere. Yet, here I am. Truth is stranger than fiction.

All things considered, I'll miss Hopkins. I'll miss the friends I made here. I'll definitely miss the grad student lifestyle, especially on Monday mornings. However, I won't miss being a grad student, if that makes any sense at all.

I suspect that many of you know how difficult it is to put on a mask every day before leaving the house and keep it on--no matter how it chafes--until you go home at night. I had to put on my grad student mask--the one where I'm enthusiastic and passionate about my research and science in general--on a daily basis, or risk losing my position at Hopkins. Compared to what other people suffer on a regular basis, I know that my problems don't even come close to showing up on the radar. But for me, it's painful as hell.

Most people would say, "You should be grateful you're getting paid a reasonable stipend (my snipes about the size of my stipend notwithstanding, I was paid a fair amount over minimum wage just to do research and earn my doctorate; my colleagues over in the social sciences are much less well off) to study, when there are people out there who'd love to be in your position." I don't mean to be ungrateful, but frankly, the biology department made a boneheaded judgment call when they decided that I would make a good grad student. They fell for my gaudy paper qualifications, and I spent the last three years pretending to be the person I claimed to be on paper.

Being a scientist is not a lucrative career. After spending a few years on your Ph.D., one typically requires several more years of intensive research experience in order to command a salary in the high five digits (as a professor), then several more years before a six-digit income is in sight. For most scientists, they are who they are because they genuinely love their work--certainly not for the financial compensation or potential social cachet. Now, I'm more than proficient in my chosen field of science--I wouldn't have been able to stay at Hopkins, mask or no mask, if I weren't--but I didn't love it. Every day, I saw people--faculty and students alike--who obviously love their work, and it made me wonder what the hell I was doing there.

Most of you might be thinking by now, "Um, won't you dislike your new job as well? It's science-related, isn't it?" It is, but I don't have to do research anymore. I don't have to run experiments, interpret the results, and design more experiments based on the results. I get to collect data, and translate them for non-scientists--something I've been doing for practically my whole life.

(Those of you whom have read Hugo's 'Les Misérables' in its entirety--not just the chapters relating to the story, but the social commentary as well--may recall his discourse on argot. This is what I'm trying to explain here.) Imagine several scientists in a room, drinking coffee and talking about their work. If you were sitting in on the meeting, you'd probably be able to tell that they were speaking English, but the words themselves may make very little sense to you. Each profession uses a set of words that takes on specific meanings to those of that profession--lawyers, teachers, engineers, scientists, stock brokers, pro sports players, and so on. Those words, given time, often develop into a language by itself. In order to be truly a member of any profession, you have to speak their language, and eventually think in their language.

I can speak science quite fluently. I can even think it reasonably well, but am more comfortable with mentally translating it into, well, English. Which is why I might have been a good scientist, but not a great one--I don't like thinking in science. However, as I said earlier, my new job entails me translating from science to English--exactly what I've been doing since I picked up my first science textbook.