I'm a quitter. By Natalie Dee.
I quit blogging. and more importantly - I quit grad school.
It was really more of a damage control thing than anything else... But I can get into that later.
the important thing - is that I am now a scientist for a Fortune 500 company making consumer products - which is where I always wanted to end up - and i have arrived.
My life is infinitely better than it was in graduate school. I am amazed at this - at the fact that your environment can influence you that much. I had always been of the mindset that who I am internally has more influence on me than my surroundings... but I guess I can see that both matter to some extent.
I also have a new belief in Luck. In graduate school I was unlucky and unsuccessful. I also think that the professors that I worked for are dumb. Now, I find myself in a new situation, still working out new technology, but I am already wildly successful. It has got to be luck that I have ended up here - and that the senior scientist that I am working with is smart. Smarter than most of the professors I knew in graduate school.
And although I have been away from blogging on the internet, I have still been on the internet.
This video by Alain De Botton (scroll to the end of the post) resonated with me.
Leaving my program with out a Ph.D. was hard for my identity. So much of who I was- was wrapped up in getting a PhD and staying in graduate school at all costs.
It was easy for me to physically leave - because I have this gift of seeing the truth of situations - and I knew I was being forced out.
And the most important thing I learned in graduate school is that a Ph.D. doesn't mean anything. Lazy idiots can have them, hard working idiots can have them, etc. It doesn't even distinguish if you can think or not.
My manager said to me about me "she acts like she has a PhD" meaning I can think, and come up with new technologies, and design experiments, etc. I just don't have the stamp.
(And for the record, yes I did leave with a Masters, but it is still quitting in my eyes.)
Hello again, blogging world.
