Where is your life now, and where is it going?

[Provost Harrison]

Biology is fine if you are doing the decent stuff, none of that counting daisies crap My biology teacher was the same. I was going to go into the sciences but then I lost my direction and was aimless again until I met Mr Ford, a science teacher and my biology teacher at A-Level and hence I am in the biological sciences now, and although the field I am in is fascinating, don't have any illusions about research...it ain't glamorous, it ain't well paid and there is a lot of crap you have to contend with. The only way to find out really is to go there...

[Provost Harrison]

...things never quite turn out as you expect. I have always done what I thought was the right thing for me and it made me utterly miserable so think hard. You don't have to go down that research path at the end of the day because you think it is the right thing to do. You do have a choice and this choice will confront you later on in life...

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Drogue
What is your graduation project on?

I'm creating an automatic forum moderator.

I have rather ambitious plans, but so far I just keep on realising I don't know nearly enough to get where I want, so I want to read more and more... But reading can be quite boring, and all those formulas make my head spin.

[Gibsie]

I'm about to enter my final year doing a BSc in microbiology (biotechnology), having almost finished a year in industrial placement. I had wanted to take evolutionary biology as well, but none of the unis I wanted to go to offered it. After I'm done I may do further studies, but I expect to go into a job.

Ideally after graduation I'd like to get one of those £21-an-hour temping jobs that I see in my boss's biomedical sciences magazine for most of the next year, until my partner finishes her course at university, but if Mr. Harrison is only on £6.40 an hour I shant hold my breath

Also, a B.A. in biotechnology? That makes about as much sense as my girlfriend's BSc in European Studies and German!

[Provost Harrison]

Yes Gibsie, I dunno whether it has just been me being unlucky, or my friends being lucky, but the world out there is not as rosy as it is made out to be by government cronies, and there aren't the opportunities and jobs around that you'd expect.

[Ecthy]

Ba is the stupides thing ever invented. MA is fine, it's like a diploma, but nothing beats a true M.A. that is Magister Artium, a lot better than that anglo saxon Master of Arts crap, despite the 2 meaning the same

[Gibsie]

A friend who graduated in genetics from Imperial went to work at a computer company, and a friend's biotechnology-graduate boyfriend is a computer programmer. Maybe that's an omen.

[Provost Harrison]

It's a very strong omen and demonstrates my point. Despite the government going on about it's need for science graduates, you'll find the jobs in science are crap, poorly paid and few and far between...so people branch out. At first I thought it was a shame that some great minds were leaving science and research, now I realise it is a symptom of the terrible shape of the science sector in this country...

[Ecthy]

This week in Apolyton Call-in: what do you do when your life goes down the crapper?

[C0ckney]

well you could always retrain PH, if there's one thing the country needs it's more lawyers

[Az]

Vagabond: it's a combination of both. Thing is, If I didn't go that way, I'd go to do a deskjob in the army, which is basically ****ing off all day ( It's VERY overstaffed ). If I'd go to be enlisted in the army, I'd rather be a grunt, but since I am an only child, my parents get to have a say in that. My father told me he wouldn't mind, but then he'd have to divorce mum. .


Btw, just finished my final in Calc 2. I'll pass, but with no flying colours. But that doesn't matter. Calc 2 is hardly the course to try to raise your average in.


Did I mention that I hate those annoying 14 year old kids that run around the university, taking Calc 2, and stuff like that?

[Ecthy]

in fact my thread is just a blatant spinn-off of this one... needed the attention last night

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by C0ckney
well you could always retrain PH, if there's one thing the country needs it's more lawyers

I'd sooner claw my eyes out...

[Q Classic]

On the agenda: Rebuild/Resurrect

On the agenda: Rebuild/Resurrect

I am an undergrad at the University of Chicago, the same school that GePap, Sagan, Ashcroft, Vonnegut, and the Chicago boys that Pinochet loved.

Or I was, anyway.

From the middle of winter quarter until three weeks before the end of spring quarter, everything that I had built up over the years for my future life collapsed under the ravages of depression; exacerbated by my inability to speak with others about personal matters, it ended as a near total disaster.

Now I have to rebuild. I did manage to obtain semi-favorable terms: spring quarter was removed from the records; the debt that I'd run up (the depression had left me unable to attend work or class, hell, even leave the dorm room) would be covered by mom (I naturally have to pay her back, but there's a lot less interest involved); and therapy.

When I return, I plan on majoring on Linguistics.

I don't know where I'll go after that. Maybe work for the UN or the State Department, see the world; I want to strike off on my own and live for a few years in Seoul, Tokyo, and Berlin, before returning to the States.

I haven't the foggiest idea about a career, though. I don't know why I typed all of this out, either.

[Provost Harrison]

The course of life is never smooth Q...