Published on 12, July, 2020
I know none of you can help me or in all probability offer me new advice but I felt I have to say this just once. I'm afraid everything my all fall apart and the wheels will come off my life and I'll do something stupid.
My contract is about to end. It was supposed to end early October. I was told it was extended till the end of December. Today I was told the money for that ran out but they were going to use another source of money to extend my contract. It makes me very nervous I've nothing in writing about this extension. This was supposed to be my dream job. It's been the best I've ever had for sure, but it's not been quite the dream I was promised. I was recruited to work on the maths of human ageing but told I'd have to take on a side project working on cancer. Since then I found out that side project pays my wage and is supposed to be 100% of my job. I spent roughly 2 years planing on the basis that my research to move more into ageing research as time went on but the cancer project kept taking up most of my time.
What is worse this cancer project when I took it on my predecessor basically said it was imposable. And it's taken nearly 3 years and in my efforts to solve the problem I've found more or less the closest thing you could get to proof that what I've been asked to do is imposable. While I'll be able to publish this research, probably, it won't get in a good journal which is not great for my career. Now my boss is warning me to not mention that I've been working on anti ageing projects at the upcoming conference with our collaborators. No more than that he's warning me they know I've been involved in them and is asking me to play down my involvement if asked. This makes me very uncomfortable.
More over my job hunting has not been going well. I don't want to move out of the general area where I live. I want to be close enough that I can drive to see family and friends with out it being a special occasion. This has basically confined me to the north of England which is not that well stocked with research jobs in my area. The idea of dropping out of research is hugely depressing to me and I'm not sure how I'll cope in a corporate environment. The idea of dropping into unemployment is very stressful.
But pre-pandemic I lived out of range of the place I grew up; for work; for 6 months. I made no friends, felt totally isolated and very depressed. It was only the pandemic that saw me move back in with my farther. I can't be totally isolated like that again.
I don't have a social life and it's hugely isolating. I live with my father who I love but share nothing in common with. I visit my brother regularly who has sevear depression and a host of minor health and major financial problems. The support in our relationship mostly flows one way. I have an autistic friend I sometimes hang out with but she is being periodically hospitalised with sevear health issues or by her occasional suicide attempts. Again the support can feel a bit one sided. Aside from that I have no one I hang out with with any regularity. There are no regular groups I go to since I was thrown out of the anime society. I've tried to set up my own groups, advertised online. No one ever comes. I don't find online 'hanging out' to be particularly helpful or indeed feasible.
My mother died in 2014. My father recently entered a secret marriage. Secret in the sense that it happened at a registry office, only me and my brother were there as witnesses, we only found out about it 3 days before and none of his wife's family knows. In fact he didn't even tell his closest friends. This is apparently because she has never told her family that she converted to Christianity years ago and is therefor not willing to tell them she's married an older christian man. They are talking about moving over seas at some point in the future as far as I can tell because she believes that way she can avoid ever telling her family about her conversion and marriage. In this case I'll lose my farther (in a practical he's available sense) and quite possibly the only home i've ever known.
I've been on anti depressants before. I don't want to do it again. It was hard to tolerate the side effects and I had real support back then too. More than now. I hated my job back then, that was a big part of it. It was getting to the point I couldn't function at work. I found it soul destroying. Then I got kicked out of anime soc that didn't help. I can't do that again. If everything goes wrong. If I find myself loosing a career and home with no one suitable to support me I think I might do something drastic. I can't say I've never thought about it before.
Hi Peter, I saw your post a few weeks ago when you originally posted and I have meant to reply ever since but only just got the time. The job situation sounds difficult and sadly I hear of so many people ending up in complicted, unfair or difficult situations in academia. But I can relate to how much joy this kind of work can give. I am a developmental neurobiologist though I am still in the very early stages of my career (I have a master's and I am now a research assistant as my previous attempt at finding a PhD place ended in a disaster. But hopefully next year I will finally start a PhD). Anti-aging seems to become a more and more popular field and aging is so relevant to many other fields (eg. neurodegeneration, cancer, stem cell maintenance/aging)- do you think you might be able to do some aging research in a lab whose focus is not directly anti-aging? Are you mainly doing computational work? Or also wet-lab? You mention that wanting to stay in the North of England is restricting your options, is there any possibility that you take a job in another area but work remotely for a large part of the time? I'm not sure how feasible that is as I am a wet lab scientist myself but maybe it is worth looking into? I know some of my computational biology friends only go into the office once a week or even less so depending on how flexible they are you might be able to negotiate an arrangement where you could work from home for longer stretches of time? I'm sorry if this is completely unrealistic.
Have you started applying for jobs? I've been through the application process myself recently (and that was much easier as it was only for a research assistant post, though even for that there were often multiple rounds of interviews with presentations etc....) and I know it's not easy but once you get going it gets better and it can actually be relatively exciting. For me everything was very last minute so I had to change field and apply to positions I would probably not even have considered otherwise- it was somewhat different for me as I was not looking for a long term job (only for a year or a bit more) so I tried to prioritise having a good environment in the lab and I am now actually quite interested and fascinated by the research in my new lab. I do realise though that as a postdoc you probably will be even more selective in terms of projects etc- but I guess you are also more able to develop and follow your own ideas? Have you considered applying for your own grant? That could give you more flexibility (I have a postdoc friend who has her own funding and it has helped her a lot and given her much more independence and flexibilit). It might help too once you start applying for jobs if you haven't already- it might give you a feeling of being more in control and more proactive and even if you get it you still don't have to take it but then you will at least not have to worry about the unemployment so much and will have something to focus on. As I was in a rush I ended up just applying for everything that seemed somewhat reasonable and that I was qualified for in a certain location (plus a few extra jobs that caught my eye in other places that I was not so sure about whether I would want to live there...)- I realised I could not expend too much energy agonising about each job advert and debating whether I really wanted the job or not as probalby I was not going to get it anyways- so my moto ended up being 'apply first, think later' (though I was in a somewhat different situation possibly and I did urgently need a job). I am really sorry if this is not helpful, I do come from a different field and different career stage so maybe none of this applies.
Regarding the social situation, it sounds difficult. I had a friend who was suicidal in the past and at the time I was one of the main people she was confiding it, which was very hard as I was struggling a lot with my own mental health at the time. It's hard.
Are there any people from your lab or through your research that you could connect to? Most of my friends are fellow scientists- that is what I like to talk and think about most so it's nice if I can just have fun science related conversations with friends. Do you have any other special interests (apart from the anime) that you could connect to people through? I know this is easier said than done.... when I am overwhelmed, exhausted and lonely, I don't have the energy to go meet new people or put myself in new situations...
I have suffered a lot with low mood, burnout (depression), issues around eating etc. and I have realised that the situation we are in can have a huge huge impact on mental health- for me it was being stuck in a lab/job in Germany that wasn't right for me and where I (probably) had been exploited. I felt like what I was doing had no meaning (didn't trust data anymore, questionable practices) and there was no support at work, plus having worked unpaid for 6 months also made me feel confused and underappreciated. I also kept thinking it was all my fault and there was something wrong with me. I felt isolated and lonely and was worried about not fitting in. I had noone to talk to about science in that job either. I was extremely depressed, even suicidal. When I finally made up my mind to leave (I had been stuck because I was so low and denergised that I felt incapable of even sending a job application and also I felt like I was the problem so no matter where I went I would just run into the same problems) and when I sent that first job application, it was like a switch had been flicked and my mood and energy was instantly better. That is how I knew it was the right choice and it made me realise how situations/environments can have a massive impact on mental health. I think doctors often think of mental health issues as something that is wrong/broken/dysfunctional within the individual- something they can treat with medication or therapy, but they do not put enough emphasis on the role of the environment and that sometimes we can change the environment and make a huge improvement to our mental health. This is sad, sometimes I feel like a lot of people must be stuck in situations that make them very unhappy/depressed, they are given medication which numbs some of the pain but ultimately remain stuck. Of course changing environment is not the whole answer- It would be a lie if I said that I have been doing brilliantly- I moved back to UK, started a new job etc. and I have been struggling to cope but I think I made the right choice, it did help and this is the first step to being able to better deal with stress/anxiety. If you are in a job/ situation in life which is having a negative impact, it is so so hard to even work on intrinsic factors that could impact on mental health. Sometimes I think that depression is a way of our bodies showing us that something is wrong and needs to be changed- the question is what is it that needs to change? Sorry I have been rambling on for so long. I think what I am trying to say is that it sounds to me like it is not surprising that you might be feeling depressed/struggling to cope- it sounds like you are in a difficult situation not only with work but also socially and with family. What helps me is if I try to find some aspect of my unhappy situation that I might be able to control and then I try to come up with a plan- once I start planning I start feeling a bit better and then I can see more clearly and try to move forward. It's not that easy, I struggle a lot too and a lot of these things I changed/did took me weeks/months and inhuman effort.
I really hope you are a feeling a little better already than when you posted this. Sending you lots of solidarity! Take care!!
Best, Ann
PS- if you ever need someone to chat about science to- I am always up to that- and I don't mind at all which field- I can get fascinated by pretty much anything :)
Ann :) said:do you think you might be able to do some aging research in a lab whose focus is not directly anti-aging? Are you mainly doing computational work? Or also wet-lab? You mention that wanting to stay in the North of England is restricting your options, is there any possibility that you take a job in another area but work remotely for a large part of the time?
I doubt I could do anti ageing work out of the field but if I still stay in the wider area of the field it might provide a rout back at a later date. My work is 100% computational. I'm looking at remote working but it's not like they offer that. You have to apply then ask for it which is a bit intimidating.
Ann :) said:Have you started applying for jobs? I've been through the application process myself recently (and that was much easier as it was only for a research assistant post, though even for that there were often multiple rounds of interviews with presentations etc....) and I know it's not easy but once you get going it gets better and it can actually be relatively exciting.
Not really. I can't seem to find anything that fits the bill.
Ann :) said:Have you considered applying for your own grant?
Yes there is one very long shot in the offing but my boss has been very discouraging about my chances.
Ann :) said:Are there any people from your lab or through your research that you could connect to?
Not really. I'm on good terms with them but I work remotely and socially I kept them at arms length. I didn't want to loose my job (or have to go to employment tribunal) if I accidentally offended one with a joke for instance.
Ann :) said:Do you have any other special interests (apart from the anime) that you could connect to people through?
Not really. Everything I might name would be anime like. Cosplay, video games, sci fi. The kind of stuff you find in student societies. ... Wine and cheese nights and book clubs not so much. That kind of thing bores me silly. I guess I don't make a very good 'adult.' Even war gaming, DnD, MTG, and fantasy LARP (some of my friends were into that) is pretty boring to me.
Ann :) said:When I finally made up my mind to leave (I had been stuck because I was so low and denergised that I felt incapable of even sending a job application and also I felt like I was the problem so no matter where I went I would just run into the same problems) and when I sent that first job application, it was like a switch had been flicked and my mood and energy was instantly better.
The thing is I quite like this job. It just inevitably ends on new years eve.