Okay, not despair. But frustration. This is my fourth year in this PhD program, and it's getting to be crunch time. Everything that influences and directs my degree program are pushing me formore work, more specialization, and less of everything else. The project I'm working on is so specific that there are probably only 3 or 4 people that would completely understand why I'm doing it. I'll try to explain the specifics, and their pros and cons and I perceive them.
I fully understand that a doctoral degree requires specialization so that I can publish something original. By and far, original publications by graduate students are necessarily specific (illustrated nicely by 'The Illustrated Guide to the PhD"). And sure, each publication adds to the total "body of knowledge." That's a mantra that I have to keep telling myself, lest I despair while I'm floundering with tiny details and boring specifics.
I work with a large global climate model. I use a version of it that is heavy on atmospheric chemistry, about 100 chemical species are tracked, with a few hundred individual reactions. It's complex, and finicky. My current task is to take a chemical tool that exists in an older version of the model and make it work in a newer version. This tool allows the modeling of artificial tracers to the model that allow us to track emissions from a specific place (for example, Asia, or North America) as they are stirred and transported throughout the model atmosphere.
That sounds interesting enough, but in order for me to do this, I have to trudge through hundreds of lines of code. I have to meticuously compare one list of reactions to another, and try and figure out what the code is doing, or more frequently, why it isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. I'm stuck in other peoples' code, who have either forgotten what they've done, or have left science entirely, leaving behind bits and pieces and fragments for me to stare at hunched over in my cubicle.
I do not enjoy this work. It's boring, tedious, and dull. I spend hours, days, week, and sometimes months on one path that may lead no where. I currently sit at a juncture where it's very likely that what I've been trying to make work for the past 3 months is not possible. That is extremely frustrating. And, I might at, extremely par for the course. I understand that new things are not discovered, reasoned, or created easily. Dead ends and confounding cul de sacs are normal. But for someone like me, who really enjoys the bigger picture, of seeing the connections and bridges between the specifics, these dead ends and cul de sacs and nitty-gritty details are disheartening and troubling. Do I like this? Is this worth it? Is this what I want to be doing with my life, my career, my days?
I'm sure some people get exhilarated by this level of detail. And at times, I taste that. But by and large, I'd much rather be showing science to kids, talking about the connections between degrees with other scientists, and communication with non-scientists. That's why I'm starting to write here. In between my degree program's requirements, I need to communicate. I need to back off a little bit and remember the bigger picture. I need to keep my writing skills alive, and keep the fire that pushed me into science alive.
I fully understand that a doctoral degree requires specialization so that I can publish something original. By and far, original publications by graduate students are necessarily specific (illustrated nicely by 'The Illustrated Guide to the PhD"). And sure, each publication adds to the total "body of knowledge." That's a mantra that I have to keep telling myself, lest I despair while I'm floundering with tiny details and boring specifics.
I work with a large global climate model. I use a version of it that is heavy on atmospheric chemistry, about 100 chemical species are tracked, with a few hundred individual reactions. It's complex, and finicky. My current task is to take a chemical tool that exists in an older version of the model and make it work in a newer version. This tool allows the modeling of artificial tracers to the model that allow us to track emissions from a specific place (for example, Asia, or North America) as they are stirred and transported throughout the model atmosphere.
That sounds interesting enough, but in order for me to do this, I have to trudge through hundreds of lines of code. I have to meticuously compare one list of reactions to another, and try and figure out what the code is doing, or more frequently, why it isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. I'm stuck in other peoples' code, who have either forgotten what they've done, or have left science entirely, leaving behind bits and pieces and fragments for me to stare at hunched over in my cubicle.
I do not enjoy this work. It's boring, tedious, and dull. I spend hours, days, week, and sometimes months on one path that may lead no where. I currently sit at a juncture where it's very likely that what I've been trying to make work for the past 3 months is not possible. That is extremely frustrating. And, I might at, extremely par for the course. I understand that new things are not discovered, reasoned, or created easily. Dead ends and confounding cul de sacs are normal. But for someone like me, who really enjoys the bigger picture, of seeing the connections and bridges between the specifics, these dead ends and cul de sacs and nitty-gritty details are disheartening and troubling. Do I like this? Is this worth it? Is this what I want to be doing with my life, my career, my days?
I'm sure some people get exhilarated by this level of detail. And at times, I taste that. But by and large, I'd much rather be showing science to kids, talking about the connections between degrees with other scientists, and communication with non-scientists. That's why I'm starting to write here. In between my degree program's requirements, I need to communicate. I need to back off a little bit and remember the bigger picture. I need to keep my writing skills alive, and keep the fire that pushed me into science alive.
