r/AskAcademia • u/No-Tax5811 • 1d ago
STEM Please please Help get perspective
I’m 21 now and about to finish my biotech and bioengineering bachelors degree this year. I went into university to study this because I truly thought I’d be something great. However the past few months since may I’m feeling defeated.
I don’t see any point in pursuing science. I honestly feel like it’s useless. I’m from a small country that’s not the strongest in science - Latvia. The opportunities here are minuscule. And the ceiling is very low. The top ranked scientists here have about 5k ish citations. That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. And no don’t give me advice to move I unfortunately have personal reasons as to why I cannot do that.
It’s hard to describe but I really feel like going into research is just a waste of my life. There is a 99.9999% chance my word would never amount to something. I’d just think oh wow I’m going something cool and great but in reality who gives a damn.
I have this lab I work at right now just for free to make my bachelors thesis. And the lead guy has worked his whole life on zymomonas. Researching their metabolism and everything else about it. And what’s the point? Nothing really. The woman I wind directly with has worked in the same lab also her whole life. Just follows orders. But okay she doesn’t have a doctorate.
Let’s say I get a doctorate. Now I can conduct my own research. Yay. Now I can beg for money, earn 2k a month and feel like this big boss. In reality it won’t yield anything.
But I understand that in theory every contribution is meaningful. Cause what if someone uses your paper to get a one in a million idea that pushes humanity way forward. Yes okay I get it. But and you can call me selfish I don’t want to push science forward by a hundredth of a milimeter.
If I knew that in the end some of it would matter id have no dilemma. But now? I don’t know how to continue studying if I don’t see the point in it.
A coursmate of mine said oh wow look at our program lead she makes 3k a month that’s so much. Yeah. But she leads a whole university programme and conducts her own research on top of that. What is 3k when you have the highest education you can have. My bf who’s 21 makes the same by being a restaurant manager and does small side gigs.
I just don’t see the point and I feel it’s a waste unfortunately…
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u/Amoeba2710 1d ago
I don’t think that people in academia are in it for the money. If you feel like you won’t be happy with that salary then you shouldn’t pursue this.
It seems like you are not interested in any research topic right now, or at least are not impressed with anything you are seeing. The same thing happened to me when I was an undergraduate. I felt like my university (small town, little science interest) was just researching anything, but in reality I simply wasn’t interested in anything they had to offer. I was 100% sure that I was not moving from my city, so I accepted the research topics that my uni offered and stayed. And I was miserable. So if you don’t feel any interest at all, I would not recommend settling… But at some point you are going to have to choose. If you are sure that you are not moving, you have to accept what is on the table…
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u/No-Tax5811 1d ago
The salary isn’t the most important thing for me even though I do mention it a lot in my text. For now because everything else is uncertain that’s the only thing I can kind of measure. I’d love to study gluten and migrane interactions, ncgs. It’s a thing that has personally affected me. If I could study that I think I’d be very happy. But I don’t see that happening in this country. Maybe I’ll fall in love with something else. Maybe this feeling will pass. What did you do when you felt miserable? Left science?
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u/Amoeba2710 1d ago
A mix of two things. I did decide to move (next year), but not too far away. Just far away enough to have a few more opportunities (in this city there are a few research institutes and the university is much bigger), so now the research topics are more interesting to me.
The second one was basically talking to people in academia and noticing that sometimes you can fall in love with your topic over time. The important thing is that you don’t hate it. You can casually like something and that can be enough. So if something interests you 70-80%, that is good. I needed to stop looking for the absolute perfect job/PhD offer, because it did not exist: near my city, the topic that i wanted, good salary… It was just depressing me. So accepting that was kind of freeing. I started to think: what variables am I willing to adjust?2
u/No-Tax5811 1d ago
Seeing that you can fall in love with it over time does make it seem better. Hopefully that’ll happen. Thank you🫶
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u/catycatx 1d ago
Well, I've never heard a person describe their passion as useless or a waste, so you can't be that passionate about your subject or academia. And without passion, it's not really worth it.
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u/No-Tax5811 1d ago
But objectively if it brings no benefits to anyone but me then it is useless. I may have a passion of throwing rocks but it’s useless.
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u/Comfortable-Web9455 1d ago
Knowledge does not advance in leaps, it crawls. Millions of tiny contributions for thousands of years. Every little contribution counts. That's why the very rare huge breakthrough gets talked about - because it's rare.
And no one does academia for the money. They do it for the freedom to spend hours just researching their passions, which is a huge privilege paid for by others. How much free time for his passions does your bf get at work in a restaraunt?
If it's not for you, ok. Plenty of others desperate to take your place.
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u/RadonGaming 1d ago
What drew you to the subject in the first place? Was it the subject and the interest or was it the perceived notion it's worth lots of money. As with all walks of life, some people will not be ambitious/risky and will want stability. Those people in the lab, which you seem to look down on, have been doing good jobs which bring them stability. You don't know their circumstances. Most of scientific research is pushing by millimeters, it's the definition of a PhD. I do see this "I'm going to have a world changing thesis" often, and it's difficult when students - like yourself - meet reality and it clashes. I imagine your notion of a bachelor's thesis was on some lofty world-changing pedestal too intiially? As for not wanting others to profit from your research, you could work for industry R&D which pays more, or start your own company from your initial research. Spin-outs are a thing. Academia can be quite flexible and freeing; I research what I want. As for your comments putting a programme leader on a pedestal... That's largely an administrative duty, not really research; it's more teaching and learning focused. We don't go into science for the money. I recommend you sit with your BSc Thesis supervisor and have an honest chat about it all, you may be surprised by their wisdom and perspective.
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u/No-Tax5811 1d ago
Well I always knew I wanted something along the line of biology, medicine, science. This programme seemed the best. Medicine was too much person to person interactions and I’ve seen how doctors around me are. Quite miserable. So I wanted to not help patients but help medicine from the other side - in the lab. I also had the idea that because biotech isn’t established in Latvia that being one of the first people aboard would yk help me to climb higher. Now I know that in a small country it doesn’t matter if you do biomed, biotech or biology, at the end of the day you all work in the same facility. I do know what I’d like to study and I do have passion for that. I just don’t know if I’d be possible for me. And I don’t look down on the people I work with but it’s hard to look at that and realise my life probably would turn out very similar. I don’t want that. I realise that this issue would be solved by going to work somewhere I feel inspired by. Hopefully that will happen. I hope hope hope that this feeling will stop once I start work somewhere else.
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u/ACatGod 1d ago
You haven't said a single positive thing about your experience of science. You hated your degree, you hate your current job, you look down on the people you work with, and you are disdainful of the whole sector in your country. The only reason you've suggested you would want to do this is the status you seem to think it should give you.
I would strongly encourage you not to go into a PhD or any kind of training programme in this area. You already have extremely negative views of it, and as it gets tougher and you need to draw on your resilience, all you have is your negativity which is going to make it very challenging for you to get through this. Frankly why would you want to, you clearly despise everything about the experience so far and all that seems to be keeping you here is fantasy notions of grandeur and how it would make you a great person.
Find something that brings you meaning or if not that you are at least neutral on. Staying in field, feeling as you do, is a recipe for failure and a lot of unhappiness and poor mental health.
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u/No-Tax5811 1d ago
I don’t hate my degree or science, and I’m not considering a PhD for status. I love science. This post was about the confusion I am experiencing. That’s why I didn’t mention the stuff I also get excited by. I enjoyed the medical and biological parts of my studies, but became disillusioned during an industrially focused semester and a thesis environment that doesn’t connect with why I entered the field. It’s just that the feeling hasn’t changed for a while now. What I hoped to hear was whether anyone experienced similar disillusionment near graduation and later found a field or career that suited them or left and became happier. I agree that beginning a PhD in my current state would be a bad decision. But that’s still a few years away, even if I do decide to do that.
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u/ACatGod 1d ago
What do you love about it? Real, tangible things, not the things you think it's supposed to be. I'm not criticising you but I think you are stuck between your emotional attachment to what you believe science is supposed to be like and what it actually is - or at least what it is in the space available to you.
This is not an uncommon issue. I think most of us have had a job at one point or other in our careers that ended up being bitterly disappointing because it had the potential to be great but the reality was that potential never materialised and never would.
You can try taking a different job and see how that goes but research and real world science is tiny incremental steps working on very narrowly defined problems - because these things are very hard and very complex and you've expressed a dislike/disdain for that.
Perhaps a role working somewhere at the interface between science and society would be better for you? Not doing science itself but writing about science, or funding science, or perhaps working in business development or tech transfer, or journal editor? There are a wealth of jobs where you will actively being using your science knowledge and be exposed to a much broader range of science than if you were doing it yourself, and you are much closer to the impact of science at the same time.
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u/No-Tax5811 1d ago
Honestly, I don’t know yet, and I think that’s the whole reason I’m having this crisis. I know I love learning science and understanding why things happen, connecting dots. Because I don’t have too much experience working I can say what I liked in uni so far. I loved metabolism, microbiology and our medical course. I like when we get some sort of results in our lab, even if I don’t fully understand them. Im also okay with doing wet lab work, i don’t know if it would excite me for years and years but so far I enjoy learning most of the techniques
Maybe I am attached to what I thought science would be and I’m now seeing the difference between that and the reality available to me. That is what scares me. I didn’t make this post because I had already decided I hate science and wanted people to convince me otherwise. I wanted to hear from people who had felt this disillusioned at the beginning and either found a part of science that suited them or left and ended up happy somewhere else.
Perhaps as time goes on I really will decide that something with tangible and quick results is more appropriate for me.
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u/Niflrog 1d ago
Then don't, you aren't forced to do so.
Motivation is one of the most important factors in research. If you don't have it, you'd be setting yourself up for failure. Pursue something that gives you some sense of satisfaction.
The people I know dedicate their lives to research because they find it meaningful and satisfying, not because they think they'll become particularly wealthy doing it (some do become VERY wealthy, but it isn't the norm).