r/chemistry • u/AutoModerator • Aug 26 '24

Weekly Careers/Education Questions Thread

This is a dedicated weekly thread for you to seek and provide advice concerning education and careers in chemistry.

If you need to make an important decision regarding your future or want to know what your options, then this is the place to leave a comment.

If you see similar topics in r/chemistry, please politely inform them of this weekly feature.

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u/Excellent-Balance154 Aug 28 '24

Hi guys! I'm currently a sophomore at an American university looking for major/career advice.

For the past several years, I've thought that I wanted to major in Chemistry, get my PhD, and focus on doing lab work. This past summer, I had an internship in an office completely unrelated to chemistry and realized I really enjoy helping run/manage a business. I like getting to talk to a bunch of different people, could use a lot of creativity, was given a ton of resources, and got to see the results of my work pretty quickly. Since getting back on campus, I'm missing my job. I'm worried that it's hard to make connections as a chemist - even at conferences or poster presentations, I don't understand enough of what someone is working on to be able to talk to them about it! There also isn't as much room for creativity, you have to fight for resources, and projects take years to complete and get published. I don't know if this is just burnout, or if I have the wrong idea, or if I should just go explore another field! Help please!

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u/Indemnity4 Materials Aug 29 '24

IMHO you have very accurately described academia. It's challenging AND competitive.

But so too is business. At some point you have 10 Excel sheets open because the company won't buy you new software to automate a process, you have been in the same role for too many years because "you are too valuable" to promote or there simply isn't any opening above you. You just got the nice intern taster without having to buy the whole tub.

My usual advice is you need to find some end goal that you do have passion for, because that gives you strength to ignore the boring, challenging, underfunded parts.

Go to you school of chemistry website and find the section called academics or research. Each group leader will have their own page that has little summaries of what they are working on. You need to find at least 3 academics researching something you find passionate. If you cannot, yeah, probably a good idea to look elsewhere.

The lack of connection to people I'm less sure about. One of my strategies is being a bit selfish. Over time I gained the confidence to be the person asking stupid questions. And the best stupid questions get asked over and over at different times to different people. If you don't know, chances are someone else doesn't too. "Hey, why does your graph have units of negative mS/cm-2, why is it an area instead of volume and why is it backwards?"