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I too get lots of emails asking how to get a career studying crows/corvids. The tone of my responses has changed so much over the last two years. It went from optimistic sage advice to “if you figure it out let me know”
Right now I’m considering myself lucky because I went from being unemployed in 3mo to employed in a temporary position for the next 8mo. That feels like a huge win. I don’t let myself think much past that. To really do the math on it.
Because when I do I have a hard time doing much of anything. Why? I mean...why not? The financial insecurity, the loss of personal identity, the general mental toll grad school took. How am I supposed to look at having to hustling for 8mo of employment and not mourn that?
Above all though it’s just the daily weight of seeing an expiration date on your dream job. Of feeling like, “hey wasn’t finally putting an end to that like, the whole point of this”?
I don’t regret going to grad school. I went to grad school because I desperately wanted to study crows and that was the most tenable way to do it. And for 6 years I got to. They were hard but for me it was worth it. At least it feels that way now.
But the price is that I feel almost exactly the way I did before grad school only more tired and less optimistic. And I can’t really bring myself to do the math on that either.
