I was a bright and successful scientist working out of college with my bachelors. Two years later I moved out to grad school. I’ve struggled with the transition and it traumatized me a bit.
Since seventh grade I’ve had a variety of OCD regarding different topics. These thoughts are ceaselessly sticky. They attack and harass me and while treating me like a marionette.
The worst of it is the constant second guessing ever since I began grad school.
i’m terrorized by this recurring set of questions: am I doing the right thing? Did I ever enjoy this subject? Is this the right career path for me? was my experience as a research scientist before grad school actually legitimate? is being white collar worth it? am i bad for not being blue collar? does what i do provide impact and purpose to the world? what is my purpose?, what is my calling?
The more disturbing: how are people around me working in finance, office jobs, or even service jobs and not asking themselves these same questions.
Why did I go to college in the first place? What if I had worked a trade? What if my success in the learned professions was all forced onto me? What if it never was meant to happen?
truthfully there is no route to answer any of these questions. i have exercised all the routes and ran through all these thoughts a million times over: probably 20 times an hour. there’s no satisfying answer that i can concoct. there never is. this is my personal mental 9/11.
Objectively I know that doing chemistry is something I am good at. My work is highly engineering focused with machinery and whatnot. It can be blue collar if I so choose. I just feel guilty or weird that there is an electrician or a handyman who is actually producing something of tangible value? Meanwhile I am sitting and theorizing how to make a plastic coating to mitigate corrosion in a pipe. I feel like the blue collar workers have more value in society than I. We should all be blue collar workers.
Industrial chemistry is something that I’ve had some marginal expertise in. Why can’t I just enjoy becoming an expert in this during school? I beg anyone and everyone from all four corners of the earth, god… emancipate me from these thoughts.