“In flux” is how I’d describe my career right now. The past few months, I’ve been consumed by an ongoing internal dialogue about my current situation, which is honestly not super unique: I don’t like my job, but it pays for the lifestyle I enjoy.

I was studying for the GRE because I’d convinced myself that getting more education in computer science would bring me the career fulfillment I didn’t have. I thought that a master’s might help me work on more exciting things, and there’s definitely some truth to that—a better understanding of machine learning, for example, would give me access to more challenging problems to solve. However, before making such big moves, I knew I had to ask myself…is this really what I want?

I soon realized that I was more excited about the idea of going to grad school than I was about actually going to grad school for CS. And, of course, that made me pause and seriously re-evaluate my plans.

Reigniting Old Interests

The first approach I took was to think back on the classes I genuinely enjoyed in college. It came down to two subjects: Physics and French. I couldn’t have a career in the latter, but maybe the former?

So I buckled down and studied.

To give some background, I wasn’t a Physics major. I’d intended to be, but I ended up switching into CS pretty early into college. Still believing that a graduate degree was the way to go, I did extensive research into Physics master’s programs that indicated they’d consider applicants with non-traditional backgrounds. Such applicants, though, needed to show potential in the field, generally via a good Physics GRE score.

The Physics GRE is meant to cover the first three years of an undergrad Physics education, so I started intensely playing catch-up. I spent all my free time bulldozing my way through Pearson University Physics by Sears and Zomansky. I decided that I wanted to take the test in October, and the schedule I subsequently created for myself was insane (and honestly, mentally unsustainable—the burnout was real).

Towards the end—yes, this stint indeed ended—I was studying Physics for 18 hours a week. And keep in mind, this was with a full-time job! This approach was rife with tradeoffs: sure, I was learning a lot in a short period of time (and, more importantly, working towards a future I thought I wanted), but such intensity was also incredibly tiring, occasionally making me abhor the subject, and keeping me from hobbies that brought me joy.

I’d given up learning Italian, lounging along the Esplanade with Coconut, and running—though, to be fair, this last activity was already somewhat on hiatus before my Physics journey started. As a whole, life during this period had a general feeling of purpose and motivation, but it was also….not super enjoyable. Despite this, I was completely willing to power through it all until I had an extremely insightful conversation with a friend who is starting his PhD in Biophysics.

He revealed a lot of things about Physics and academia that drastically impacted my desire to go into the field. I’ll list the major takeaways from that conversation here:

1. Physics is a super conservative field when it comes to admissions and general work-life balance. When admitting students, the process will not be as holistic as in other fields. Your personal statement and letters of rec are much less important than your GRE, pGRE, and GPA. Honestly, that wasn’t a turnoff to me, but what was is how hellbent Physics apparently is on the idea of a meritocracy. You are your research, and if you’re not working on it constantly (aka “living the life of a 19th century physicist who is consumed by his work,” as my friend put it), then your chances in the field aren’t great. That…did not sound appealing to me. I wanted an identity apart from my job.
2. Physics is not a kind field for women. The implicit biases held towards female physicists is real. To contextualize it for myself, I tried imagining what I’ve faced as a woman in CS….times 100. I think this problem will only improve when there are more women in Physics, but still, the current reality should be considered when thinking about entering.
3. Academia is not a kind field for women. I feel many ways about this. Again, like for the last point, having more female academics will likely improve this. But in general, my friend mentioned that the timeline of trying to get tenure may also coincide with that of starting a family, which makes things a lot more difficult. And on that point….
4. …Tenure is crazy hard to get. Academia is super competitive. If you don’t get tenure, which is likely, you’ll have to hop to another university—more importantly, you’ll have to uproot your entire life (and that of your spouse/family). This can happen repeatedly. Hopping around sounds exciting to my current, early-twenties self, but when I’m in my thirties? Not so much.
5. Many physicists end up in tech. Most professors teach at institutions that are lower ranked from where they graduated. As my friend put it, “If you graduate from Harvard, you might end up teaching at Ohio State. And if you graduate from Ohio State, then you might end up teaching at a community college…and at that point, you’re like, ‘Why did I invest this much time to teach here?'” So where do they go? Tech!
6. You’ve got to love research. I was banking on the fact that my passion for Physics would naturally lead me to love research in the field. But in reality, a love of research generally comes from a love of your research question, which—unlike my friend, who’s spent nearly the past decade invested in his—I just didn’t have.

The conversation was incredibly enlightening to me, and I’m really grateful that my friend shared his wisdom. “You won’t hear this stuff online,” he boasted proudly and, uh, YEAH, that’s totally true. These were things I didn’t even know I needed to hear.

At the end of the day, life as a physicist/academic did not fit the vision I had for myself. And while that may change in the future, I decided to close out my Physics journey for now.

(On the bright side, I had gotten through 18 chapters of my Physics textbook—so ask me a question about thermodynamics, I dare ya!)

And Then Cal Newport Swooped In…

Around the time of the conversation with my PhD friend, I’d also read So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. This book argues that career satisfaction comes not from matching a job to some pre-determined passion, but rather from being good at what you do. Trying to swoop into Physics because I was sick of CS sounded a lot like what he was advising against.

I thought deeply about what I don’t like about my current job. I’m not a fan of the annoying bureaucratic stuff, sure, but more importantly, I hate the problems I’ve been given. Why? Because I spend 95% of my time stuck, and not even on fun stuff—I’m not working through logic or doing something that utilizes brainpower, but rather learning to use new technologies that are unfamiliar and unintuitive. And because of that, I spend so much of my day Googling fixes…clearly not what I imagined when I envisioned my life as an engineer.

And then, I thought about the time I’d invested into learning Physics. 18 hours a week! What if I put that into learning more CS? As Cal Newport puts it, I could put all that time—okay, maybe not all, but perhaps a few extra hours than I’m currently doing—into building “career capital.” It’s less glamorous than trying to pivot into a completely different career, but it also makes so much more sense.

And, as he argues, maybe I’ll end up liking my job more.

So Grad School?? Lest!?

Not exactly.

Grad school is a serious investment, and for now, I still don’t think I should go, at least not for a purely CS degree. I have career capital in tech, and I want to eventually cash in on that—but not for another super deep tech role. I don’t think it’s valuable to try to convince myself that I want to work in machine learning or data mining or something like that.

Rather, I’d like to take an approach that infuses what I enjoy into what I have skills in. (Sounds obvious, I know!) I have a lot of creative energy and people skills that could integrate well with tech, and that’s where I want to invest my time now. This means learning *gasp* how to do front-end work and design. And it also means, in general, incorporating creative pursuits into my life, tech-y or not.

At the end of the day, a job that perfectly melds everything I want—creativity, people, and tech—may not be feasible or support me financially in the way I’d like. (That last bit is, again, really important! I love the way I live now.) But by living more creatively on a regular basis, from personal projects to the way I engage with other entertainment, I can still get a lot of fulfillment.

All in all, what got me out of this funk were 1) a mindset shift, 2) a commitment to pursuing interests outside of work, and 3) a willingness to develop my already-existing skillset, even if it’s not currently fulfilling. This is, for now, the approach I will be taking with my career conundrum, and honestly I’m excited to see how I feel in a few months.

As always, I’ll keep y’all updated.