Quite possibly, I didn’t have a clue about what I was getting myself into

Celebrated getting funding for my PhD with Yin on Sunday, in our usual way (epic food, epic walk, goofy card). A large slab of relief comes from the not having to worry about what I’m going to be doing next year, from anticipating the doubling of my disposable income, from not having to awkwardly visa marry my boyfriend at 23, from the realization that even if Yin doesn’t get a job straightaway he can stay with me for a bit, from the validation of my ability and intelligence, from the seeming affirmation that I am on something like the right path right now.

I’m either past cold feet or in it again, right now. It is not about the PhD per se; I am beyond excited about being based at the FIL, which provides such mind boggling opportunity for (interesting things like) finding out about brain mechanisms of cognition and (more boring but probably someday useful things like) training with all these cutting-edge techniques of brain science and network modelling and pharmacology. I’m excited to have somehow ended up working with such a prominent figure in the field, I’m excited and intimidated in equal measure about being a part of his lab (which is ridiculously well-funded and so post-doc heavy as for me to be the sole baby of the group), I’m excited and pleasantly surprised at somehow having managed to sort myself an ideal position where I can learn from the ground up about all these fancy techniques, with enough money to scan all day every day if I’d like, and with a supervisor who is open-minded enough as to allow me to root myself semi-firmly in psychiatry, where all my interests lie.

It is not that I have the slightest inclination that I will not enjoy the next three years; it is the sudden realization that the next three years signal some sort of start to my career, with all its trappings of seriousness and personal significance. Just thinking of myself on this road makes me feel like I am about a billion middle-aged years-old, and I really really deer-in-the-headlights don’t want to be here. For the same reasons, it stuns me ever so slightly everytime I hear about my peers, people my age, having proper jobs, getting married, doing all these adulty things. If I told Michelle how I feel, I know she’d chide me for immaturity, I know she’d say, with sisterly kindness but perhaps a twinge of family-forgivable condescention, everyone feels like a bit of fear during that transition, getting used to it and being able to function is what being an adult is all about. And I would say, throwing my toys out of the pram like a two year old, but I don’t want to be an adult, I just want to go about acting inconsequentially, relying on Mum to buy me out of trouble, being in denial about the greyness to my family conflicts and my parents’ inability to right all the wrongs in the world. 

In other words, there’s a large possibility that I didn’t have a clue what I was getting myself into, when I got into it. It is not like me, to consider long-term goals, to look beyond today’s sundown, to be unimpulsive or to look beyond the most immediate rewards and the most salient and shallow motivators (wearing jeans to work? not having to move out of London? being able to start work at noon each day? continued student discounts from Topshop and National Rail?). In my heart of hearts, I know that it is not Being An Adult per se that is bothering me, but rather the notion that life should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Where I Want It To Be. If I don’t have years ahead to burn on trivialities, if I am going to be looking back on my Right Now as the zephyr years of my life for goodness’ sake, then all of this isn’t really stacking up all so well. What’s this neighbourhood, I want to be in? I want to have something to do with music, I want to have something to do with dance, I want to have something to do with art, I want to be in some sort of community and I want to have a better relationship with my family. Fast-forward to some middle class dreams I do find myself wanting, I want to own my house, so that no one can ever kick me out of it. But more significantly, more age-appropriately, the previous few. Because those are the things it feels like I should be doing now, that’s the side of me that needs setting up, before career and whatever swallow me whole. Unless the life bit of work-life balance has actual content, this is a meaningless thing to even strive for, and in terms of this life business within the work-life balance, I am so far from where I want to be right now.

Can’t pretend like I am not excited about having a foot on the ladder in terms of career, but from this bottom rung upwards it’s a slog of concentration and personal sacrifice, and I can’t help but feel like if I do the necessary and play the game (which of course a large part of me, that is happy to be in the industry, wants to), I’m going to wake up one day in my mid-thirties in a fit of terror, preceded by a decade or so of feeling like the most boring person at every party I have ever been to -not because I think what I do is boring, but because there’s got to be more in the human experience than workaday drudgery in pursuit of even a noble scientific or humanitarian ideal. Is it misplaced, to be wanting more out of life? Or have I merely bought into the great advertisement of modern society.

Add to that the sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be really quite bad at doing all the adulty industry-type things that will be required in this job – from the little things like dressing like a professional and turning up on time, to more game changing ones like networking and selling my ideas and not letting criticism get me down and not being intimidated by the position and intelligence of peers and superiors – and this is altogether filling me with unease. With some training, with some effort, with some focus, feels like I could sort myself out, in both regards. Just wish I had the direction and the balls, to do something substantial, to get me closer to where I want to be right now.

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