An unusual response to my answer on what I do for a living

Sometimes I wonder if I'm hypersensitive. A couple of weeks ago I was at a Sunday School teachers' meeting, and one of the guys asked what I do. What I wanted to say was, "I fold conotoxin peptides so they can be used in research for pain medications." Of course, that would sound like technobabble to the uninitiated, so I said, " I synthesize cone snail, marine snail, toxin proteins. We're trying to make those toxins into pain medicines."

His reaction: What's your major?

Me: I graduated in Biology.

Him: Oh. I never thought you'd be interested in something like that.

This was a highly unusual response, and one I'd never received before. I usually get "Cool," or, "I only understood maybe a fourth of what you said, but that sounds awesome." (The second response is what a second guy in the conversation gave)

I honestly didn't know how to respond. This was a guy who had only spoken to me on two other occasions, both dealing with Sunday School. Part of me (the worse part) wanted to give a snarky response similar to, "Why? Because I'm too pretty to be interested in science? It's not like I don't mention it in every other lesson I give or like I don't testify of faith and how it is difficult for some of us, like me, to live by faith because we are so logically minded."

Another part of me was genuinely interested in why he thought that--I do sometimes bring crocheting projects to church to help keep myself awake, and maybe he equated crocheting with domesticity in the absence of science (for the record, I also enjoy knitting, sewing, cross-stitching, cooking, baking, and painting, and I have taught myself those skills in whole or in part. Oh, and writing fantasy. So obviously science and domesticity are not mutually exclusive).

A third part of me was afraid that he would reply that it was because I was so quiet that I simply didn't seem that smart. (Of course, he probably wouldn't say that to my face, but perhaps his words would have implied that silence reflects on my intelligence or lack thereof. In reality, I am not prone to get into conversations on subjects I know little about, such as politics and sports. Silence does not indicate a lack of intelligence. Vocalization on certain subjects also does not correlate to IQ)

A fourth part of me feared that he meant that he thought I was too spiritual to be led away by science. That would have been insulting with faint praise. I do not believe that science and religion are separate, that one is true and one is false, but I have encountered this both at school and church far too many times to count. It hurts my soul and makes me doubt myself and God far too often for me to want to address it every single time.

So what did I do? Conflicting emotions and responses raged in my head, and after a moment's pause I opened my mouth and said, "Oh."

Then the guys sort of ignored me and started talking sports.

So, am I hypersensitive?

Human Experience. Or, a brief autobiography of my adult life. Or, reevaluating dreams and goals and continuing on anyway.

What is a dream?  What is a goal?  How do we strive to rise above ourselves and refine our lives?  Is there a certain pinnacle we must look for in deciding, "Now I have made it.  Now I am complete?"  What decides whether we succeed or fail?

In May, I graduated from the University of Utah and obtained my second bachelor's degree in Biology, with a minor in Chemistry and an emphasis in Biochemistry.  Since then, I have worked in a part-time job in a lab and applied for several (though obviously not enough) full-time positions as a lab technician, research assistant, chemistry researcher, biology researcher, and other such positions.  I have also self-published my second book, helped my mom edit and traditionally publish her memoir, helped her with setting up blog tours and radio interviews, helped babysit my nephew, worked on a quilt and crocheted half a sock.  I have also whittled away far too many hours in watching television and surfing the internet.  And all this has made me wonder, three months after my graduation, what am I doing with my life?  What are my goals?

Last year, the plan was that at about this time I would be getting ready to go to a shiny new school for a grand adventure in a graduate program, where I would finally gain enough experience to get a post-doc position and finally a real-life job in a scientific field of my choice.  And when I didn't get in, I suddenly felt so tired.  If I applied for graduate school again,  I wouldn't graduate until I was well past thirty, I wouldn't complete my post-doc until I was nearly forty, and I wouldn't get a "real" job until I was so old that people would probably throw out my resume because I wasn't the bright young PhD graduate that they could consider.  It made me depressed.  It made me go into a tiny shell and wonder, "Is this really worth it?"  I joked about getting a job at the zoo (although I have no experience in animal husbandry or animals in general), in the forest service (where you should have an emphasis in plant or animal science, not biochemistry), in anywhere besides what I really wanted to do: research chemicals (particularly those in plants) and their effects on the human body.  Yet I was afraid that by the time I finally graduated with my PhD that I would still be unmarried, alone, likely living far away from the rest of my family, without a house (because what unmarried graduate student can afford a house), and thus not even able to have a cat or a dog (since it's hard enough to find a place that allows pets anyway).

So I must ask myself: where have my dreams gone?  Am I really content to live in my parents' basement for the rest of my life? (The answer is: your parents won't let you live in the basement for the rest of your life, so you'd better get figuring things out)  What do I want to do?

My first degree was in Elementary Education, and after graduating from Brigham Young University I immediately got a job at a brand new charter school.  I quickly realized that all the fluffy warm-hearted speeches given by each of my teachers didn't matter to me when I had to create lesson plans and unit plans and a full curriculum outline and substitute plans and had to balance making sure the kids succeeded with making sure the kids were happy and creating individual education plans for my kids with special challenges and making the parents happy and making the principal happy and dealing with a regime change mid-year and changing my teaching style completely and then falling behind in paperwork and knowing that my college teachers said it's okay to not grade every assignment and then having the principals say that you should grade every assignment and me knowing it's impossible to know where the kids are in things like math without grading assignments and not having enough help and not being creative enough with crafts and having students tell me I'm a terrible teacher and having other students tell me I'm a wonderful teacher and having to admit to parents that I don't give their particular student enough attention and crying myself to sleep at night and hating most of my job and being afraid that I would start to hate the students.  So I got out.  I admire teachers that can deal with all of that and face each day with a smile and genuinely love their students and care about their success.  But I couldn't.  So I decided to go back to school and get a second degree.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have continued teaching.  Sometimes I dream I'm back in the classroom and it's not so bad.  Sometimes I have nightmares about teaching.  Sometimes my nightmares revolve around the fact that I went to school--except I went all the way back to elementary school instead of just to college.  And then I remember those dark days: the days where I felt that the world would be better if I simply ceased to exist, where ceasing to exist was better than killing myself in a job that I wasn't good at, where I felt like I wasn't the teacher my students deserved and that just vanishing would be better for them.  I would call myself suicidal but unmotivated (*this is not a clinical diagnosis. If you need to talk to someone, go do it. Get help).  I never actually planned my own death--but I definitely imagined the world without me.  I think realizing what would happen to my mother in particular--her mom died by suicide when she was just twelve--if I took my own life is what kept me from formulating any sort of plan.  It's like there is a wall in my mind that grows up around any visualization of suicide, and that wall is triggered by the word "Mom."  You see, I realized that my death would cause suffering among my family, but it was the double-pain it would cause my mom that kept me from going any further than imagining the world without me.

It is because of those dark days that I believe it was right for me to stop teaching.  Yet that has always made me wonder: am I a flake?  Is my character so weak that I can't hold onto a job that will make me struggle?  I live surrounded by people who have so many more problems than me, so why can't I get and hold a steady job?

So I turn again to my original question: what is a dream?  What is my dream?  When will I reach a point that says I am "complete?"  When I was in junior high and high school, my only dream was to become a writer.  Not very practical, everyone told me, to only have that dream.  After all, we are no longer in the age of sponsors for the arts, and books were never very sponsor-able in the first place.  Plays, maybe.  But books?  All the classics I know of were written by people who had inherited money or who were already secure financially, allowing them the leisure time to spin tales of romance, political intrigue, morality tales, and dark adventures.  In today's day and age, you hear of the famous authors who write for a living, but these authors are a handful of select few.  Most other writers write in their spare time, around other jobs and family lives that they are passionate about, making maybe fifty dollars a year off of their royalties.  So yes, writing is still a dream of mine, but it is not something that can put food in my mouth.  I've made maybe twenty dollars total on both of my books in the past two years, and where I self-published I get higher royalties than traditionally-published authors.

What are some other dreams of mine?  As I am getting older, the dream of becoming a married wife and mother is slowly fading.  Not that it was very strong to begin with.  I was not one of those girls who had their wedding all planned out while they were still in high school.  I didn't create pages of lists of traits for my imagined perfect groom or decide where I want to go on my honeymoon.  I did play house when I was little, but I just as often played Star Wars and dragons and knights.  Ironically enough, as I grow older the desire for a husband and children is growing stronger, yet it often feels that that sort of life is slowly passing me by.  And then there are the student loans I have accumulated in my second bachelor's.  How can I be so selfish as to ask a man to marry me, let me be a stay-at-home mother, and have him pay off my debts?

And what about graduate school?  Is that something I'm willing to give up on?  For a family, yes.  But what if I get bored?  What if I want to continue my education?  What if I want to make my mark in the world?  And again, there's the question of student loan debt.  Would I be able to get a job that relies on my degree that will allow me to return my debt?  Most certainly, with a doctorate degree.  Perhaps, with just a bachelor's, though it would take several years if I held back any for other things (like living expenses).

So I return, again, to some of my questions and pose a new one: What are my dreams?  What are my goals?  When will I be complete?  And the new one: am I going to continue just sitting here letting the world pass by?

It is the human experience that things never go as they are planned.  If someone's plans go perfectly according to schedule, then they are the lucky few.  But we cannot simply let life pass by because our plans got thrown in the mud, because our script got torn apart and someone else's inserted, requiring us to learn new lines.  We must press forward, saying "come what may," following what dreams we can while accepting others along the way.  So I tell myself, and you, my readers, Lift yourself up.  Follow your dreams.  Do not let the many side paths life places before you get you down.  Your destination is still ahead.  Don't sit in the mud and wonder where you got lost.  Stand up, your map in hand (although it may now have a few alterations), and continue forward.