For the record, it’s not bad to have that sort of goal. It’s not unreasonable or illogical or defeatist by any means. But, I must admit that it hasn’t sat too well with me either. My intuition says that there’s gotta be a healthy middle ground somewhere between having a well-paying job that sucks but keeps me alive, and a minimum-wage-paying job that is awesome but is guaranteed to be short-lived. Perhaps, for me, Biology is precisely that middle ground.
Since I came to that conclusion, I’ve been praying an awful lot about possibly pursuing a career in Biology. Pursuing a career in Biology would require me to spend many more years of my life going to school full-time, so I can then spend my career doing one of the hardest, most mind-melting yet rewarding jobs in the world: exploring and discovering science. And then finding a way to get the news out to the general public.
Sounds awesome, right? Well… I’m not so sure.
While being a Biologist sounds really cool, I can’t deny the fact that I have many worries, fears, and doubts about my ability to be a successful scientist of any kind, let alone in something as notoriously difficult as Biology. Also, for a myriad of reasons, some of which I struggle to articulate, becoming a Biologist (or any kind of scientist for that matter) scares the absolute shit outta me.
For one, college is ridiculously expensive. If I’m not careful, I’ll doom-scroll the news and scare myself away from getting my associate’s degree, let alone a goddamned graduate degree, out of fear of wracking up hundreds of thousands worth in interest loan debt!
Logically, I know that won’t happen. If I pursue a graduate degree in the sciences (especially Biology at CU Denver, which is a well-known Biology school), many of those degrees are paid for by scholarships and grants, and the school may even give me a stipend for studying a particular degree. Emotionally, however, I can’t help but play the dreadful what-if game when it comes to that kind of money.
However, emotionally-speaking, I have even more greater challenges to deal with than just my (mostly irrational) financial fears. The biggest one being my imposter syndrome, which seems to bite me in the ass at some point or another every semester. It has been especially loud over the past couple of weeks, for reasons I do and do not know.
The dumbest reason I know that still contributes to my Imposter Syndrome is the fact that I don’t fit the “stereotypical” academic/studious student trope. This is reinforced by the fact that every semester, without fail, someone points out the fact that I dress and sound more like a rural hillbilly than a person who was born and raised in Denver, Colorado.
I’m not ashamed of my wardrobe or my hobbies/interests, so I’m not gonna stop wearing and liking what I find most comfortable and enjoyable because of other people’s superficial judgements. If/when the time comes, I’ll pick up some more “professionally appropriate” attire. But, for now, I’m simply an undergraduate college student trying to find my place in the world. Why would I care about what some random people may or may not think of me?
