Prologue

It's been almost two months since I resigned from my job in Academia.  Yes, I was one of those PDs (er, postdocs) with a glazed look in their eyes.  Jaded, yet hopeful enough to remain where they are.  After having survived 7 years of graduate school, I wasn't thrilled to know that I had 5 to 10 more years of hard work ahead of me.  In point of fact, being a PD is harder than being a graduate student, as weird and strange as that may sound to someone who is in his/her third or fourth year of graduate school.  It's incommunicable, the stress of being a PD.  Perhaps it's the emotional strain of wanting (if not, needing) to start a life (finally) and realizing that (despite having a Ph.D.) you're incapable of that.  Or working so hard to gather enough data to have a thesis, finally writing it and realizing that all your efforts can be found in some bound volume that will forever be hidden in the back of a university library where all the other theses reside.  All that and more have forced me to take considerable stock of my present and future -- rather, what I have left given that my past was taken hostage for 7 years.

So...

The present: I sit here now waiting to hear back from an on-site interview I did last week at a major Biotech company.  As I had informed my fellow g-chatters, I e-mailed the Coordinator who forwarded my e-mail (inquiring of a time frame for a hiring decision) to the Recruiter...who as of right now, has not responded.  Yes, it's been a heck of a week.  It makes me wonder how efficient I am in this process.  At the moment, I am digging deep within my scientific brain hoping to conjure up some system, some failsafe system, to succeed in this endeavour.  So far, the results are what you see before you...the random musings of someone who has dared to ask the question: IF not Academia, then what?  What happens when you make a conscious decision to veer off the main road?  What trails do you blaze?  And where do you begin?  Well, friends, this is the journey that I've decided to take.  The path of a Rogue Scientist...and let me be clear, I am not a revolutionary by any means.  Sadly, however, I am forced to be one.  I do not consider myself an academic nor an industrialist.  Which makes me for lack of a better word a revolutionary.

So...no response today...sigh...