Alternative Careers
Not everyone wants to be an academic scientist. With this funding climate, who can blame them? So, what other jobs are available? I’m glad you asked. Here are a few I think most graduate students will qualify for:
- Measuring Expert
- Conflict Mediator (especially if you work in a big lab)
- Professional Pourer
- Glassware Cleaner
- Bottle Opener (especially those pesky ones from 2002 with the labels worn off and an unidentified crust around the lid)
- Mixing Liquid Engineer
- Bartender (doesn’t it use the skills listed above?)
- Graph Designer (not graphic, just graph)
- IT, but only for computers from the 90s that can no longer be turned off and back on because they won’t come back on
- Rat Handler
- Incredibly Precise Blogger (excuse me, accurate, precise refers to getting similar results each time, while accurate refers to being close to the correct result each time)
- Free Food Scavenger
- Actor (I’m pretty sure I have enough memories to just cry on command at this point)
- Acceptance of Rejection Specialist
- Fiction Writer (you know the stories you’ve told yourself of graduating one day…)
- Motivational Speaker
- Cheerleader (just try one that experiment one more time….)
If all else fails, you have been trained in planning a hypothesis, spending years designing experiments to prove it is wrong, and then celebrating to find that it was correct. So a puzzle maker should work out just fine.
Amanda Labuza