Figure 1 is how I often feel. A deer caught in headlights and looking slightly guilty. Up until a few years ago, it’s how I felt when thinking about my future. Now I think I have a pretty clear path of things to try, and reasonable fall backs. Figure 1 is still me when I’m late to my own meetings though… and when I’m writing last minute blog posts.

This week we were encouraged to write about the future career we wanted, and some of the steps to reach said career. I thought it’d be a fun to take a romp through my history of jobs I was interested in before we come to the sobering conclusion that it may just be a simple matter of timing and persistence.

Here’s my list of jobs that I wanted when I was in elementary school:

• lawyer
• psychologist

In highschool, this shifted towards:

• interior designer
• animator (I specifically wanted to work for pixar at the time, I do recommend looking into their work practices for anyone considering this!)
• architect
• professional musician (I knew this wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t have the discipline to practice enough and I wasn’t a born virtuoso. It was still nice to dream about from time to time)

Naturally, I promised my folks that I would try applying to university as well. Since I was going to be paying money to apply, I figured I should be strategic about it since there was no guarantee in the acceptance process. So, I took a few quizzes on what the best programs would be for me. (I love taking the type of quizzes that point you towards a match, even though they’re often absolute bogus). I was consistently finding out that I probably wanted to be applying to science programs as a whole. I knew I didn’t want to do biology, physics was too hard, and chemistry seemed alright. As part of my browsing, I discovered Earth Sciences was also a science. The name itself really resonated with me, and it seemed like it would result in time outside. I also looked into engineering because I had grown up with the impression that engineers made a lot of money and were super smart and cool.

Eventually I found myself in the counsellor’s office several times trying to narrow down the number of applications I was considering. The Ontario system had a single cost for applying to 3 different programs and an additional cost for each program onwards. I recall the applications being something like, Western University for Linguistics and Pyschology; maybe McMaster for one Science program; Waterloo for Psychology (Science stream), Earth Sciences (Geophysics), and Mechanical Engineering; and University of Toronto for Engineering (general first year). The University of Toronto portal annoyed me so much that I ended up moving that “program” to Waterloo for engineering. I’ve been told it’s still pretty inaccessible.

No (Visual) Art for Me

All during this time I was slowly planning on what I wanted to showcase in my sketchbook for my portfolio as part of an application to Sheridan College for animation. As life would have it, I received acceptances two months before the Ontario college applications were even due. That immediately cut short any motivation I had for developing a portfolio. After all, I told my parents, if I get accepted to university, I will go. When I had declared that, I really hadn’t been expecting to receive any acceptances at all.

I was also invited to visit Western as I had applied for a specific program that was just starting that year, and I was concerned about the requirement to spend one year abroad. It sounded great, but would there be funding to support this? This is probably when my pay negotiating habits started. I informed the director of the program directly how much Waterloo had offered to me for their entry scholarship, and I asked if Western was able to match this if they were requiring me to live in a specific residence and do that year abroad. They later emailed me confirming they would be able to increase my entry scholarship, but it still didn’t match up. So off to the program that offered me the most money. As an aside, I decided not to take up the engineering offer because when I reviewed the course breakdowns, the Geophysics program^{1 2}really didn’t look all that different than Geological Engineering, and the cost of tuition was a fraction of a science degree³. Plus, Science offered me a much larger entry scholarship. I also knew there was a possibility of switching degrees once I started, so I intended on switching into Mechanical Engineering as soon as possible. As it turns out, I was having such a great time in Earth Science that I completely forgot to. Oops. I did, however, managed to remember to enroll myself in the co-op program as I had clicked the wrong button during the initial application process (see Figure 1).

1. As an aside, I picked Geophysics because it sounded the hardest, and I figured I could just switch into Hydrogeology and then Geology. This of course is not how the specializations worked, but it is the only reason I ended up in Geophysics. ↩︎
2. An interesting note is that Atmospheric Science was still listed on the website at the time, and I wanted to apply for that instead. I had missed the deadline for the singular out of province university (UBC) that had this program (Fig. 1) ↩︎
3. Notably, I was not accepted into Mechanical Engineering at Waterloo, but they offered a position in Geological Engineering instead. ↩︎

Part way through my undergraduate degree, I was at a bit of a loss as to what my future career would look like. I had been convinced by a few math and computer science friends it was worth taking a computer science course, and I kept getting rejected from geology related co-op positions and landing computer science ones instead. I had acquired a joking version of “Cali or bust” that actually led me do doing a term in San Francisco and it was really looking like a bad time for me in mining or any sort of field work because I didn’t have my complete driver’s license (city girl thought she could take public transport for her entire life and realized that this doesn’t hold up when accidentally ending up in an Earth Science track). So I was veering towards, perhaps I should seriously take up programming and see if I can take advantage of the tech boom and somehow landing positions. I still think about this these days, though we’re currently in the bust phase.

As part of this, I always asked my supervisors and hiring managers, why did they pick me? The short answer is that they often found that they wanted communication skills from their co-op students and a diverse background often helped with that. If my bear stories resonated with the folks on the call, and my transcript showed I had some basic competencies, then I got the job.

A Research Experience!

Things changed slightly when I got my final co-op position (I quit the program out of protest when they increased the co-op fees) where I spent a term at Environment and Climate Change Canada. I worked on tools for understanding wildfire smoke transport and finally had interesting real life problems to solve via code. I had a great time there, and a government job sounds like it should be stable. However, my boss was very clear that I would likely need another degree to do similar types of research and modelling work at the government, and research positions are often not permanent anyhow. Nonetheless, I figured I should probably continue my education and try doing some research. A Master’s degree felt appropriate. I ran the idea through a good friend of mine and she suggested I come hang out with her at Western. I took a look through the professors that were currently active, reached out, and ended up meeting my future MSc co-supervisor there. I did also apply to work with my fourth year final project supervisor, but I opted for a change of scenery and to give Western another shot. Also, I really like Western purple.

My Master’s was…complicated. While the work I was doing was interesting and impactful, I didn’t feel like it was a good fit for me. I also had convinced Western Space to let me take their Planetary Science specialization because Earth was obviously a planet, and therefore I was doing planetary science! Originally I just thought it would be a cool add on, but I ended up enjoying the atmosphere of the folks doing planetary science. Towards the end I figured, it was worth a shot trying to do a PhD in it. If it didn’t shake out, I could always just try and find a regular gig doing some sort of data analysis or QA work like I had done in my co-ops that used some basic programming skills. The one person I asked (upon excellent reviews from her current and past students) ended up working out a co-supervision situation. I’ve been doing that ever since.

The (Not So) Nebulous Future

What does that leave me with?
Well, I still want to do some sort of art, the kind that resonates with people and changes their outlook on life, even for a moment. I do think I’m alright at connecting different groups (my first co-op position they ended up putting me on internal business calls to facilitate communication between the software developers and the end users, which in retrospect was a really interesting opportunity my boss provided). And I really do enjoy research. There’s nothing more fun than encountering a problem or a question, and working out the tools to solve it. I also like sharing the cool results I get, whether positive or negative. With that, I’ve come up with a few more potential career options:

• Science Communicator
• Museum Curator
• Science policy advisor
• Researcher (industry, government, etc)
• Professor
• High school teacher

Some brief thoughts on these and how I decided I should try and be a professor at a research institution:

• Science communicator and researcher fall too much on the communication/art and the research heavy side respectively. In an ideal world, I could continue to do both
• Museum curator and Science Policy Advisor, there are simply too few of these positions out there. Perhaps one day this will line up, but at this time it will be very hard to get my foot in the door. That said, I’ve reached out to see if there are opportunities to do so by working at a museum. I’ve also been put in touch with someone who does work on policy advice and received some interesting advice and frank assessment of the potential toll that the work may cause if I cannot detach myself from the strong recommendations I might give and have it be subsequently ignored
• High school teacher. Underpaid if I stay in Canada in the public school system. Limited time, energy, and resources for personal research. While I don’t mind having an “unnecessary PhD”, I do feel like I would struggle working in this environment long-term

This leaves me with trying the hard route of becoming a professor at a research institution with teaching duties. In teaching, I would get to share cool science and encourage good research practices. As part of the expected department participation and “service”, there is likely plenty of opportunity to support outreach activties. And, of course, I will also continue to do research.

However, I see several challenges to achieving this particular career path. The most obvious is that there are also very few of these positions in the first place. The second is that I have limited experience in applying for funding to support a research group (a typical expectation of this roll is to have a lab and lab members). The third is that I also lack experience as an independent researcher. The latter two can be resolved by following the traditional path: do some work as a postdoctoral fellow for a few years at different institutions and get a collaborative network going, apply and win some grants, and gain experience with additional responsbilities such as mentoring students or sitting on committees. Unfortunately, the ability to teach in a university setting is not always something institutions look to, but it is something I care about and will also be seeking out opportunities on.

Try to apply, work in different settings, gain experience, and see how it goes! That’s really all I’ve got except for one final thing, which is seeking out mentorship from those who are in the position I’m interested in, and at different stages of the same career. How did they do it?

Parting Thoughts

An old mentor of mine I ran into the other day described what I was doing as, “planning one year at a time and figuring it out”. I’d say that’s pretty accurate! While I do think about what the future might hold for me, there are many things that can change so I try not to set any specific expectations too far in advance. What I do know is that in my future personal life, I want to have a personal library, a comfy couch, and cats. I think I can do that.