It's been a long time since I've written anything, and I don't know if I will again. I "took a leave of absence" from my job, which means I can choose to come back within a year, but considering my shittiest coworker will likely still be there then, and everything I've come to learn about the field I was headed toward, that seems like a very slim possibility at this point. In the meantime, I got a new job and moved to a new place. I really like the area, and I'll still be using my degree doing something I am good at and enjoy. Also I'll actually be making wages above the poverty line. Seriously, just doing my online orientation almost made me cry reading about kindness, compassion, respect, and diversity being core values of the institution. Obviously, that doesn't mean every employee will embrace these values, but it's so relieving to know that they are codified as part of the workplace culture. Even during my interviews I felt wanted and cared about more than I had from anyone but family and a select few friends in a long time. We'll see if they will actually help me in future times of need, or if they will just tell me that it's not their problem and they want me gone like in the recent past. I entered scientific research with the mindset of discovering things about the world and making it a better place; I made the mistake of assuming others were there for the same reason. Instead, most of the people I came across seemed more focused on proving themselves right as often as possible, and that was by no means confined to the realm of science. I also knew that people in graduate school would be, on average, of a higher socioeconomic class than myself, but I had no idea how stark that difference would be, and how difficult it would make the social environment. Even the people who acted like they were poor grew up in wealthy families and still received an enormous amount of financial support from their parents; something I always thought was strange for people older than I. Don't get me started on the fact that people with trust funds took up assistantships for play money. I was by no means as poor as many of my childhood peers, but living on social security and getting winter clothes from charity is something that my graduate school associates could obviously never relate uto. Social hardships aside, I just about bankrupted myself trying to fit in with those around me. I was honestly surprised at how close-minded many of my colleagues were at what was a relatively liberal university. I didn't realize my lab would remain almost exclusively white for the duration of my tenure, but after various comments ranging from contrasting "foreign" students' cleanliness habits around test animals with the smells of their culture's cooking, to avoiding taking on foreign students on account of their supposedly not being educated up to American standards, I rapidly became disappointed, to say the least, with the people around me. Also, being agender, and much preferring the company of women to men (not a small factor in my choosing to work where I did), I was constantly singled out and excluded as the only member assigned male at birth (I believe) despite my protestations. The last four years have by no means been a waste of my time, but I wish I had more guidance going in. I have suffered from a woeful lack of experienced confidantes throughout my adult life, and I would certainly have made some better decisions in college and graduate school had I a better understanding of how things worked, but I am still better off for my experience. A new era begins: here goes nothing.
