Reality Check #1

I admit it-- I lived a pretty cushy life when I was in college. I went to an expensive school, but my parents paid for the vast majority of my tuition, and they paid for my rent, groceries, books, etc. I lived in expensive apartments (the school was in a high cost-of-living area, not helped by the plethora of renters whose parents foot the bill), had a car, and I'll state right now that I was damn lucky to have all that. My parents are amazing for putting up with me and paying all that money.

So, with that disclosure out of the way, we come to my first reality check:

My degree wouldn't let me actually do the jobs I thought it would.

Let me backtrack. My undergraduate degree is in Biochemistry. When I entered the program, I had glamorous visions of being a highly paid research associate at some huge Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, doing glamorous things like curing AIDS.

What I discovered is, without a Ph.D, what I would actually be doing is running the machines day in and day out for someone who DID know what they were doing. All the research associate jobs listed a minimum qualification of 2 years experience and an MS degree.

How was I supposed to get 2 years experience if no one would hire anyone who hadn't worked for two years?

If you called my mother right now, and asked her to describe some of the rants she was on the receiving end of during this time, I guarantee you she will use the word "epic." I screamed, I cried, I yelled, and it didn't change one fundamental thing: my career field was not what I had imagined it was.

Now, when everyone asks me what I wish I had done differently, one of my standard responses is: I wish I had looked into what jobs I could get with that degree, BEFORE I spent four years writing fifteen-page lab reports and learning calculus and suffering through thermodynamics.

I would have been a lot happier.

Don't get me wrong, I love my new job, and every second of my time spent earning my degree was worth it. But what I am doing for my career is not ANYTHING I had ever envisioned myself doing. In a way, the job I ended up with was perfect for me. But more on that later.