How to Become a Scientist? My Study/Career Path (PART 2/3).

When I started my first job in academia I still didn't know what I would like to do for my career. My plan was to buy some extra time to figure this out as my contract at the university was going to be only half a year. And so three years passed. I learned both the beauty and the roughness of academia: the freedom to use your creativity and endless possibilities to learn new things, as well as the fact that (financial)stability is not a word that describes academia at all. Regardless of the continuous pressure and insecurity, I fell in love with science. For a moment I tried to hold on to my old dream of becoming a doctor and applied to medical school (while writing my Bachelor's thesis & later on working full time), by preparing for half a year and spending a good amount of my salary on preparatory courses. No study place, but plenty of information I found useful later on when I started my neuroscience master's studies.

I ended up studying for my master's after doing a lot of self-reflection, which started after I started studies on sexology. Middle of all the hustle, I studied for this counselor degree as I wanted to help people, but I was missing something. And that something was science. Working as a laboratory engineer for three years has offered me a lot, including all the challenges it has to offer and I was craving more. To continue forward in academia it meant I would need to study more and studying more means reading, and reading requires passion or at least high interest in the topic. I needed to do one-plus-one calculations to understand my own interest: old dream (brain surgeon) + counselor studies (working with the mind) + passion (science) = neuroscience. To be honest, before applying for my neuroscience master's degree I did apply to one master's degree in Germany and one in Finland that were more translational fields. Did not get either one. In the following year, with more experience and knowledge about my goals I applied to two programs and got into both. 

Neuroscience studies were extremely challenging and rewarding. Midway through the studies, I joined a group that studied anxiety disorders and I felt I was almost there - almost working with the topic I'm most passionate about. To make a story short, I discussed this with my supervisor then, who suggested a place she saw on Twitter. This place happened to be in Australia and this place happened to be the one I ended up doing my master's thesis. Maybe you can still remember the year 2021 when the world was still fairly closed. That was the time I prepared for my next, extremely unsure, move. I needed to trust that either my Visa application would go through in these weird times or the borders would open when it was my time to start in Australia. So I sold all my furniture, gave my place away, and kept my fingers crossed.

Eventually, I moved to Melbourne and worked in the field of psychedelics and eating disorders. Looking back, I could take it a little bit easier, but sometimes you need to learn from the experience that even though you would work with the thing you are the most passionate about, you need to have other things in life as well. My saviors were the friends I met along the way and who I dearly miss still today. Ok, let's take a moment and acknowledge one thing in this story - constant thinking of and working toward the next step. Only during the master's it looked like this: starting my master's = thinking where to do my thesis, mid-point of my master's = preparing for the move abroad to do my thesis, and during my thesis = planning what to do after my master's. And these are not small things to plan and execute. 

I finalized my thesis, thought the method forward in the research group, and then my visa ended. It was time to return home, where I didn't have anything waiting for me. I applied for my PhD in the same group in Australia where I did my master's thesis and the plan was to return home for a moment before going back. The plan didn't work. I didn't receive a study place, I didn't have my own home or a place to work. This meant the biggest identity crisis I went through since my teenage times. Who was I?

While figuring this out, I lived in my parents' and my friends' places, doing volunteer work in marketing at a huge event called Slush. Getting experience from team leading and being exposed to a completely new field has its part in my self-growth for sure. Maybe that or the constant desire to work with science, I did something I never imagined to do: asked for help publicly. One post on LinkedIn and I was back in science. 

But what happened to my PhD-dreams? I will finish the story in the next post by telling you how did I got into my PhD.