at long last: a confident step forward

somehow, the wisdom and courage necessary for me to make a decision found their way to me, and i have taken action. i have decided to change labs. i realized, in contemplating leaving grad school, that i wasn't ready to give up on it. a scientist at heart, i wanted to change one of the variables in this experiment that is my graduate education, and see if it wasn't the causative factor in my unhappiness. i do think the mismatch between myself and grad school has played no small role in my struggle, but i don't wonder -- and here maybe it was susan baserga's comment that got me thinking about this -- if it's not the lab environment that has been dragging me down, and if i changed that variable, maybe this experiment would be a success after all?

susan said to me: i bet you'd have eeked by with a PhD had you been in a different lab. and talking to ben today confirmed my suspicion. i divulged to him that i was thinking of -- no, i AM going to -- change labs, and we got to talking about and analyzing our lab. it was so amazing to hear someone articulate the exact feelings i'd been feeling: there is an air of subtle competitiveness about the lab, he is made to constantly feel like he has to prove that is smart and worthy, andrew didn't know how to motivate him. he expressed a longing that graduate school could be different. he commended me for taking action, for doing something, and said that in his own way, he was doing something about his own situation. we all find our own way through life. what needs to happen for one person won't necessarily solve another person's problem.

anyways, all this to say, that i am confident that this is the best decision for me. i talked to mark solomon (the DGS); he concurred. and to my great relief but not surprise, enrique, who had urged me towards this decision in the first place, agreed to take me into his lab. (he said that i should look at least two other labs, to give myself options and to make sure i was choosing the best project, but that i should not worry. i would have a place to go.) it felt so *good* to be wanted by someone, to have someone believe in me. that gives me confidence in myself, motivation to work hard, and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. even though my attitude towards many things in my life has changed recently -- i am doing things for me now, and no one else -- it does help to have someone who believes in you, is interested in what you're doing, and is counting on you.

this is a step on a new path. it is setting my course for the near future, but not forever. one of the things i'm beginning to realize is that decisions are time-dependent multidimensional actions: the "right" decision depends not only on all the logical factors affecting the situation, but also on where you are in your life. the decision you made five years ago may have been the wrong one in retrospect, but at the time, it was a good, right decision.

wow. i made a decision. i can second-guess it 'til i turn blue in the face, but sometimes you have to stop looking at the map, calculating with your compass, and testing the wind with your finger and start marching confidently forward and not look back.

here i go.