下面是原文：
Today I received tenure at the University of Chicago, along with a promotion to Associate Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Here on the feed, I am a developing artist with a nerdy day job. This day-job milestone, though, means a lot to me because of what it took to reach it. A story... ✨ In 2002, I was a human resources director at a software company in Texas. I’d been with the company for seven years, had grown up there surrounded by people I loved. And each night for the last two years of that, just for fun, I’d gone home and read textbooks on quantitative biology. 作者: Biodog 时间: 2017-12-17 16:11 本帖最后由 Biodog 于 2017-12-17 16:13 编辑
Today I received tenure at the University of Chicago, along with a promotion to Associate Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Here on the feed, I am a developing artist with a nerdy day job. This day-job milestone, though, means a lot to me because of what it took to reach it. A story...
In 2002, I was a human resources director at a software company in Texas. I’d been with the company for seven years, had grown up there surrounded by people I loved. And each night for the last two years of that, just for fun, I’d gone home and read textbooks on quantitative biology.
I’d never done laboratory research. My degree was in engineering. But I was tormented by deep curiosity about the natural world, life, evolution, and the physics underneath.
Eventually I gave myself some HR advice: you’re in the wrong job. So I finally applied to graduate schools, to programs in quantitative biology. They all rejected me — why wouldn’t they? When I got the final rejection, I wept in a way I never had. Those emotions made me understand that this dream was not optional, it was a kind of biological imperative. I’ll tell the full story another time; here’s the punchline. I ended up getting Caltech to reverse their decision and admit me.
Four years later, I had a PhD and a fellowship at a Harvard; five years after that, a faculty job at UChicago; and today, tenure. I never have forgotten those early days, wondering whether I had made the most colossal error of my life in quitting a great job for this insane dream of being a scientist, a dream I had no business pursuing. But it worked. Turns out I’m much better at science than I was at HR.
The support you all have given me here has buoyed me through some brutal times where art allowed me to release stress in a productive, positive way. Thanks for following along. For those wondering if it’s time to change careers, I can’t tell you what to do — but I can say that I took the leap, fully and without a net, and life caught me. Today is a good day. 作者: Biodog 时间: 2017-12-17 16:12 作者: 序道 时间: 2017-12-17 16:41
佩服作者: ipsvirus 时间: 2017-12-17 21:34
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