ronin

My situation continues to worsen with each day. For the past year I have been unable to complete a plasmid construct as, what should be simple cloning steps, continue to fail. After over 100 DNA preps I had a construct that appeared to be correct however it failed to sequence and the insert looks to be ~1kb too small for some unfathomable reason. I have now wasted a year of my project with no progress and go into the final year with 2 plasmids and a mechanistic model of a genetic interaction I have never tested. To compound the problem, my supervisor has announced their resignation which will be effective in weeks, disbanding the lab, and the post docs and technicians re-deployed or finished up. Unless I move with my supervisor to the new labs in another university a few hundred miles away my funding will be cut and I will remain here, alone with no wet lab support. To move means selling a house and forcing my partner to quit her training and move to a more expensive part of the country to live together on my stipend, with no guarantee of a job after I finish in a year. The consequences are that if the project continues to fail and I don’t graduate I end up with no house, no job, and the both of us with no qualifications amidst potentially 5 more years of recession. If I stay here I work alone with the same risk of failure but with somewhere to live and a small income to pay the mortgage from the other half. Gamble nearly everything or everything?

Lab morale was bad following the announcement and in the days following it turned into a full scale rout with PI’s prospecting our lab space and the entire group actively seeking alternative employment and the prospect of a period on benefits. I have meetings with the university to attempt to form some plan but things look bleak. It is hard to imagine how, after surviving a gruelling 1st year training period and a year and half of 12 hours days, 6 days a week, travelling 4 hours a day that it has come to this. I am re-activating my job search profiles but can’t face the prospect of returning to a science technician role where every day will be a reminder of how close I was to a career and a future.

Even if I was, by some miracle, to graduate I don’t know if I could face a lifetime career in a field as volatile as this. I have experienced redundancy rounds in industry, and numerous changes in senior management, but to be in a situation where an entire department can be liquidated by an individual with no warning has been horrendous. I just don’t think I can live day-to-day by the grace of a single individual who can end my research when the wind direction changes.

Over the past year and a half I have had the privilege to be allowed to work with loyal and hard working individuals who routinely work >12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with no holidays, breaks, or even sleep some of the time. Tireless machines that produce endless data at the highest quality they are capable of, who are suddenly cast to the four winds to fend for themselves with no prior warning or explanation.

As Newscientist publishes articles discussing the future of scientific research for the UK and Universities demanding the highest possible calibre of researcher and students to forge a new generation of cutting edge science, I cannot see how anybody of such calibre could tolerate, or survive a life of thankless servitude and uncertainty. Not while individuals with 1/10th the capability are paid more in a week than a scientist earns in a lifetime kicking a ball around a field. I think Universities need a reality check if they hope to build such a future, as the days of serfdom and medieval guilds have ended.