Money vs. Freedom

As I sit here at my desk at work, I savour the freedom I have at my work. I spent two hours having lunch with a missionary friend whose office is down the hill from my university. We talked about his upcoming Lake Tahoe trip, our mutual enjoyment of cycling, a current devotional book we have been working through. There was no rush for me to get back to the lab. Ahhh...this is the life.

Of course there is the fact that I am in grad school, and as one professor put it, "There is no free time while you are in grad school." But since I am finishing up my fourth year, I have adopted a heavy dose of "I-don't-care," medically called "senior-itis." The fact still remains that academic research positions are VERY laid back. Sure we have some deadlines that HAVE to be met: publication deadlines, grant applications, and that pesky thing called "a thesis." But it is far different than those who work construction, sit at an assembly line, or manage a classroom of students. If I feel like coming in late, I don't have to tell anyone. There are the days, I must admit, where I have to stay until the experiment is complete (once until 11pm). Also the work I do on mice has to happen when they are at a certain age (to the day). I almost had to work on Easter, except that assignment got handed down to a lab tech.

The money isn't swell though. As a soon-to-be PhD holder, I make less than many of my friends that have jobs using their B.S./B.A. in liberal arts. And when I do finally have the coveted PhD, if I decide to go the post-doc route, I will still be making less than someone with a B.S. in Engineering or a Masters in Education. Sad but true. Academic science is not where the money is.

Funding is very similar between the sciences and missionary work. We both ask people to pay us so that we can do work for the betterment of mankind. Our funding agencies do not ask us for any end product, only that we add to the intellectual commonwealth and that we give them credit for helping us along the way. Very vague, wouldn't you say? And not terribly fullfilling, at least for me.

So as I contemplate the path I have chosen, I often ask which is more important to me, money or freedom. And I must say freedom. My only change would be that I could use my freedom to work with people, even helping them. Right now, unless you are a mouse, I can't help you. But hopefully that will change very soon. But first I have to get back to this pesky thesis.