It’s Not Me, Academia. It’s You

My neuroscience was sexy. My colleagues were sexier. Our research was capturing the imagination of the masses, and I relished the intrigue my title would evoke at social gatherings. More importantly, I was contributing to something that could one day change people’s lives for the better. I was good at my job and I was proud of my identity as a scientist.I hadn’t always loved science, and science hadn’t always loved me. At school, I ducked out of any form of science as soon as I was given the choice. It all felt too discrete. Right and wrong, good and bad. Science was knowledge and either you had it, or you didn’t. My failure to perform was clear and it scared me. I found shelter in the arts, where I could lose myself in characters and plots. I could exist in someone else’s skin, if only for a short time. 

I found myself in the grey; the spaces between reality and fantasy. I went to university to study for a BA in psychology. I can’t remember exactly what it was that drew me to psychology, aside from an interest in understanding why life seemed so much harder for me than anyone else.I also knew that it was a subject broad enough to have no definitive career trajectory. There were no set expectations and therefore fewer ways for me to fail. While I didn’t realise it at the time, it is also a subject that straddles both the arts and sciences. So while it was the arts that drew me in, it was science that very quickly stole my heart.

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