Jobs I Could Do (And Those I Couldn't)

(An homage to Chemjobber)

I’ve spoken to lots of colleagues about the job market lately, and one of my favorite questions to ask them is always “Well, what would you do if you weren’t doing this?” Let me preface this discussion by saying that I love being a chemist; it’s the job for me. But, like everyone else, I have interests outside the lab: music, sports, food, and writing. Could one of these be my calling down the road somewhere?

As it happens, we’ve been in the midst of a move for some time now, and I’ve interacted with (too) many real estate agents. I walk away from most of these meet-‘n’-greets and fill-in-the-blank lease forms thinking “I could definitely do that job!”

Intense synthetic chemistry training draws on lots of skills: data mining, critical thinking, historical sense, motor memory, adaptation, public presentation, logistics, etc. Job promoters would call these transferable skills, and they open up a wide palette of career opportunities.  Below, I’ve run a thought experiment to see where I could contend, and where I might fall apart.

Could Do

Real Estate Agent – Really draws on the data mining and ability to forge contacts. Can you predict how a neighborhood will look in a few years? Memorize some tax and housing codes? Fill in lease and mortgage statements with names and dollar figures? Buy a GPS? You’re in!

But, how will they accept my tenure talk?
Credit: imdb.com

Struggling Musician – Some might say “Don’t you have to have talent and drive for this, and luck?” That sounds like an assistant professorship! You don’t make enough, you’re constantly self-promoting, and your most creative moments have to spill out in a 3-5 year period in your late 20s to early 30s (chemistry timeframe, people, I get that biologists are longer in the tooth).

Mel Brooks, he of Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs, once described his songwriting process for stage productions as humming into a tape recorder when the moment struck him, and having an amanuensis transcribe it into a song later (from It’s Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks, by James Robert Parish). Food for thought.

Line Cook – Synthetic chemists ‘cook’ all day, and we use a much larger catalog of ingredients. Plus, I’ve read Kitchen Confidential, so I can answer Jimi’s question “Are You Experienced?”

Professional Gambler – Hey, it’s what you do with chemistry careers now anyway! (Bah-dump-CHING!)

Seriously, though, much of this involves critical thinking, learning about odds tables, house advantage, best times to play, and, if possible, how to beat the system. It also involves calculated risk, such as calling the bluff of that one-eyed, gruff man across the poker table from you.

Film Critic – OK, many readers have written a dissertation, right? How do you start? Read some literature, get a sense for where the field has been and where it’s going, learn central themes and players, then develop opinions about the work. Write.



"Boron? Yeah, like their whole show!"
"The movie's great: just change everything after the title!"
"Vitamin C? More like 'C you doing anything but this!"
Credit: Jim Henson Productions

Well, what do critics do? Watch a bunch of movies. Learn historical context and chart how actors and directors work together over time. Learn central themes. Develop opinions. Write. Dovetails nicely, wouldn’t you say?

Couldn’t

Jobs that start with ‘Phys’ – Physician: what many scientists try first, perhaps due to parental input and a sense of social responsibility. For me, I couldn’t stomach the various fluids of every hue and smell that emanate from sick individuals. Trust me; I was an EMT once, long ago…

Physicist: Too much math. Anything that uses all the Greek letters, base e, imaginary numbers, and ever-stronger graphing calculators and computing clusters is where I get off the boat.

Phys-Ed Teacher: I was never a runner. To me, coordinating exercises for 20-30 young kids for an hour sounds like herding cats.

Let's see: loop[object bullet, n=0-25, IF fired(true), init stop(n)]
Credit: cinema sifter

Computer Programmer – Artists can “see” forms, shape, and color, like photographers can. Business types see emerging markets and opportunity, and musicians hear notes and rhythms where we cannot. I have personally tried (and failed) to be a programmer more than once, and I simply don’t think like they do. Iteration, nesting operations, classes, functions, describing how you want the program to function is, to me, “thinking about thinking.” Just not in my toolbox.  (On the other hand, check out these perks, courtesy of our bud CJ)

Readers, do you have any thoughts about your future career paths, and whether or not they include chemistry? I’d love to see some comments, or hoof it to Chemjobber and discuss there.

Musings: Who are Chemists, Anyway?

When I’m performing a repetitive lab task (columns, iterative dilutions, etc.), my mind tends to drift. Yesterday, I began thinking about who I actually work with, where they come from, and why they’re in chemistry. Ever heard Jeff Foxworthy perform “You Might be a Redneck if…”? What if someone were to compile a similar list about synthetic chemists?

Thus, a few observations, from the subset of, say, 300 chemists I’ve worked with over the last ten years:

"It's OK, Dom, I'm leaving baseball for grad school"
Credit: AP

They tend to be older siblings: Perhaps there exists out there somewhere a biotech run entirely by younger sibs, but I haven’t found it yet! At my current job, all senior managers are the oldest siblings in their families, and I’m fairly certain most of the bench chemists have younger brothers and sisters. Maybe the old nature / nurture debate surfaces here, where parents encourage older children to pursue medical and scientific careers.

Folks come from all over: I hail from a town that the 2000 Census dubbed >95% Caucasian. Many of my friends went off to school, and then moved immediately back to town. After college, I moved 700 miles away, possibly to escape this exact fate! This "lifestyle inertia" has never occurred at any of the six labs I’ve worked in: the scientific population integrates well (math joke here?). My coworkers have hailed from all over the US, plus every continent except Greenland. It’s fun to watch Russian postdocs tell jokes to Indian coworkers, while French, Chinese, and Iranian labmates listen in and laugh.

Tech-savvy:  The first Blackberry I ever saw was wielded by a chemist. Ditto iPads, USB sticks, and noise-cancelling headphones. In grad school or college, you’ve probably used MacOS, UNIX / Linux, and most of the Microsoft Office suite, and you may have created .pdfs, manipulated graphics files, or solved crystal structures. It comes with the territory.



Merit badges = Future PhD?
Credit: watc.edu



Be Prepared? Four of my former coworkers were Eagle Scouts, and several more have EMT and First Responder training. Safety first.

Hobbies? Try second careers: Bench chemists live two lives: they’re passionate about their chemistry, but everyone has a hobby that they could fall back on (maybe a necessary practice in a bum economy). I’ve met semi-professional musicians, day traders, lay pastors, auto mechanics, authors, aerobics instructors, economists, coaches, show promoters, bodybuilders, shop owners, and even professional dancers.

Credit: rushpassport.com

World Travelers: Maybe this makes sense given their international background, but chemists travel all over. Many save up their whole vacation allotment for 2-3 years, and then go to China, France, Australia, or Argentina. Back when large chemical concerns had travel budgets (I know, a novel conceit), chemists could rely on at least one expedition per year, usually to attend a big conference in a far-flung locale.

Not Fashion Plates: You won’t see many chemists dressing like the men and women striding down docks in J.Crew, or taking nighttime strolls like they do in Ralph Lauren catalogs. Perhaps it’s thrift, or comfort, or maybe chemists just realize that their clothes have limited lifetimes in synthetic labs.

Office Pool?  Of course!  Chemists tend to jump at opportunities to participate in NCAA tourneys, fantasy football, or poker nights. Maybe it’s the competition? The odds? The logic? Who knows! I’ve worked in labs where two competing tournaments have been run simultaneously…and both found plenty of participants.

Wanna join our league?
Credit: tradebit.com

One-Upsmanship: Many of the conversations I’ve had with older chemists invariably come down to competitions over how hard the job once was. Usually, they begin with “Oh yeah? Well, when I was your age, we had to recrystallize everything to purity, we didn’t have working fume hoods, and we actually used the (insert here name of old, dusty apparatus in the corner no one ever uses).” Maybe this speaks to how much synthetic chemists enjoy competition (see above).

War Stories and Battle Scars: No, I’m not talking about actual military service, although I’ve worked with a few chemists who have bravely fought alongside our troops. I refer to tales career chemists always tell at bars, stories where pump traps explode, flames shoot up from flasks, and injury was narrowly avoided. If you work in a synthetic lab long enough, you’ll have a few close calls, and you might even have something to show for it: a bald spot here, a burn there, even some stitches now and again.