by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

Theoretically, I will be graduating next spring with a PhD in Microbiology. I love research and teaching, but I also love not being in debt. I’m tens of thousands of dollars in debt from my undergraduate education, and while my student loans are deferred until I get my PhD, the interest on the private loans is still accruing and in order to make my payments, the recommended salary is nearly 20-40% more than a postdoc makes.

I attend virtually every career talk available on campus and ask seminar speakers about their career paths. Of course, most people have been in academia their whole lives. They went smoothly from PhD to postdoc to professor where they spend the rest of their career begging for money and lose the bench work. This sounds terrible to me. Not only do you have to deal with the depression of another grant being rejected (I watched my boss go through it for several years), but you only get to talk about the science, not do it.

I’ve found a postdoc fellowship that fits my interests exactly (research + teaching), but it’s doubtful that I can afford to live on a postdoc salary and pay off my loans.

I don’t know anyone who has ventured into consulting or the Biotech industry, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t find the whole transition as daunting. They do make good money though.

Anyone out there with some advice?