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  1. :-( Bummer.Please do carry on blogging, expressing yourself, and being "obsessed with anything living"!! Not everyone can fit the system..... (some people make their own, more interesting, ones instead ;-) )

  2. Whatever obstacle you've run into, I hope you can blast past it and get on with an academic career (assuming it's still what you want). If not...well, science journalism needs more people like you who can capture & convey the excitement of ideas. Thanks for keeping the blog alive! :)

  3. Taking a year off is not the same as falling off the track!

    Many people take a year off between college and grad school. They travel, or volunteer, or work, try to get a start a repaying student loans while gaining some real-world experience. Grad schools are used to this, many even like it. No problem getting back in.

    In some areas of science (biotech, computers, materials science...), a very good way back into academia is to spend a few years working in the industry, where the pay is good. Then come back. Grad schools don't really care how long you've been out of academia, as long as you spent it doing something potentially useful.

    The key is to stay in science while not being in school. Find ways - grants, sponsors - to go to your society meetings to see and be seen. Read the literature at the same rate as ever. Blog about it at a furious pace. Stay engaged with the science, and nobody will be looking at the calendar when you apply for grad school again.

  4. I'm with blog on this. If you really belong in academia, leaving for a few years will make you a stronger candidate. I don't know that there's much of a protist industry you could work in (medical side I guess), but one benefit of working a McJob is how strongly it motivates you for something better.

  5. I hope that has nothing to do with your deviationist views on evolution ;-) Evolution, after all, is an extremely ideological issue and always was.

    Take the best of it. Though not on fast track for an academic advancement, it may allow you to stay on track to creative evolutionary thinking. It is your chance to leave the scholastic ivory towers and to step into real life. Good luck. And if you really needs a new job, probably I can ask someone to employ you or to help you to start your own business.

  6. Thank you for your support and advice, everyone, I really do appreciate it! Turns out, I am about to luck out tremendously and work as a lab tech for a year (while taking a couple courses and re-applying for grad school) in the very lab I was applying to do my grad work in, so I can keep doing science. Thus far, my entire scientific career (well, mere beginnings of one) is built upon nothing but sheer luck, and people strangely expecting things out of me. Anyway, this coming year will be quite the demanding one, as it's a rather poor practice to screw up second chances so I'll avoid that direction altogether. That said, I'll definitely still keep on blogging!

    @Paul N: Thank you for your offer; and no, luckily my deviationist evolutionary views (they ain't *that* crazy, are they?_) not only haven't hindered my academic life, but actually helped a lot, particularly with this lab tech job I'm getting. The views may be less popular than usual, but there's still quite a few of us who subscribe to the notion of prevalent non-adaptive evolution -- perhaps because we're right... ;p

  7. That's good news for all of us :-)


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