unfamiliar exploration within a familiar environment

Can the concept of graduate school be considered a place? It certainly is unfamiliar, both like and unlike the actual locations the education takes place - or, rather, would be taking place, if I was actually doing real tasks beyond ‘exploring my options’. It shouldn't, really, be unfamiliar - I'm by no means a first-generation student. I grew up on stories of my mom's master’s degree from Columbia University. 

Only she was studying a completely different field from what I want to study. She was a speech language pathologist, and I aim to become an entomologist. I call myself an aspiring entomologist, on the volunteer forms I fill out as my attempts to find paid work feel less and less realistic. Aspiring, as in, not yet there. Not yet real. None of this feels real.

Almost right after I graduated, I was exploring a book online about the narratives of education – I think it was called Beyond Education, or something similar. It talked about how we use directional metaphors – someone drops out of school or moves on to higher education. Upwards momentum. I feel like ending education in any way, whether by quitting or graduating, both feel like tumbling down a slope, bordering on a cliff. When I was eleven, I tried running down a hill and stepped on an underground beehive. I’ve always looked at the ground before running ever since. I’d like to study the bees, not be stung because of human hubris. Although studying bees, I’m learning, requires quite a bit of human interaction.

In a lot of ways, I’ve always been on this path – I almost wasn’t allowed to graduate elementary school because I had checked out all the books on bugs and hadn’t returned them all. Still, there’s a huge gulf between the vague goal of ‘I want to study insects when I grow up’ and where I am now. Almost as huge as the gulf between where I am and where I want to be. Only maybe I shouldn’t use the word ‘where’ when I have no clue the physical location my goal will result in me ending up. I’ve looked at internships as various places as California, New York, Newfoundland, the Yukon – if they will take someone incapable of driving, I’ll find a way to get to wherever will house me.

 Where I am now is far from an unfamiliar place – my bedroom, the same room that growing up was my brother’s room until I turned 13 and has been mine ever since. The house I lived my entire life in until I decided to leave for the extremely unfamiliar place of a university in Quebec, where I didn’t know the language nor a soul there. Now I know one soul there, my best friend, but still never learned French in my four and a half years obtaining an undergraduate degree. I didn’t truly try to learn it though. Better not to try and make fun of oneself for being an idiot American than to try, fail, and still be an idiot Anglophone.

Language was never my area of exploration. One of my friends within the state I currently live in was obsessed with linguistics enough to eventually get a job translating Yiddish archives. He still has that job. I try to tell myself I’m not jealous of the natural talent being bilingual gives certain people when it comes to picking up later languages in life. There’s no point in being jealous over a trait I was never going to be given in the first place – both my parents are also monolingual, English only Americans. Exploring languages would take more effort than I’m willing to exert currently.

No, the natural world was what I studied, and it led me back here. Well, graduating from university led me back here. Home. Back in front of my computer, where I once researched possible universities to attend back in high school. Now researching insects, editing Wikipedia pages, being a drain on my parents’ bank account as mine gets drained by my leopard gecko’s veterinary bills. Whoopie, my leopard gecko, lives in this bedroom with me. We’re struggling together, only his life is far simpler than the world I exist within.

Of course, my life is far from just the fun freedom of no longer being a student. It is also spent applying for lab technician or assistant or research assistant jobs only to receive email after email about how someone else was a better fit, more qualified.

Exploration, one can say that’s how I’ve spent the months since January – exploring my options, possible summer internships, graduate programs… I attended the Entomological Society of America’s Eastern Branch meeting, and I was surrounded by graduate students who studied the creatures I love. They were still students, somehow, creating knowledge I simply consume and regurgitate into Wikipedia articles on the insects. I want to become one of them, I’m just entirely lost as to how to get there. There, as in an entomology student, but also there, as in the annual Entomological Society of America conference, which will be in Phoenix, Arizona. Attending the Eastern Branch conference took over a thousand dollars, mostly of my parents’ money – odds are, I’m not making it to the conference in November. Networking is stupidly expensive.

Okay, I’m not entirely lost. I applied to a graduate program before I graduated, so I know the basic premise – email a professor and/or principal investigator with a research interest (ideally one they have already announced they are looking for a student’s help with), contact professors that liked me back in university and hope they remember enough about me to write a letter by the deadline, pray the deadline hasn’t already passed. So, what I need to do is put myself out there.

Only I don’t know where I’m going, so how can I create a path to get there? What I want is a guide, only none exists. I’d know – I certainly searched multiple libraries often enough that if one existed, I’d have found it. I’ve search libraries for jobs too, only without a higher education degree, they’re not considering me either. Next to this computer I’m typing this on is a pile of books from various libraries – ReSearch: A Career Guide for Scientists, THE AUTISM JOB CLUB, So You Want to Work in a Museum? The libraries have entire shelves for career exploration I walk through and check out books from, only they’ve been in this house a week and haven’t been opened. Neil Gaiman’s selected nonfiction collection is just taking a while to read through. I’m not avoiding the books that will actually get me somewhere. Just, delaying when I begin reading them.

The worst part of all this exploration is how little it leads me anywhere. I enter my online bank account and they ask for an update to my employment status. I just click the word ‘update’ since the unemployed part remains accurate. Even publishing this will simply reduce the number in the account even more, unless I’m somehow lucky enough to turn $5 entry into a $250 prize. Winning requires creativity, a story with a plot. My life doesn’t have one now.