Well. There are just too many choices.
Assuming for a moment that all is well for me to graduate with a doctorate in the spring of '09, just what should I do next? Postdoc? Faculty? Research scientist? Work for an environmental consulting firm? Or maybe get an entry level engineering job on the road to being a practicing civil/environmental engineer? There are more barriers to the last option simply because my undergraduate degree is not in engineering (grad degrees count for relatively little). But if I'm not picky about where any of these jobs are, I could probably find something in each category.
Then there is another idea. There are those who would argue that my interests/passions/abilities in philosophy/theology are sufficient to challenge the default option of continuing in science. At least one person I know who commands a level of respect and admiration has suggested as much. And of course all those friends of mine whose bent is also theological have seconded the idea.
This highlights a minor schizophrenia. It happens that my friends fall almost entirely into mutually exclusive camps of Christians and scientists/engineers. Some might try to see some higher significance in this division, but I see the disjoint nature of the sets as being circumstantial (if also padded by popular prejudices toward both science and religion). So where do I go to get "integrated" advice - someone from either both camps or no camp, as it were? Would such a perspective be useful in the end?
And the fact remains that probably most folks who read this blog will know me as either scientist or amateur theology enthusiast and rarely as the combination. I find it quite common among family and friends that they will identify with or understand one or other side but find great difficulties in making much sense of my passion for the other.
So, as I said, there are just too many choices. I have the benefit of choices, and the difficulty of making them. It's not a bad situation to be in.
But as I said to H the other day, it might just be that the only profession that people back home would find less intelligible than scientist might just be that of theologian.
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...Practice resurrection.
2 comments:
you could start a quasi-monastic, non-institutionalized order/ministry in the episcopal church that pursued the practices of subsistence farming and local theologizing. hmmm?
Well, I certainly speak from the theology side, since I got a C+ in Chem 101 and called it quits.
Discernment is wierd. I was sure (note the grammar folks) that I was supposed to work in the academy and in the church as a way of bridging the two. I discerned a vocation to historical biblical scholarship for the church. But now I think in a lot of ways that is dumb.
Should I now say that I am sure I was "supposed" to do a PHD in NT so that I could be lead to where I am now? And what do I do now?
Discernment committees, composed carefully, and ruthlessly honest, seem like a good first step.
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