A Dream Job and A Nutcase Boss
Work first, everything next.
All through my life, I have been driven by this quote by James Nesbitt. My family has complained that I do not call them, and I am a distant child. The influence of this quote has played a part in this predicament of mine. The problem is when the majority complain of workload, work pressure, not having a dream job, and having terrible bosses, I can’t complain of anything like this. The first choice I made about my ambition without my family members influencing me was to become a scientist.
Marie and Edison
It was Edison’s story that first caught my attention and influenced me into thinking about this possibility; then, it was Louis Pasteur's and, recently, Marie Curie’s (Manya Sklodovska) biography. When I chose to be a scientist, I was 8 years old. This was my first open rebellion against my family, who had just two choices for me-Engineer or a medical doctor. The engineers in my family urged me to be an engineer, and the talk among them was that I was destined to be a great engineer as I am the eldest child of two engineers. When not around the family patriarchs, the women in my family would secretly influence me to be a medical doctor.
However, I rejected both of these chosen paths and made a path of my own that my family had no idea about. My father would often complain that if I had chosen to be an engineer, he would have guided me and made my future safe with his network and expertise, but this path of mine was something that he had no idea of. After high school, he would often tell me that he was ready to do whatever was needed if I would change my mind to become a medical doctor, if not an engineer. Well, that didn’t happen.
My academic grades had ups and downs, but they were always above average even in my worst of times except when I was in my final years of high school when I failed model exams. Well, that’s a story for another day.
I opted for Zoology for graduation. My father and mother are both introverts who don’t talk much. But their anxiety thinking about my future might have caused them to talk to me more than they talk to others. Now, as I am doing my research with a fellowship away from my home with my soulmate, the talks of anxiety have changed into complaints of being distant. But it's not my father and mother who complain; it is the more open members of my family. That’s how much my parents love me. Their love and care for me are so great that they force their own craving for their child’s presence with them to take a backseat. I remember how they struggled to bring me up. I have been hard to deal with since my adolescence.
Dream job
After my graduation, I went to my father asking for his support to marry my lover, to which he said that he would support me if I can show him that I can excel in my chosen path. So, what I did is that I studied even harder, and in 2017 I married my soulmate after I got admission for Ph.D. in India.
My Ph.D. life is pretty good because it was my dream to pursue science and research to become a scientist. I have got a Ph.D. supervisor whose behavior makes me forget that he is my guide. I often have to remind myself that he is my guide and not my father. I live with a person who believed just my words when all odds were against her. My soulmate has made the life of a hot-tempered prick who is constantly haunted by health problems much better than I hoped for.
What else can one ask for to achieve excellence? So, I work hard in my dream job, never allowing my nutcase brain to criticize me for my lost time. But, I was never able to stop her from criticizing me because she is very good at her job of being my boss.
