The calm before the storm

Architecture school is about three weeks away for me, which is exciting. I’m currently in the process of off-boarding from my postdoc job at USC and I’ve been working from home quite a bit because there’s very little for me to do at the office: it’s just a lot of waiting for people to give me feedback on my manuscript. Science in America is certainly in an interesting state now. I get the sense that a lot of physicians here are not enthusiastic about doing research and, given the nature of the research, I can sort of see why that is. I’ve already touched upon the perceived fragility of scientific evidence in a previous post, and I won’t go into that here. 

Yet, this is the calm before the metaphorical storm of architecture school for me. What will I do? I don’t know, I still must give one last final presentation to my group before I officially leave. That will certainly be a challenging one to give as I will ultimately be standing up and defending this unique direction that I’m taking. I’m not going to mention the government funding freezes and all that because it’s honestly not that important and didn’t factor into my decision to leave science all that much: had I truly wanted to be a scientist, I would’ve stayed and found a way. But, very much like being a physician, I think my heart just truly was not in it and so when it got difficult, leaving was the clear choice. 

That’s something important to think about in any aspect of life whether it be work, love, hobbies, or whatnot, if your heart’s not truly in it, then it’s easy to leave. I need to think about that looking forward as I reach the middle section of my adulthood. Having these wise formulations in my head will surely equip me to make better choices looking forward. All in all, I think I’m very much excited for the prospect of entering the architecture field. I get the sense that I will be near the top of my class, despite my lack of architectural knowledge, I hope that will be the case.