it's like trying to leave a cult
I pretty much decided to leave academia. Research doesn't give me any joy. Waking up, it's like being forced to eat gruel when you're not even hungry. All this talk of intellectual fulfillment, and I'm just bored out of my mind. I write up manuscripts with the same enthusiasm as going to the gallows. When people talk to me about this new paper, I just hear static. My head hurts. My health is not great. I'm just done. Frankly, it's not really the financial situation with the NSF/NIH cuts. It's been my work environment. Man it's toxic.
I don't quite understand my boss. I think he believes me incompetent.
"Clearly, he thinks I'm incompetent in academic research!"
But when I told him that I was leaving for industry, he thinks I'm also incompetent for industry jobs! He was derisive in that I can only get a data analytics job and not a data science job. Frankly, I have done some data-analysis projects, but recently I've been doing more mathematical modeling.
He thinks he's being a good mentor but I've been spiraling. Jesus, does it hurt to be supportive to a postdoc who is in one of the worst periods of their lives? Also frankly, I'm just trying to pay the bills! The data analysis jobs he looks down on- they pay much more than what I'm getting paid as a postdoc (61K for my initial contract but that's being reduced to 52K in my stop-gap months!)
I swear with academia, it's like leaving a cult:
"You're not going to survive out there,"
or
"You're not going to be happy,"
Jesus Christ, I'm not happy now. I want out. I'm so burned out. My advice is to not do postdocs- it robs any passion you had for your field. I have a bookcase full of my ecology books. I want to get rid of them.
I swear, if anyone has career advice I would love to hear it.