Career student.

Yes, its true. I wish to be one. I think there is something seriously masochistic about wanting to be a student for life. The horrible hours, the low pay and the lack of life. Then why do we do it? For me, its simply a combination of fear of the world outside and an interest in science that is narrowing down perpetually leaving me too specialized for the world outside. As long as I am safely ensconced in my lab, surrounded by familiar clicking and whirring noises, with only fellow nerds for company, I am happy. I wonder how long this will last though. One day, I'm sure I will want a different life. But there's a good decade between now and that time.

I am sure this comes as a shock to those of you who were with me during those years of wondering before I came out of the academic closet. I openly confess, I am a nerd.

But think about it some more. Doesnt this explain it all? The hours spent (voluntarily) in the Honours library at St. Xavier's College (not reading dirty limmericks, DP), the evenings spent at marine drive discussing some wonderful natural phenomenon, the obsessing over a greying Oxford scholar (may the blind watchmaker bless him), the moments of exhileration over a new discovery (when you know something that nobody in this world can claim to know, even if it is the fact that an hpr null B. subtilis mutant is still repression competent), and the pride I invariably felt when someone called me a geek (that's you, Marie).

This tells me that I should hang in there when the going's tough (like now, for example), since deep down I am the nerdiest of the nerds and can take the insults of this career. And when I am overwhelmed, there's always Spaaten and salsa. In that order.