Stumbling into my dream job
This is my background.
I was that kid that always had a nose stuck in a book, that other kids would come to for help on math homework, that liked school because it answered my questions. My biology teacher pulled me aside in 9th grade to say, “It’s a pleasure to teach you because you enjoy learning. Never lose that.”
In 11th or 12th grade, when I admitted I had no idea what to pursue in college, my physics teacher suggested that I would be good at engineering, and STEM could use more women. So I studied engineering in college.
During my senior year, there was one day in class when a professor announced there would be an important exam on a Friday a couple weeks later. I raised my hand and asked if I could reschedule and take the test on a different day, because I wouldn’t be at school that day. “Why not?” he asked. Awkwardly, bashfully, I said, “I’m getting married that day.” After some stunned silence and those surprised-chuckle responses from the class, he agreed I could reschedule the exam.
A month after graduating with a degree in Materials Science and Engineering, a little over nine months after my wedding, I gave birth to my oldest child. I went straight from college to being a stay-at-home mom.
Over the next 20 years, I had a total of 7 kids, and I continued to be, first and foremost, a stay-at-home mom.
My intellectual and work pursuits were not entirely neglected during that time. I read pop science books for fun. My part-time college job of tutoring student athletes continued for a couple years. I argued philosophy and theology with strangers online. I started doing contract proofreading work in my spare time. I read my way through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s sequences on rationality. I experimented with homeschooling my kids for about 4 years, until I contracted clinical depression and gave it up. I learned enough programming to build a very basic math-teaching app and put it on Google Play. I worked my way through a dense, difficult text called the Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, in an attempt to get some context around unintuitive notions like the uncertainty principle, and figure out what those ideas were claiming and what they weren’t, by figuring out where they had come from in the first place. My brother bought a really nice house on the Columbia River Gorge and offered me work managing it as a vacation rental, so I did that.
In June of 2020, as covid raged and kept everyone inside, I found out…something1, and decided to divorce my husband.
I was 40 years old, had 7 kids, and had never held a full-time job, unless you counted three months of working at McDonald’s during one college summer break. My youngest was 3yo, which meant a job would need to pay for full-time daycare on top of regular expenses. My prospects were bleak.
It took two years before the divorce was finalized. During most of that time, I did not put a heavy effort into job-searching. This was partly because I didn’t know what I would do with the youngest kids, and partly because the divorce itself took all my emotional energy, and I didn’t have any left to make myself handle rejection.
I did try applying for some semiconductor technician jobs that might let me work my way up into an engineering position, but never heard back. I started the Odin project, hoping to teach myself enough new skills to find a job in a different field.
Then, one day, I’m reading my favorite blog, who occasionally has “classifieds” threads where people can try to find love or a job or a sale. I come across a listing.
I live in Portland. I can read scientific papers—I do that sometimes anyway, when I’m curious about something, or when I want to know if the data in the paper backs up the newspaper headline. Brain preservation certainly sounds interesting. At that salary, I can afford childcare, so, yes, I can travel to the lab. I’m obese, middle-aged, and have creaky knees, but I’m stronger at lifting things than you would guess from looking at me, so maybe I can handle the physical lab work. I really like the sound of “I can teach specific skills”, and I really like the salary, and I really like the idea of brain preservation and lab work.
So after googling what ROT13 was, I applied. During the initial Zoom interview, Robert asked a question about turning a 5x solution into a 1x solution.
Inside, I panicked. Numbers floated around in my head, but they wouldn’t cohere into a definite picture. He said it was fine if I googled the answer; he didn’t need someone who had all the answers on hand, he needed someone who could get them. I spent several minutes nervously googling different things, without finding anything that would help. Eventually I gave an answer, and when he asked why that answer and not another one, I could mumble awkwardly about the reason I thought so.
During the in-person interview, he gave me some time to read a two-page, mind-blowing paper about C. elegans worms inheriting imprinted memories. We discussed it, which was super fun. He asked me what I thought of the diagram, and I eventually admitted it was confusing and could be better. Later that night, I stayed up creating a better version and forwarded it to him. He never commented on it, and given what I know now about his lack of email-reading habits, I wouldn’t be surprised if he never looked at it.
But he offered me the job.
And thus did I land my dream job. Not just my dream job for practical reasons like pay and my boss’s total willingness to ignore the 12 times a month I have to shift hours to accommodate taking a kid to a doctor or dentist appointment, and not just because of the coolness factor, but also because this job offers something I hadn’t expected to find: work I find meaningful, a worthwhile cause.
Something I won’t write anywhere my kids might read, because I’m trying hard to avoid badmouthing him to them. But it’s probably along the lines of what you’re imagining.