Gaijin Panty

Hello everyone,

I graduated with a biochemistry degree in 2013 – at the time I found the labwork boring and completely uninteresting. From my experiences, I preferred solving problems and one of my best lab experiences was trying to solve a contamination issue which was for my final year project. I also did a placement with some immunology stuff and I was given some autonomy there but I found that quite boring too. So I decided that I did not like labwork and although offered a chance at doing a PhD, I declined (I also saw how my placement supervisor was doing funding applications all the time).

I thought engineering might have been a good fit for me, so, in my supreme wisdom I then did an MSc in Biochemical engineering at UCL. After the MSc I was struggling for cash so I got a teaching job. I have been teaching for 4-5 years now and desperately want out. The problem is I don’t know what to do. I’ve been looking at biochemical engineering positions, a lot of them look like labwork plus they require considerable experience.

I’m interested in the machines and the problem solving aspect more rather than the actual labwork which I’ve found to be a lot of – there was a lot of labwork in my biochem engineering course (duh), which i didn’t expect. In fact, the part I probably preferred more was designing P&IDs in my project and researching companies whilst building a business case. I’ve also looked at biomedical engineering as well which seems more interesting (because of the hands-on problem solving part), but again running into issues with experience and knowledge.

I’m putting this out to you guys because I assume you may know of fields/careers that I do not. I actually feel like I’m at breaking point because of my current job.