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Just recently finally finished my physics degree by the skin of my teeth taking an extra year for it and having quite a bit of retrospect now. When I had first started out it was something I more or less did for the challenge and prestige of and to potentially work on something that could actually make a difference in the world with research, specifically alternative energies. Over the course of those five years though, I had a relatively major breakdown in all things I held for granted and ideal notions of what I wanted to do with my degree. I loved the subject to death and the kind of insights it gives me but hated practically everything else about it: the academia culture, varying evaluation methodologies, and overall crapshoot nature a lot of higher education can really be. It killed all of my motivations to do classwork and nearly sunk me out of it entirely. I went through all the motions of a scientist, doing the research, getting my name published in a paper, presenting it at a relatively high caliber place. But I never felt part of the community, I never felt like anything was actually getting done. I understand the slow process it is from research to application, but so much of it felt like doing it for the sake of it, and never actually felt I was helping anyone.
My reasons for being so concerned with all of this is figuring out what really drives me to keep going under my own terms and how to apply that to my future work. Ultimately, I don't think I'll ever settled down anywhere. I'll likely end up working a litany of jobs in just as many different places, just so long as my skills can be utilized to actually directly make something happen for the better and seeing results in a world that often feels like nothing more than spinning wheels. That and the heavy influence stoic philosophy has had on me and how much sense it makes for today's world. I was first thinking of starting with training for some sort of EMS job, then seeing where I go from there.