Life Is A Journey

This month's Scientiae Carnival is on the theme bumps & humps, and the briefing ran:
What are the current bumps in your road? Have you managed to get over a major hump recently? Are you facing an extremely bumpy road at the moment? Or do you just like to go bump! bump! on a seven hump Wump?

As soon as I read that, all sorts of little little niggles* started jumping up and down in my mind going 'me! write about me!' 'no, I'M more of a bump!' 'no, ME!'. However, most of this blog is about niggles and grumps and snags and troubles (because letting them out onto the page relieves the chorus of disgruntlement and makes space in my mind for important stuff science - and for perspective, it's hard to see any sort of big picture with all these little concerns and issues buzzing around in a cloud), and I like to use Scientiae posts to do a bit of arm-waving or story-telling (in my own particular disjointed way).

Rereading the description, and ignoring the urge to google 'wump', the road metaphor jumped out at me. It's one I like for all parts of life and all occasions. Considering how much I gripe about, and genuinely dislike, most kinds of travelling, and the challenge I'm finding it to walk more each day, that might seem a little ironic...

Humps and Bumps initially sound negative. An uneven road presents a challenge. Humps are uncomfortable to drive over in a wheeled vehicle, the pedestrian experiences the uphills and downslopes more slowly through slogging up and skidding down, knees and thighs pulled and punished by the changes, and the low points might be wet and muddy whilst the high points are exposed to the wind and rain. Yet the high points bring views of the road ahead and behind and the surrounding landscape, and the low points a little shelter from the weather - variety is not innately bad. I find the designered-smooth sweep of a motorway tricky to drive... because it is So. Damn. Boring. Hypnotic, soporific, sweetly and deceptively convenient, the car is swept along, around cities, eased over a simplified, moderated topography. Staying awake can be tricky if you concentrate on the road, and yet taking note of other things is perhaps even more hazardous. I like interesting roads. Roads which take a little skill to negotiate, roads with bends and dips and unexpected views. Roads with gateways where you can stop and get some air, fossick around in a hedgerow, stretch and think and nap. Minor roads, roads which make a journey an adventure full of interest and variety, old roads with complicated, layered palimpsest stories.

Sometimes, it's true, getting to 'the destination' quickly and efficiently seems attractive. Watching the Stars and the Great White Hopes, easily collecting grants and accolades and following the scripted path can be as diminishing and grump-making as watching a beautiful new shiny powerful sports car sail past your sensible, in-need-of-a-wash-but-the-dirt-hides-the-dents runaround. Even if you know you don't WANT a sports-car - environmentally unfriendly, expensive to buy and insure, flash - you can still feel discontent rising when you see your friend in one. There are other options than motorways. Look at a map - you can get to Shangri-La or London on back roads, enjoying the view and making discoveries along the way. Or you can go somewhere else, somewhere the motorways don't lead... and there are so many wonderful places to go.

I can tell a story of my career which looks motorway-like - degree and PhD from InternationallyRenownedAncientUniversity, post-doctoral work at Overseas and NorthernRedBrick and TartanCampusWithLake, a lectureship at NorthernUni, probation completed and promotion to Senior Lecturer achieved by the age of 36. I can tell a story about meanders and road-blocks and pot-holes, about going to university to do one subject and ending up with a degree in something else completely, a PhD full of angst as the definite NotFavourite doing the UninterestingButWorthy topic who Talked Too Much, and the end of a relationship I hung on to for too long, the misery of being lonely and ill in a foreign country and a method going totally wrong meaning a scramble to scrape together a mixture of other ways of looking at the problem, phases of unemployment, a politically-powerful-too-busy-unreasonable-expectations boss and an erratic-unreliable-sarcastic-tempremental-boss, a job where I have had to write new teaching every year for nearly 15 years now, where I have to fight for the bare minimum of lab resources, where I have had no technical support for over a year. Tales of sexism and bullying and the relentless grind of applying for grants that get rejected, of lacking the right contacts and the right gender, of doing other people's jobs as well as my own and being treated like a doormat. Of failing physical and mental health, loneliness, childlessness and partnerlessness, of being forced to go part time with the concomittent pay cut because it was the only way to force my employer to make some minor accomodations for my health and emotional needs, of being patronised and ridiculed.

But I'd rather tell the story where I value my integrity and do the kind of 'old school science' I was trained to do. Where I have worked hard for what I have got - the serious thinking and exploring and praying and seeking of advice involved in changing degree subjects (and the sitting in on extra classes on top of the ones I was registered for, the summer of reading to essentially cram in 5 years of school and 1 year of university's worth of ideas), writing nearly 100 individual job applications and going to interview after interview, then living on apples and pasta until the expenses cheques came back in, the writing of teaching and the spending of time and care on all sorts of students, good and indifferent and confused and time-eating. A story of growth and learning and cats and, yes, struggle and illness - a story about a journey, not about a destination.

Humps and bumps offer views and lessons, and side roads offer so much more choice and freedom than the motorway. They require pauses, and considered negotiation. I have come to actually be very fond of humps and bumps**. Which is a good thing - science is good at humps, bumps and detours, and science careers are full of them. Embracing them makes life so much richer!



* in my mind's eye niggles are roundish, fuzzy things a bit like multi-coloured dust-bunnies or yarn frozzens, with stick-drawing arms and legs, googly eyes and shrill, officious little voices. And they are very bad at sitting still and waiting for attention - they bounce around and wave their arms and all talk at once.

** though I'd like a few less anatomical humps and bumps - sleek curves would fit better under the lab coat than bulges