I am sure you all have heard of the preconceptions that certain careers have for personalities. My favorite was always the personas of clinical doctors. You have the pathologists who are NOT people people and would rather look at slides all day every day. Then you have the neurosurgeons who are usually self-aggrandizing. Then you have pediatricians who love people and are super extroverted. Don't believe me? Here is a link to the Myers-Brigg match per specialty.
This is an example that perhaps when one considers being a clinician, they also need to consider their personality to understand what career path best suits them. I had to go through this exercise, but I was steeped in my graduate program when I realized that it needed to be a defining factor.
My Experience
Being in a lab every day was intellectually fulfilling. I could quickly test hypotheses generated from foundational knowledge by using my instruments and then recording and quantifying the results. What was not personally fulfilling for me was the interactions with others I would lack...
I came to grips with this during my third year when I started my fall semester of graduate school. My mentee from the summer before stopped coming to the lab and had to return to their high school program. I missed them. I missed our interactions.
I missed our banter in some cases, and I missed collaborating with them and discussing ideas for experimentation, results, or thinking through the phenomenon we were seeing via the data.
The lab became one that was lonely and isolated. Without my mentee, I was the only one there. Furthermore, we had four groups share one large lab space. Not the optimal space for a person who enjoys being around other people.
This is all the say that students need to consider their personality types in their exploration of career paths. The lab environment may not have been a good fit for me, but it sure gave me the experience I needed and the ability to try something and acknowledge that it may not have been the best fit for me. It also gave me a great deal of anxiety, learning opportunities (not all good ones), and a small degree of burnout.
Things to Consider
One thing every student needs to consider is not just what they are inherently good at, but what environment from which they would most benefit. What environment fits their personality? What pieces of their persona do they need to fulfill every day?
For me, it was collaboration and people interactions. For others, it may be something different, and that's ok. One just needs to consider this before selecting a path because dealing with unfulfillment, disappointment, and burnout does not feed your soul.
Please comment on your Myers-Brigg result and your thoughts on this! I would love to discuss further!
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