Towards Hope

It went down to the wire.

I woke up on the first day of 2019 not knowing if I could remain in America, or be forced to leave the country. The uncertainty had clogged up my life ever since I left my postdoc position.

Job searches are rarely quick and easy. Staring backwards, 2018 seemed like a snaking path of savvy resume boosts and wince-inducing professional missteps. I was on the hunt for an entry-level position in a field that wasn’t quite what my CV up to this point was leading towards. You could see the contours of self-inflicted wounds on my resume. I had promising callbacks, and moved up plenty of hiring chains…but was never the number 1 candidate for any position. 2018 dragged into winter. I wasn’t moving forwards.

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I first came to the States aged 20: working an internship as part of my British undergraduate degree requirements. I returned 3 years later for my PhD. You need a certain degree of internal resilience to survive in a foreign country by yourself, no family on your side of the ocean. Over time you forge local support networks…but it always hangs in your mind that when disaster strikes you might be the only person you can rely on.

As I spoke about what was going on in winter 2018 – job search, challenges – listeners sometimes commented that at least I seemed calm in the face of such uncertainty. I prickled at those words: it didn’t feel like I had a choice. The clock kept ticking – if I panicked, went in to meltdown, denial, or gave up searching for work I’d remain unemployed. And then I’d have no choice about leaving.

Oh, I wanted to have a full meltdown. I wanted to wail, give up completely and have somebody (anybody!) sort out all my problems for me. I resented myself for keeping calm. I’d restrained my capacity for fear and despair, but also my capacity for hope.

In the first week of January 2019 a job offer came through. Days before I was researching freight shipping costs and average UK rental prices, bracing for defeat. If the offer had come through a week later it would’ve been too late. Even with a written offer I couldn’t let my guard down: the piles of on-boarding paperwork I rushed through were more than capable of tripping me up. If something was wrong with the paperwork – or something wrong with me – I had no other Stateside backup plan for protection. I’d be out.

The new job’s a medical/science writing gig. It plays to my strengths, allowing me to do the type of gritty, wide-ranging science writing I didn’t think existed within a single job remit. It’s also a job where my Chemistry PhD is an integral part of my employee identity. I didn’t sleepwalk to that PhD – I want to use and derive benefit from the thing I suffered for. I hoped grad school wasn’t a waste of my time. Now that worry is abating.

I don’t know if I can ever break out of emotional lockdown. My instinct tends towards keeping calm and biting down – it always has done. But I can feel hope like shafts of sunlight on a cloudy day – rushing across the fractured sky and occasionally catching my face. I think I’ll enjoy 2019.