I am the best kind of unemployed
I am a student. Oh yes, I have it easy. Oh wait - no I don't, I'm a chemistry student. I have anything up to 25 timetabled hours a week, and can easily do just as much again outside. I can work all weekend if required, leave the house and not return until 12 hours later, do 9-5 in lab with no scheduled break. If it needs to reflux for a couple of hours and you have time to grab something to eat and run to the loo, great! If not, tough. While my housemates are lying in most mornings I'm getting up and running off to lectures. Most people do things like this and get paid to do it. Me? I'm paying to do this!

But, when the going gets tough, when my reaction is sitting in the round-bottomed flask and looking at me and going "Oh is everyone else's working? You wanted to get out of here early? You're tired are you? Well tough luck, I'm just going to go the wrong colour, not crystallise and then for shits and giggles I might just explode everywhere so you have to start again, sucks to be you right?!" I think to myself, what else in the world would I rather be doing? Nothing at all. Where else can you spend all day in a large room with some of the best friends you've ever had and some of the most stupidly exciting and dangerous chemicals you've ever had the priviledge to get your hands on and spend all day writing "Titration wank" on each other's labcoats, squirting each other with acetone and occasionally liquid nitrogen and giggling beacuse it says "orange mother liquor" in the labscript? And then going out and getting hideously drunk even though you know you've got to get up stupidly early the next day to do it all again? Where else can I feel like my love of maths and freaky sense of humour, where my failing at being a woman will be completely embraced? Where else is there a group of people who know a ridiculous amount about illegal drugs and how to make them but would never take them because they recognise they're all off their rockers enough already? Nowhere else in the world, ladies and gentleman.

I'm already staying an extra year to do my masters, and then I'm thinking about doing a PhD. Where I will do double the work for about half the pay than if I graduated. I wouldn't have it any other way.

No apologies for length, we have a range of different sizes.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 12:06, 10 replies)

Nah
You won't do double the work if you do a PhD. Unless you do it wrong of course ;-)
(rockdoctor, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 13:47, closed)

Knowing me...
I probably will :p
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 14:02, closed)

:[
I get to graduate in the middle of a recession from all this. I still clicked though
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 16:33, closed)

Chin up...
There are still jobs out there. Good luck, and thanks for the click!
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 17:15, closed)

I hear ya.
With seminars, workshops and guff, I used to do up to 48 hrs a week on my chemistry course, while some of the artsy-types would be doing maybe seven hours a week.
The ther bugger was that Southampton gave you three weeks off at Christmas and a lot of employers wanted you for four for supermarket work.
It's worth hanging on in there, though. The Ph. D is great. I'm due to finish my first postdoc position soon and hopefully, I'm being 'promoted' to Associate Lecturer (if everything goes well with the possible new job, that is).
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sat 4 Apr 2009, 23:19, closed)

I hope that...
... after all that hard work, you'll be able to find a very high-paying job which will make it all worth it.
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 17:51, closed)

Thank you
:)
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Tue 7 Apr 2009, 12:11, closed)

I know where you are coming from on this one
Just make sure if you want to stay doing chemical type things, that you know a foreign language, and fuck off out of the country ASAP.
Despite what people claim, the life of a chemist in (UK) Industry is poorly paid with few prospects.

In places like Germany in comparison, you are treated (and paid like) a God!
(Sir Tainley Barking Ezekiel 23:20, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 0:52, closed)

Not crystallise?
What? don't you like tars oils and waxes stuck in the bottom of a RBF that can't be shifted with any common organic solvents and grabs the end of a spatula in a death grip.
(Benzyl, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 22:54, closed)

It's ok
I've learned to love them. And decided to become a physical chemist.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Tue 7 Apr 2009, 12:10, closed)