How tiring is organic chemistry?

1. First of all, wherever experimental operations are required in chemistry, especially organic chemistry, there is the possibility of harming human health.

If you study for a Ph.D., your body will be exposed to this highly damaging environment for at least five years. What's more, if you want to produce a certain amount of good results and pave the way for a future teaching position, a work intensity of at least 10 hours per working day within five years is the minimum requirement. Therefore, no matter what the outcome of doctoral graduation is in the future, the impact on physical health will be much greater than that of students who work normally or study in liberal arts graduate schools. Not to mention some students who are doing synthesis-related topics, long-term exposure to toxic and harmful reagents will cause unknown harm to the body over a long period of time.

In addition, mental stress often goes hand in hand with physical fatigue. In Hong Kong, almost all graduate students with "high" scholarships, especially chemistry-related students, suffer from depression to varying degrees. Experimental success or failure is very clear. If there are results, there are results. If there are no results, there are no results. Let’s talk about the experimental results. In most cases, there is no guidance from mentors, especially those with professorships, and you have to work alone. Leaving aside the students who are particularly academically excellent and have strong psychological endurance, most students are moving forward under high pressure and loneliness.

Suppose you are very lucky and are in a group with a harmonious atmosphere and an understanding tutor. You get your undergraduate degree at the age of 21 and successfully get your doctorate four years later. You will be 25 years old at that time. Maybe you will do a postdoc or find a teaching position, and you are very lucky to complete all this within 3 years, when you will be 28 years old. In order to give birth to a healthy baby, a girl doing chemistry needs to "detoxify" for at least another year before she can put pregnancy on the agenda. After a successful delivery, you will be at least 30 years old.

Suppose everything goes perfectly for you.

Therefore, graduate students majoring in chemistry are at greater risk of being victimized, both mentally and physically, compared to students in other majors. If you are a girl, don’t want to be a DINK in the future, and are preparing to take on the responsibility of having children in your family, wouldn’t all this deter you?

⒉ Secondly, in terms of employment and salary levels, it is an indisputable fact that it is relatively difficult for chemistry-related graduates to find employment, with relatively poor working conditions and relatively low remuneration.

On the issue of employment, other regions don’t know much about it, so we can only talk about Shenzhen. As we all know, Shenzhen, as a coastal city, does not have a lot of industrial support like some older inland cities. For students with a chemistry background, most of the recruitment is for sales. As you can see, for me, who came from a polymer background, in Shenzhen, for jobs that require a graduate degree, except for sales at some high-end foreign companies, the most professional one is to go back to a research institute to work as a researcher. Of course, there are also some financial industries, but generally they require compound talents with a financial background. For girls, who want to stay away from chemical reagents and escape from the laboratory in order to start a family in the future, they are naturally unwilling to return to a research institute to work as a Ph.D., or to work as R&D engineers in Chinese companies whose protective measures are worse than those in good universities. So, is sales the right opportunity? I believe that few girls are willing to try a job like sales. In addition, before raising your salary, most companies have already removed you from their list, probably because you are a woman.

Therefore, graduate students with a chemistry background, especially female graduate students, are at an obvious disadvantage compared to men in the same major, apart from the difficulty of finding a job in chemistry.

As a female graduate student with a chemistry background, the above are my reasons for quitting chemistry. I didn’t think too much about it, I just started from considerations about the future and my family.

Excluded here:

⒈Students who are academically excellent, have very solid foundation, have the ability to promote academic development and have a strong enthusiasm for research,

⒉ Students who have mastered Nature/Science or its sub-journals during their Ph.D. period,

⒊The family is in good condition and they own no less than several properties and luxury cars in Shenzhen, or the husband’s family is in good condition and he owns no less than several properties in Shenzhen. Students who have real estate and expensive cars,

⒋Students whose family has background in the system, and who are willing and able to enter the system to engage in official duties that require a chemistry background.