I need some feedback on my options

[Elisabeth]

I'm being pushed at work (physics phd) into doing numerical computation, which I hate. I means dealing with badly supported software with no up-to-date documentation, where every new task presents me with the "it's not working as it should" kind of problems, which I generally can't solve alone. I don't have very supportive colleagues either, the one who knew the software best is now in Germany, and another one decided not to speak to me. 

My whole life I've been your average windows user. I lack the basics of linux, bash, vim, gnuplot, C++, python, wolfram language, numerical methods & software architecture, that I would need. I lack interest in learning any of that. My physics major didn't prepare me - we had one semester of programming, I learned some LaTeX, used other software a bit, but I didn't have to deal with any complex code. 

I studied because I wanted to do pen-and-paper calculations (which may not have been realistic). 

Problem is, doing the numerics solving the "it's not working as it should" kind of problems is not solely something slightly boring or bothersome for me. Feelings of paralysis, the problems being unsolvable, huge resistance, and even despair come up. I've literally cried out my eyes for hours this week over having to face more numerics and not being the kind of physicist that I wanted to be. 

Any other job I would quit if they asked me do do stuff which I both hate and suck at, but a phd is special. It's basically a four year contract, I'm third year, and if I quit now, I'd have to basically start over or quit physics altogether. 

I might well quit physics altogether, especially if doing physics means the numerical stuff. I almost quit in November. My supervisor convinced me to stay. I negotiated with him back then about not feeling up to the programming tasks that he wanted me to do, and it seemed that he understood, but then I got more numerical tasks, because "someone has to do it". Also, he wants to get me to stay for a month with a very prestigeous group abroad. That's would give my career a networking boost, might also get me to grow personally because of interacting with different people, but guess what - more numerics.

So I have the options of 

1) Try to push through negative emotion and learn skills. This is very hard, especially as I'm not sure that this will put me on a life trajectory that I want. 

2) Quit phd and physics. I don't feel ready to do that. Back in winter I've made a decision to finish it  - although the deciding reason to stay was 'I want to fucking finally get to analytical work', which isn't happening. 

3) Negotiate with my boss (who is currently abroad for two months) to do something else & letting the stay abroad slide. This might feel like betrayal to my boss, and the person abroad, since I already agreed, and we're in the process of applying for money. Quite scary now to disappoint all those people and then try stay at the same job. 

Ugh. Feedback please.  

Edited July 12, 2019 by Elisabeth

[universe]

Well you have to know if the grind is worth it. Consider how long it takes to get the phd. What would be your options after you have the phd. Where else can you get an phd in analytical phsyics.

Did you start looking for other phd programs? What are your options. Are you willing to move for another phd.

It seems pretty clear to me that you have to quit. But if this is your only way to get your dream job, then you have to do it of course. Keep your eyes open, there might be another way.

[JustThinkingAloud]

I’d focus on the main goal to get me through it, you’re nearly there, only one more year to go. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to do things that we don’t like doing to get what we want. Every time you get miserable remind yourself that the final result will be so worth it and that it will be over soon. Good luck!

[ajasatya]

@Elisabeth Have you tried searching for other libs? Python is expanding really fast and maybe your work can be contemplated by a well documented lib out there. For instance, if you need to work with hypothesis tests, I recommend a lib called Pingouin, which is very user friendly (I have contributed to it with some lines of code thus I've seen how it is from inside).

[Elisabeth]

@ajasatya It's highly specialized software http://nrgljubljana.ijs.si/ , there's no alternative. Well, there is another code, just as badly supported. But thanks for the suggestion.

[ajasatya]

@Elisabeth Oh well, it's C++.

Did you download their 40 pages manual? Have you tried contacting them to explain your problems? They published the following e-mail on the lib webpage: nrgljubljana@ijs.si. And here's the personal webpage of the creator of the lib: http://auger.ijs.si/nano/

I'm quite hardcore, so I'd just make my own way through the hard times. You may even contribute to the lib by reporting bugs and you may also increase your network by becoming a friend of the lib maintainer. If you watch closely, the last patch is very recent so the lib is still being developed. What if you end up being part of something greater than your own PhD thesis? You never know! 

Major mental attitude: where there's difficulty, there's opportunity for expansion, improvement and uniqueness.

[Aliman]

Aloha Elisabeth,

Those people on this forum who are leaning toward recommending that you push through and get your PhD, could have a good point. Consider that the result of you getting the PhD in physics could have nothing to do with physics per se, yet it could propel you forward in your life. In the 1980s I absolutely hated my voluntary three-year US Army enlistment, and the content of what I studied and qualified for and did, had nothing to do with my future career (in social services). But having that Army experience of learning to kill in combat and extreme physical gusto, and an extremely "republican" political view, strangely enough, opened the door for me to get into social services. Here I am helping the poor in society and being very "liberal" in my politics and generally being the opposite of what I was in the Army. My Army experience set me up for this.  I was able to start a successful nonprofit in 2007. Consider pushing through, getting the PhD, then being open to the Universe and feeling the power of the Universe and look for your next opportunity. A few years from now, you may find that the PhD in physics is exactly what you needed and was the key to propelling you into the life that you really want and really need. That could be in physics or in something totally different.

Aloha,

Aliman

[SFRL]

The first option. Push trough. 

[Key Elements]

It's only one more year. Go for it!  Ask yourself, do you really want to quit and start working now? If so, working as what?

[Elisabeth]

19 hours ago, ajasatya said:

@Elisabeth Oh well, it's C++.

Did you download their 40 pages manual? Have you tried contacting them to explain your problems? They published the following e-mail on the lib webpage: nrgljubljana@ijs.si. And here's the personal webpage of the creator of the lib: http://auger.ijs.si/nano/

I'm quite hardcore, so I'd just make my own way through the hard times. You may even contribute to the lib by reporting bugs and you may also increase your network by becoming a friend of the lib maintainer. If you watch closely, the last patch is very recent so the lib is still being developed. What if you end up being part of something greater than your own PhD thesis? You never know! 

Major mental attitude: where there's difficulty, there's opportunity for expansion, improvement and uniqueness.

Thanks. It never ever occurred to me, that reporting a bug could feel like "being a part of something greater"  To me it feels like bothering a professor in Ljubljana, who has a ton of other stuff to do, although I did write him before and he's being kind. Also, I can't tell a bug from my own stupidity. 

I do have the manual, it's just 6 years old. I also have Rok's phd thesis. They help some.  I can - hopefully - find some practical things to do to help me. In fact, I've just travelled 800km to consult the colleague abroad, because I'm so desperate about having to try on my own. 

The problem is really the emotional aspects. I know I likely have the intellectual capacity. But I struggle to make myself do every little bit. I struggle to see meaning in any of this work. (Expansion, improvement, uniqueness? How is me being a bad numerical physicist going in the direction of that? Because I won't be a good one, for that, passion is needed.) Although I do see some meaning in finishing what I started. I struggle with inner conflict. I struggle with feeling like crying all the time and not knowing on which grounds to make a decision.

Btw. the feelings are unclear. It's hard to believe that such deep emotions would be tied to a bit of numerical work. Yet they are. Time to look for a  source of these?

@Aliman @see_on_see  You are expressing some of my conflicting streams of thought with a new twist, thank you. I'll re-read that later. 

17 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

It's only one more year. Go for it!  Ask yourself, do you really want to quit and start working now? If so, working as what?

I want to work with people, facilitating groups perhaps, but I don't have a specific thing and a specific way to do that in mind yet. We have a
very successful group with my friends, I also started a slightly less successful discussion group for scientists. I'd ideally still use some of my physics knowledge, but it's unclear to me, how to connect it all.

Edited July 14, 2019 by Elisabeth

[Key Elements]

20 minutes ago, Elisabeth said:

I want to work with people, facilitating groups perhaps, but I don't have a specific thing and a specific way to do that in mind yet. We have a

very successful group with my friends, I also started a slightly less successful discussion group for scientists. I'd ideally still use some of my physics knowledge, but it's unclear to me, how to connect it all.

Great! I think it's just that one more year of hard work that you need to go through. And then, you'll be more free. Keep exploring with your groups. Keep exploring in general. Most importantly, don't forget to understand what is entrepreneurship. Remember, this section of the forum is entrepreneurship too. Let me tell you that most ppl in the world don't even know what it is. They just skip it and miss the opportunity to really understand it. You can start to try to understand how your interests in physics fits in with entrepreneurship. That is for you to explore. Yes, I started to explore with my work. I started a thread below on it. I don't know if you saw that.

[ajasatya]

@Elisabeth It's very easy to smell a heavy load of self-limiting beliefs in your words. The simple fact that you're not really open to becoming better at the numerical aspect of physics is a big one. You think of yourself as "done", like "this is it, I suck at math". What a burden! Human beings are never "done".

[Elisabeth]

I've arrived at an option.

I think I'll push through with the stay abroad, try solve the numerical problems we promised to the Spanish person, and improve the necessary skills until then ... but let my boss know that I won't be doing any more NRG after that. I think this is a good strategy and fair enough, because by then I should have enough material to finish phd, and by letting him know I ensure that he's not gonna dump any further tasks on me while I write my thesis, and also, should I stay in the group sometime after my phd or come back after a postdoc, he knows what to expect.

I studied to do analytic calculations, and I'm also willing and able (or able to learn) to write, to teach, to talk publicly, to deal with grant applications and administration, to manage people and collaborations - all those requirements of academic life. It's also fair to expect of me to work with Mathematica or other professional software (I acknowledge a gap in skills that I want to improve there). I'm not willing to work with a program where setting up every basic task means looking into code written in three different languages. 

If this decision costs me my "physics" career, well, I don't want a career like this anyway.

He needs a physicist with the soul of a programmer, or a programmer with the soul of a physicist who will be working with this software longterm, and that's not me.  You bet that these people are around. He needs to do the work to find someone and secure funding to keep them longterm. I think he's been trying to dump the task on me because I was available. I'll give him this responsibility back. 

If he has a person in the group who has numerics as his main occupation, who's able to expand the libraries as @ajasatya suggests, and is willing to help others, if there's someone to consult with, I'm might be willing to work with the software every now and then. I'm not willing to be that person.

Does that sound any reasonable? 

[JustThinkingAloud]

2 hours ago, Elisabeth said:

I've arrived at an option.

I think I'll push through with the stay abroad, try solve the numerical problems we promised to the Spanish person, and improve the necessary skills until then ... but let my boss know that I won't be doing any more NRG after that. I think this is a good strategy and fair enough, because by then I should have enough material to finish phd, and by letting him know I ensure that he's not gonna dump any further tasks on me while I write my thesis, and also, should I stay in the group sometime after my phd or come back after a postdoc, he knows what to expect.

I studied to do analytic calculations, and I'm also willing and able (or able to learn) to write, to teach, to talk publicly, to deal with grant applications and administration, to manage people and collaborations - all those requirements of academic life. It's also fair to expect of me to work with Mathematica or other professional software (I acknowledge a gap in skills that I want to improve there). I'm not willing to work with a program where setting up every basic task means looking into code written in three different languages. 

If this decision costs me my "physics" career, well, I don't want a career like this anyway.

He needs a physicist with the soul of a programmer, or a programmer with the soul of a physicist who will be working with this software longterm, and that's not me.  You bet that these people are around. He needs to do the work to find someone and secure funding to keep them longterm. I think he's been trying to dump the task on me because I was available. I'll give him this responsibility back. 

If he has a person in the group who has numerics as his main occupation, who's able to expand the libraries as @ajasatya suggests, and is willing to help others, if there's someone to consult with, I'm might be willing to work with the software every now and then. I'm not willing to be that person.

Does that sound any reasonable? 

I love that! 

[Elisabeth]

So I wrote my boss - over a month ago - that I'm gonna push through this stay abroad and the related project, but I don't wanna do numerics after that. I got a quite strong belated reaction now. 

Basically, he's asking me to "make a commitment to do whatever's necessary" , or leave now. Like, I shouldn't be picky about not wanting to do numerics, and I shouldn't be doubting whether I'll push through all the way to finish. 

I'm baffled, just left speechless and actionless. 

I understand why he might want to give me a last warning, or wouldn't want to work with me at all, but wtf am I supposed to do? Change from a doubting person who gets depressed a few times a year to someone with stamina and clarity within a few days? That makes no sense at all. 

It sucks because I decided to finish, and now it's "promise (something I can't promise), or leave". 

@JustThinkingAloud @Key Elements @see_on_see @SFRL @Aliman @universe @Shiva

[Key Elements]

@Elisabeth jobs with a boss always suck sooner or later. This reminds me of a time when I was in my university as a full-time student. I wanted to work in a job related to my studies. I wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to do. However, I remember one of my classmates saying that she recommended working in a "no-brainer" job while I'm studying full-time. Jobs that require lots of thinking will "stress you out" she said. Well, looks like she's right. Luckily, at that time, I found a job as a teacher's assistant part-time. I liked that job. However, try to make a transition to find a different job that you like better, and do become self-employed eventually. You got to really research and look into that. I think I made a link to you about it. The key word is: transition. Don't stay stuck at something you don't like.

Transition:

Recommended book into B and I with something you like.

[Elisabeth]

@Key Elements I do want to transition (though I'm not sure where I'm going), but should I just take his prompt and leave now? 

Thanks for the link and the book. 

Edited August 27, 2019 by Elisabeth

[Key Elements]

@Elisabeth you're welcome.

If you could afford to leave and support yourself, then go ahead. You don't sound like you like your job. However, do start to mingle with other ppl where you will run into other opportunities.

Currently, I have a beautiful website that I would like to advertise somewhere. I need to work on my video clips. If this works, it will put me in the 'S' (home business). However, I do want to network and mingle in an official startup group to see if I'm doing my life purpose/startup right, and to see if anyone could point to better career opportunities in different places. If you do this, make sure you have your resume (CV) and business cards ready. Only give them out if the other person can help you and can point you to the right opportunities. Don't just be demanding. Observe first.

[Elisabeth]

I decided to stay with the condition of working on one project at a time only. The stay in Spain is also canceled. One last try to finish what I started.