Back to Life...

Why am I complaining?

I have a nice, comfortable job, in my "home"town, that is not a run-of-the-mill IT job. I'm doing research, I work on projects that are pretty close to what I worked on in IIIT. Home to Office commute is roughly 10 minutes, 5 if i decide to put the pedal to the metal on my swanky new car, a vehicle I cannot dream of owning (and fueling) in India. Heck, I could go out on a limb and admit that this job is probably the best job for me in Qatar. I could also claim that this job is identical in work to typical MS/PhD research work, but with a fairly generous paycheck.

But it really isn't. I think it has something to do with what my Boss said when I had lunch with him in the first few weeks of my time here:

"When you are a student", he said, "you can afford to be spontaneous, you can walk around campus aimlessly, you can have 2-3 hour discussions with fellow students about life, universe and everything. This life is addictive, you are free of responsibilities. You are responsible only for yourself. And then there's 'real life'. It's like a big red button that you choose to ignore as you study. But it gets bigger and bigger as time passes. Finally, when you step out of grad school, you push the button and you enter real life, with all the responsibilities and stress and other goodness that come complementary with it"

I haven't gone to grad school and gotten a PhD. But having done what IIIT essentially calls a "mini-PhD", I understand exactly what he's talking about.

It's not like my life's chock-full of stress and responsibility. Not yet. But its slowly becoming mundane, routine, boring. What really hit me was my friends asking me about my plans for a PhD, and what I'd be doing when I was leaving IIIT. Even though the work I'm doing here is pure research, on par with what is expected from a PhD student, it's not the same. I don't have the luxury of being a carefree student anymore.

Have I pushed the button too soon?