How I decided Bench Science was not my career path

Like many graduate students in the sciences, I had my share of ups and downs during my doctoral research, and during some of those downs—an extended period of negative results or failed approaches, panicking as my qualifying exam approached—I had passing thoughts that I couldn’t cut it as a bench scientist. Still, it wasn’t until near the end, ironically enough as I was writing up my dissertation and confident that I could go on to the next step, that I realized that I didn’t want to keep going in laboratory research.