Info on being a biologist?

Question

I'm in my second year of college to be a biologist. I want to end up in the bio-tech industry.

I've recently read a book called s*x, Drugs, and DNA, and it outline the basic life of a biologist, and it sounds miserable! I wouldn't normally believe everything I read, but the author got the beginning college years down pretty well, where mostly everyone in my class is pre-med, and are basically competing for the 4.0 GPA and sucking up to professors.

Now I am having huge doubts about my chosen career path. It seems like a very cut-throat industry, where you pretty much fail if you don't get published in a respected enough journals, and that everybody (even the people who review your articles for publication) are trying to steal your ideas and experiments. I love science, but I want a family at some point, too, and I don't want to be spending 60-80 hours a week in a lab by the time I'm 40.

Does anybody know if this is the case with being a biologist? Are there any jobs in the field with less competition than 200-300 applicants for a position? Thank you.

Answer 1

I'm a biologist.  Although I'm not in biotech, I'm an evolutionary ecologist/marine biologist.

My experience with research and publications is not as bad as you describe.  In my field scientists are generally very collaborative.  But, I work with invertebrates and there's plenty to study and not a whole lot of money in it.  Cetacean biologists are much more cutthroat and won't share information with each other.  So, it depends on the field.

I work at a college and do a lot of teaching.  I do some research in the summer, but I easily work 60 hours a week most of the year and don't make that much money.  When I applied for my job, there were over 200 applicants.

I also had a lot of pre-med students in my classes in college and they were the same then.  When I became a grad student, I heard some of the professors talking about the poor effort by some of their undergrads and one of them said, "At least they're not pre-med."  I ended up hearing that a lot.  The reputation of pre-med students is that they don't really care about learning anything, just doing what they have to do to get an A and then moving on.  (Professors hate that attitude.)

The reality is that there are more PhDs graduating each year than there are positions available for them.  So, it's going to be competitive.