u/Prudent-Internet-848

So after graduating this year from my PhD (Biochemistry), i have found my skills (mostly bacterial protein expression, purification and biochemical/biophysical characterisation) are kind of just run of the mill skills and aren't seemingly high up on my post doc positions skills. Is there ways apart from asking labs if i can do some work for free effectively, to try and gain some needed skills in areas such as cell biology, more in depth structural work and mammalian cell work? I have asked one lab for a few weeks training on mammalian cell work but I only have a part time job but cant really afford to just spend money on expensive courses and long term stetches in labs where i have to pay my own way etc. Any ideas would be appreciated. In Uk.

So i will condense this down as i have made similar posts before on some parts of this. At the age of 21 i left a minimum wage job and tried to improve my chances of getting a job that i liked and would pay a liveable wage. I spent the last say 11 to 12 years (i am now 34) training through college, and then uni up to passing my PhD in February, studying biochemistry focusing on protein structure and function. Upon completing my PhD i was highly expectant to enter a post doc position in the lab my did my PhD work on, basically working on the same project. I had contributed all the data too to get the grant funding for the position. Unfortunately my supervisor awarded the position to another previous student who had worked in industry for the last five years and apparently wanted to go back into academia. I got on well with my supervisor and he even said for me to apply for the position, however lots of things lead me to believe he never had any intention of hiring me, and simply felt guilty and couldn't say, no i don't really want you continuing to work on the project. I was someone who has really struggled with my view of my my own capabilities throughout my time in research but was always assured i was working on really difficult projects, so really game changing results weren't going to be flooding in. But after the post doc snub, tbh it has just said to me that most of this wasn't true and basically i am just not very good. I have a paper coming out on my work during my PhD and i have written the entire first draft with figures, with my supervisor now taking over now. As i'm now not directly involved anymore, i find it hard to feel proud of the paper being published at some point this year. Tbh i decided to not attend my PhD graduation because of all of this and also as someone from a working class background, i have never felt truly included during my time at uni and have felt a bit of a black sheep among my other students and supervisors.

I can and have to deal with all this, if i could at least say i can still get decently paid job in something related to science, but after almost a year of applying to both academia and industry positions, i have had no more than two interviews. Due to both mine and my families mental health problems, i have had to limit my search to london and the south east of England. As i don't have really any skills outside of science that would allow me to apply for jobs above minimum wage jobs (currently working at sainsburys), do i just accept to go back to working the same type of jobs i did before leaving to study in the first place. People will say you have lots of skills from the PhD that aren't explicitly science based, in the real world though, when applying for jobs they want you to have qualifications or experience in certain areas, to which i will not have.

I don't want sympathy or any of that, but my family don't really understand and just say well just get any job then. But i did all this to better my life but it feels like it has been complete waste of time and that both socially and economically, my life has got significantly worse since leaving that job 13 years ago.

Should i continue to look and hope i get a break in a science based role or just decide to scrap it all and find something else. Note: i thoroughly enjoyed the work throughout my Mres and PhD but it has been soured unfortunately, so idk really.

thanks for reading

Hi, so i have somewhat recently completed my PhD in Biochemistry investigating membrane proteins using purified protein expressed in bacteria, performing biochemical and biophysical assays to characterise their function and structure. While looking for both academic and industry jobs, i am struggling to find any that i have any of the basic essential skills they require on the job description. Most work is in eukaryotes which i have no experience in, and requires other skills that i do not have. I find the biochemical/biophysical techniques i have utilised throughout my PhD and Mres are very rarely mentioned if at all. Obviously i am very up for learning new skills, but it appears a lot of jobs require very specific requirements and it kinda feels like if you did a PhD in an area that is now not as desirable, your kinda just stuck. I can apply for some jobs but i feel it is almost guaranteed i would not get it, and also as i don't really know the subject areas or techniques, i would struggle to justify my hiring.

Additional: Thankyou for all the messages, i appreciate the help but must admit it is filling me with existential dread reading these messages, as someone who went back into education after leaving school at 16 and then going back in a 21 to try and build a better life, it is very depressing. I am now 34