u/frazzzledazzzle

Hi everyone! I'm looking for work and am feeling lost in this process. I feel like my skills and experience (shared below) don't match well with my Earth & Climate Science degree and that it boxes me out from a lot of roles. I have spent the last couple years unsuccessfully applying to grad school (PIs in Planetary Science and Astrophysics this year and last told me they wanted to admit me but didn't have the funding to do so). This fall will be my fourth -- and likely last -- time applying to PhD programs, but I'm tired of putting my life on hold in the interim.

I have a B.S. in Earth & Climate Sciences with a concentration in Geology and a minor in Astronomy that I earned in 2024 from a state school in northern New England. For my capstone, I conducted field work in and around the Juneau Icefield with a focus on ice core and bedrock sampling for pollen analysis and cosmogenic isotope dating, respectively.

My experience, on the other hand, is not centered in the geosciences. It's mostly been astronomy research with some project management sprinkled in. I've done some other work too (TA, planetarium show presenter) but these positions I've held are the most representative of my skills.

• NASA internship (3 months, 2019) where I determined instrumentational discrepancies for trace gas aerosol spectrometers by integrating meteorology (cloud cover and cloud type) into data confidence analyses with Python.
• NASA internship (6 months, 2022) where I synthesized federal reporting and literature to identify research gaps related to the detection and study of Earth-sized exoplanets and to evaluate the state of the field for the extreme-precision radial velocity detection method. I also contributed to planning and operations of a virtual, three-day, 100+ person workshop.
• NASA internship/student consultancy (13 months, 2023-24) where I conducted one-dimensional simulations of exoplanet atmospheres using Python to generate atmospheric spectral data of terrestrial Solar System planets and potential false positives for evaluation of biosignature evaluation capabilities for a future flagship space telescope. I also created and judged a NASA Space App Challenge that received over 1,100 team submissions (the most of any challenge that year).
• NASA postbac research assistant (12 months, 2024-25) where I conducted one-dimensional exoplanet atmospheric simulations with Python and Fortran to evaluate the production of oxygenated species due to CO2 photolysis for Mars-like planets. This position resulted in a first-author manuscript that I am currently revising for re-submission to a journal in the fall.

Once I knew my postbac position was ending last year I applied for nearly 100 jobs, with a lot of them being entry level geology positions and was either rejected or ghosted. I made it to final round interviews at a MBB consulting firm but didn't receive an offer. I was unemployed for nearly two months, moved back home, and have been working in customer service in retail since October. I hate it. On one hand, my current position enables me to take courses at a local university to boost my graduate applications (I took differential equations in the spring and plan to take mechanics and partial differential equations in the fall). On the other hand, the more time I spend working in retail the harder it will be to pursue a career built upon the skills and experiences I've gained in astronomy and geology.

I've tried looking into atmosphere-related jobs (meteorology, Earth-observing satellites, etc) but don't meet many of the qualifications. My Python skills aren't robust enough for tech sector software jobs, and I don't have an active clearance which renders me ineligible for most jobs I'm seeing in defense. I used GIS for one class in college. I want to be able to use my degree in some fashion and find joy in what I do for work again.

Do you all have ideas on positions or sectors I should look into for jobs?