Round and round I go...

I've concluded two things from my rotations: first, that I'm honestly not sure I like any one aspect of research (computation, theory, experiment) so well that I want to do just that, and second, that I don't want to do my PhD in any of these labs. They've all had their upsides, but in every case, the downsides of the lab far outweighs what I liked about it. In my first rotation,I realized that computational data analysis is really, really tedious, and also, that I was not too good at it. I did what I was asked to do, after considerable effort, but it was not something that came to me naturally. This was a disappointment, since I enjoy working with computers in general, and I liked my advisor a great deal.

My second rotation placed me with an advisor who was rarely around, and who gave me an entirely theoretical project that I worked on in isolation for the quarter. I enjoyed the work. I love mathematics, and learning the new math this work required was something I really liked. It's crossed my mind more than once that maybe I should've gone to graduate school for math instead of science. I was decent at physics, but I was much better at the purely mathematical aspect of physics than I was at transforming the physical problem into the math to begin with. And for this rotation, I taught myself abstract algebra, and then solved my problem. After consistently struggling to piece together the biophysics techniques, chemistry, and miscellaneous biological facts from my classes, it was striking to me to remember how clean and simple pure mathematics is. But I can't imagine joining that lab, particularly since the PI is apparently about to move to a different school (something I didn't know prior to agreeing to the rotation), and I had such little interaction with him I have no sense of what the lab is like.

My third and current rotation has me doing experiments again. It's alright. Working at the bench can be tedious, but you get to work with your hands, and its rewarding to know that you're generating your own data. People in this lab, however, are almost uniformly miserable and all caution me against joining for a variety of reasons. The uniformity of their bitterness (with one notable exception) gives me pause. And I think that, if I did join a purely experimental lab, I would be shelving my physics and mathematics background, probably for good. There's not room for that sort of approach in a pure biology lab, as I've slowly come to realize.

So, I'm not sure where this places me. I've decided to definitely do a summer rotation, but I don't think I can choose to do a 5th. It's really important that I choose the right lab for my next rotation. I don't know what I'll do if I don't like my summer rotation. I feel more and more certain that I could not work for the next five years in any of the labs I've been in so far. I suppose, if it comes down to it, I can always leave graduate school... Hopefully, it will not come to that. And it would seem a terrible waste, after all the work I've put into it so far.