> You essentially were at a disadvantage if you had a social life.
I actually think that is an incorrect myth. You can have a social life, you just have to pick social activities that are compatible with the grueling schedule. For example, I took up social dancing, which meets with a regular weekly pattern, and I was able to plan my experiments around it.
If you expect to have nonscientist friends that want to impromptu go out all weekend every weekend, well, that's maybe not going to happen, but I think that a lot of scientists use the process as an excuse to justify their social anxiety - the causal arrow here is in the wrong direction.
> You can have a social life, you just have to pick social activities that are compatible with the grueling schedule.
This was something I was never able to find. Maybe it was just me trying to justify my social anxiety, but the alternative to being in the lab always seemed to be all-night benders or similar. Envious you were able to find something. I should've been more proactive.
I was lucky enough to a postdoc pull me aside and say, "look you need to not be that guy" and pointed to another postdoc that was... embarassing. Scared the shit out of me. Up till that point in my life all of my social engagements had been handed to me on a platter (high school, and esp. college), and although I'm a social person, it was very good rude awakening to tell me that I had to work for what I wanted in life.
I actually think that is an incorrect myth. You can have a social life, you just have to pick social activities that are compatible with the grueling schedule. For example, I took up social dancing, which meets with a regular weekly pattern, and I was able to plan my experiments around it.
If you expect to have nonscientist friends that want to impromptu go out all weekend every weekend, well, that's maybe not going to happen, but I think that a lot of scientists use the process as an excuse to justify their social anxiety - the causal arrow here is in the wrong direction.