I Could Do this, I Could Do this as a Job…
Some Personal Experiences from the ACS Career Event
Hero Winsor
Graduating college is scary. There’s no real way around it. You’re armed with a bachelor’s degree and a dream. As June grows closer you might be anxiously checking your inbox for emails from grad schools. You might be doom scrolling through online job searches looking at “entry level” jobs that say that they require 2 years of professional experience. Unless you already have something lined up after graduation, that anxiety might be pretty consuming.
On February 7th, I and other science students from Evergreen and colleges throughout the region attended the 20th annual Careers in Chemistry for Undergraduates Event. This was run by the Puget Sound Section of the American Chemical Society and was held at the Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma. While initially I had thought this event would include a job fair, and printed off several copies of my resume, I sadly didn’t end up handing out any of them. Regardless, the event still had useful information for chemistry students such as myself.
To kick it off, the career event started with a keynote speaker, Dr Brian Pinkard, from a local environmental remediation startup called Aquagga. The technology behind Aquagga is a mobile unit that destroys PFAS chemicals in water. The unit pairs treatment with alkali and high temperatures to break the carbon-fluorine bonds in PFAS chemicals, converting them into clean water and safe salts. PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances) consist of a chain of carbons surrounded by strong carbon-fluorine bonds. This makes them great at putting out fires in the form of firefighting foam found in most airports and military bases.These carcinogenic substances stick around in the water supply and have to be removed from drinking water using activated carbon filtration. Pinkard had originally wanted to create a startup vaguely around wastewater treatment but in talking with others in the field narrowed in on dealing with PFAS.
Throughout the career event, a recurrent theme is that working in science is far more flexible than one might think. During a panel discussion of local scientists in the area, most recounted paths winding from various specialties before arriving at their current careers in chemistry. Whether it be switching gears from forensics to environmental work or starting college later in life, no one had a linear progression. As someone who started studying hard science later in my college career, this instilled some confidence in me.
What may now push me from doom scrolling through jobs to applying to those jobs was the tour through the Center of Urban Waters. The facility was truly incredible with labs analyzing a huge range of compounds potentially present in the waters of Tacoma. For context, Evergreen has one gas chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS). At the Center for Urban Waters there were GCMS instruments as far as the eye could see. I can’t lie, I was a little bit giddy, but what struck me more than what they had more of, were the elements that mirrored my own studies. The professional chemists who welcomed us into their spaces were applying the same techniques I’d done in the lab the week before. I got the feeling that I could work in a lab like this in the not too distant future. It finally clicked that the years of experience I thought I needed was perhaps what I had already gained.
While I do wish I could have handed out a few resumes, the ACS career event made me a little less anxious. To all the other students graduating this year, I want you to give yourself some credit. Whether you’re in the sciences or not, whether you’ve learned how to use a piece of analytical equipment or dissect Shakespearean literature, it can be hard to truly acknowledge the skills we’ve gained. Not everyone knows what you know. It took work to get to where you are. Apply for that job you’ve been eying at 3 am, I’m rooting for you. I’m rooting for me.
