@Canageek I'm not exactly covered in glory, here. I made the disastrous mistake of interrupting a dull but fairly solid career of low-level office work to make a push to get back into college, made three tries to get into the Ph.D. chemistry program at the deeply unimpressive University of Washington, and eventually collected an M.S. degree as a sort of booby prize. I've never worked as a chemist except at UW, so my interest in chemistry is chiefly as a self-educated amateur.

@mona M. Sc. isn't so bad, at least in Canada. Lot of people I know get them then head off to industry, so don't sell yourself short.

@Canageek I was able to secure some interviews within the first year after I graduated but then everything dried up and I stopped trying after a while. It didn't help that I ended up working for a frankly not very good scientist with a tiny and impoverished research group, so I made few friends and learned few skills.

@mona Ah. That sucks. :(

@Canageek The P.I. was obsessed with trying to make nanoscale electrodes, pores, channels, &c. with benchtop equipment. It was a futile idea; he did develop some techniques based around the heavy use (not to say "abuse") of a CO2-laser micropipette puller to draw out gold wires, fused silica capillary tubing, &c. into very fine tips, and then trying to work with these. but reproducibility was more or less nil

@mona Blehhhhh

@Canageek yeah :( in general I got a very poor impression of the UW chemistry department. I got the impression the whole department was considered something of an anachronism, still clinging to life in an ancient building and getting so little funding that the department couldn't even keep a receptionist on staff.