I write a lot about art school and my fellow students there – the projects we do, and the futures that face us. I’m surrounded by people who make things, and it can be a very insular community. But I also live with two roommates (Laura and Bea) in the sciences, two “women in STEM,” you could call them. They both have degrees in biochemistry, and one of them works in biotech – a real, decent-paying nine-to-five. It’s an alien world compared to my media exploits, a totally different path to take, and not without challenges.

STEM is where all the jobs are – that’s what they say when you study the humanities. It’s where all the money is, all the opportunity. But after my two friends graduated last spring, it took them both many months to find work in the industry. Ultimately, they both landed internships through LifeSci NYC, an organization that funds interns at life science companies all over the city. Laura went to work testing personal care products, and a few weeks later, Bea landed a gig making synthetic textile fibers. These were little start-ups, with small staffs and big dreams. My friends came home wiped out after long lab hours, talking about clients and research and trials. I was duly impressed.

Bea had that job for about a month. Then, out of the blue, her company went belly-up. They ran out of money, and just like that, the whole thing shut down. She told me this kind of thing happens in biotech, an industry full of ideas grasping for momentum. It’s a race for funding that her company did not win.

Laura’s company, on the other hand, is part of an incubator called JLabs, run by Johnson & Johnson. It occupies an entire floor of an office building in Soho, like a mini start-up business community. We all thought this was terribly ritzy, right down to the free espresso in the common area. But in reality, my friend is a bit of a puppet down there on the lowest rung, pipetting samples one after another. Her employment relies on perfection of a process she plays just one part in, and the slightest mistakes cause uproars. She warns me that STEM is not as cushy as it seems.

At least, for her, it’s not permanent. She has sent in her PhD applications for the fall, and answers are on their way in. She probably would’ve heard from a few more schools by now if not for the freeze on NIH grant decisions, which many of her ideal programs rely on.

Though I’m not on my way to a bioengineering PhD, I empathize with the confusion my friends are facing. These easy, straight-line paths into the workforce that we hear about are rarer than we think. I know precious few young people on any sort of surefire track. Among my artist friends, we’ve had to adopt a sort of Zen attitude about the future, and my STEM friends have had to do the same. Camaraderie of the young, you could call it.