Naturally Obsessed

For my research course, we recently watched Naturally Obsessed:The Making of a Scientist. It was a public television special about the research experience in grad school. It followed several students and their PI (principal investigator) in a lab at a college in New York. They were doing biological research, so not everything in the movie completely applied to me. It did help to put perspective on what the research experience in grad school would be like.
These particular students spent a great deal of time working on the same project. They had to repeat the procedure for their experiment thousands of times over multiple years before getting any results. This would put a lot of stress on anyone. For my research in grad school, I don't really think that I will be repeating the same general procedure over several years, but I will probably spend several years in grad school just the same. Throughout all the years they spent in grad school, they only made around $24,000 a year and didn't have very much time for anything but research. It will take quite a bit of perseverance to get through that experience, but I think I have the dedication to do it. I think that the joy of discovery would be better than making a good deal of money answering to a superior and designing products for a company.
The movie showed the graduate students' experiences in the lab quite well. Seeing them being frustrated because their experiment didn't yield any results time and time again put things into perspective. It seems that in order to succeed in grad school, you don't only need to know the subject matter, you need to have extreme patience. Judging from what I've heard from my professors and what I saw in the film, the end result when you finish getting your PhD is quite rewarding. While the film was rather intimidating, I still am eager as ever to get to grad school.
My research experience for this course so far has been very positive. The independence in my research is a great new experience. I am finding answers to things that I don't already have an answer for. The fact that I am making conclusions about something that is over 90 light-years away from me, something I can most likely never reach in my lifetime, is thrilling. I don't think any other job in the field of science would fit me as well as research will. From what I've seen, with a good mentor and PI for my research, grad school will be a great experience.
There seem to be a lot of burdens to carry that come from going into grad school, but I knew from  the start it wouldn't be easy. I am hoping to do things that no one has ever done before. With time and hard work I may achieve that. If I don't try to achieve my dreams, no matter how unlikely they are, I will have absolutely no chance to achieve them. I plan to give it my all and hope for the best.