From Molecules to Memories: Why I Switched Fields
Work has been on my mind lately. When I worked in a pharmacy, the definition of work was simple, almost insultingly so: Work was the time between unlocking the door in the morning and locking it again in the evening. It was the hours for which I received a generous salary, the hours during which I stood behind a counter and handed out boxes of things that promised the illusion of control.
And yet, this neat division — work here, life there — bothered me more than I ever admitted at the time. I didn’t like how I felt at the end of the day: relieved, grateful that another shift had finally ended. I didn’t like that the last ten or fifteen minutes felt unbearable, as if time itself had developed a limp. Those final customers were always the most annoying ones, the ones who arrived with complicated questions, vague symptoms, or a mysterious inability to read opening hours. I wanted them to leave; I wanted to leave; I wanted the whole messy world of the pharmacy to evaporate so I could go home and not think about work for even one second.
Except, of course, the inner separation never actually happened. At home, I replayed scenes from the pharmacy like a director who couldn’t stop rewatching her own mediocre film. I questioned my decisions, doubted my instincts, wondered whether I had done the right thing or the wrong thing or the catastrophically wrong thing. Working in a pharmacy means always feeling guilty — guilty for what you did, guilty for what you didn’t do, guilty for what you might have done if you had been a better version of yourself. It is a profession built on the quiet suspicion that you could have done more for human health.
Take aspirin, for example: Any decent pharmacist should ask why someone wants it, what else they’re taking, whether they know the side effects. In theory, you should deliver a miniature TED Talk on responsible NSAID use. In reality, though, pharmacists do none of this. Not because they don’t care, but because it is emotionally exhausting and annoys people — especially in Vienna, where the average customer has the patience of a startled pigeon. No one has time for the aspirin interview: not the pharmacist, not the customer, not the universe. And since people are not used to being questioned when buying aspirin, they often get defensive. “Why are you asking me this?” their eyes say. “Do I look like someone who can’t handle an aspirin?”
On the other hand, not asking means you’re not doing your job. You’re not protecting people from medication overuse, not preventing interactions, not catching the subtle signs that something more serious might be going on. So you stand there, trapped between two equally unappealing options: annoy the customers or fail them. It’s a lose‑lose situation, the kind that makes you want to crawl under the counter and pretend to be a box of chamomile tea.
Looking back, I realize that what bothered me wasn’t the work itself but the way it divided my life into two incompatible halves: the part where I performed competence, and the part where I replayed my failures. And although working in the pharmacy did have one beautiful aspect — getting to know all the layers of society and forming unlikely connections with people I would never have met otherwise — the moment I stepped out of that career, I knew I wasn’t going back. The affection for certain moments and certain people was real, and I carry it with me, but affection alone cannot redeem a kind of work that made me feel like I was constantly falling short, constantly failing to improve people’s lives in the way they hoped or needed. Pharmacy gave me glimpses of humanity at its most vulnerable, but it also left me with the heavy, unshakeable sense that whatever I did was never quite enough — and no amount of fondness can outweigh a life lived under that kind of emotional gravity.
And I want to be as fair and responsible as I possibly can about this subject: Pharmacists make small contributions every day, helping people in countless ways — calming anxieties, offering advice, catching mistakes, guiding someone toward the right medication. I did all of these things regularly. But my problem was that I never felt I was doing all the things I could do to help. I always felt caught between what I should do and what people would tolerate, between the ideal of care and the reality of impatience, advertising, and the quiet pressure of small enterprises as well as big industries. That constant sense of falling short, of not doing enough, became its own quiet frustration — one that followed me home and refused to let me rest.
What feels right about my current path in history is not whether I feel like I am making a difference (I certainly do), but that this difference finally feels enough. That is why even the smallest contribution feels so meaningful: a clarified source, a conversation that encourages a student, a piece of research that adds a new layer of understanding. For the first time, my work expands the world without caveats — it builds something, opens something, illuminates something.
And yes, perhaps my papers will not be widely read, and perhaps the difference I make for society will always remain small. I truly don’t know what the future will bring for me as a historian. But what matters to me is the feeling that I am giving myself fully to what I believe is right — that I am not holding back out of fear, or shrinking out of obligation, or living in a way that makes me feel I am letting someone down. If the impact remains tiny, then let it be tiny; at least it is completely honest, and at least it is completely mine.
Perhaps this clarity about knowing what I want now also comes from understanding what I didn’t want before. I was never interested enough in biochemistry to go deep, to become the kind of researcher who spends years chasing molecular pathways with genuine passion. And for all the other career paths in pharmacy, I simply never felt I could give myself fully to the work. The meaning was partly there, but never sufficient — never strong enough to justify the emotional weight the job demanded. Once I realized that, the decision to leave felt less like a departure and more like a quiet return to myself.
History, with all its pros and cons, never feels like work to me — not only because it feels enough, but because I am endlessly, almost comically, interested in human behavior, both past and present. That’s why I can commit between Monday and Sunday, from dusk till dawn, without ever feeling the need to escape from it. It feels like play, like joy, like something I’d do anyway, even if no one paid me a cent. It feels like slipping into a space where curiosity is its own currency, where attention becomes a form of affection, where the hours pass without resistance and without the slightest sense of sacrifice. When I scan old photographs, it feels like touching the past with my fingertips, as if I were briefly borrowing someone else’s memory; when I teach, it feels like watching ideas wake up in real time, stretching their limbs, blinking into the light. So far (and I truly hope it won’t change), history has never asked me to split myself into versions or to carry guilt home at night. It simply invites me to show up — fully, curiously, foolishly — and rewards me with the quiet miracle of doing something that feels right in my bones. Money is just a bonus, although a necessary one. The real payment is the feeling that I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I was meant to do.
