I really would like to do research in a specific field, but I’m just so worried about the bureaucracy and horror stories of academia. I mean I’ve had to operate in bureaucratic environments, but it just seems so antithetical to what my actual goals would be. Just the amount of bureaucracy I’ve encountered trying to get into universities has rubbed me wrong.

Sadly I couldn’t remotely afford the equipment to do things on my own (nor do I think I could handle the initial learning workload these days without some structure).