Flyceum: Your Science. Your Career.

I have lost count of the number of people to whom I’ve turned for advice regarding the optimal career path.  The beautiful thing about learning from other people’s experiences is that you come away with proof that things can work out (or not) if a certain course is taken.  The agonizing thing is that you ultimately have to make your own decision anyway.

In stark contrast to my first year of applying to graduate school, I was accepted this round to all of my programs of interest.  As encouraging as it is to be wanted, I somewhat wish that I was left with fewer options.  After a bit of grueling rumination, the decision came down to two programs.

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I survived graduate school interviews this year because of one very important mindset: they’re not just interviewing you; you are interviewing them.

In preparation for my four consecutive recruitment “weekends” (read: 15 days, 27 interviews, 2 committee meetings, 3 states, 6 flights), I scoured the interwebs for guidance.  My favorite resources were Philip Guo and Neurotypical.  And in the real world, I was fortunate to have the invaluable advice of my boss, our post doc, and the handfuls of graduate students currently enrolled in my programs of interest.  As is my nature, and that of many type-A research personalities, I over-prepared [read: way over-prepared].  In hindsight, it came down to three things:

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Ever see a news article title and have to do a double take?  Below I’ve outlined a couple of recent examples of how the headlines that the popular press shares with the public don’t always match up with what the scientific press actually reports. Or, as in most cases, how the report is twisted in such a way to make for a good “story”.

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Last week on 30 Rock Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and her show came under attack for playing into feminine stereotypes. A flashback to several sketches showed the punchline for each relying on PMS, with Jenna (Jane Krakowski) suddenly proclaiming she got her period and turning into a crazed and irrational human being. And then Liz followed suit, screaming at her writers “I just got my period, you’re all fired!” Maybe if she’d taken her fatty acid supplement she wouldn’t have experienced these symptoms, new research shows.

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“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” – Michael Corleone, just after trying to delete his Facebook account.

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The days of passively searching the Internet are over. We’re now expected to be active participants – try living without an email account – or risk looking like someone writing a check at a grocery store.  As our online activity and number of accounts across the web grows, managing our presence feels a lot like herding cats.  Fortunately, there is a simple solution that every scientist should examine – creating a homepage.

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So you had a great idea and you think it might be worth a few bucks.  That’s excellent, but your intuition will probably not be enough to move forward with the idea.  Not to mention that you may have to spend a few thousand dollars on IP protection before you move forward, so you’ll probably want to be somewhat certain your idea has value worthy of commercialization before you go spending that kind of money.  In order for you to ballpark the value of your invention, I’m going to give you some guidelines to perform your own very rough market research using nothing but your analytical capability and the tools you probably use everyday.

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Today we’re incredibly excited to kick-off our Scientist Homepage Challenge!  There are no good reasons scientists shouldn’t have a web presence and the great folks over at flavors.me agree.  We’re working together to enable scientists to create beautiful homepages and to reward the crowd favorites with a full year of premium services at flavors.me.  It only takes a few minutes, so during your next incubation, follow these three easy steps and join The Challenge!

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Dear Dora,

I’m a 6th year grad student and my boss has essentially written me off. He doesn’t support me at all and essentially acts like I’m an invisible person. Of course, now is the time when I need his help the most (pushing for graduation, finding a postdoc/job, letter of reference). How can I get him back on my side?

– Shan, grad student

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Today we’re unveiling our ‘Mind the Gap’ series, which dives deeper into stories that we feel deserved a bit more attention.  Each piece will contain it’s own “gap” to mind and the first reader to leave a comment with the missing word will get their name added to the blog and will receive a sweet new BenchFly mug!

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Ever see a news article title and have to do a double take? For example: “Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make an incredible discovery”. Sensational science headlines like that make me want to dig deeper and find out the truth. In this example the cited “source” is indeed a report on the effect that different forms of alcohol have on superconductivity, but there is no evidence that the scientists were drunk, or that their research was accidental in any way.

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