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Dear Dora,
One of my friends got to take off 6 weeks to study for their qualifying exam, but my PI says I should be in the lab until 2 weeks before it. I’m not sure that’s enough time and I’m getting stressed out. Is there any kind of rule that says how much time we should get to study for it?
– D, grad student
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Growing up, I was a stellar student. I majored in biochemistry/cell biology as an undergraduate and, immediately after college, entered a PhD program in cell biology. With my academic success and interest in science, it was an easy choice for me to follow a respectable career path that everyone, myself included, assumed would lead to a successful and stable career as a scientist. What could possibly go wrong?
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What’s scarier: Michael Meyers chasing you down the street with a knife -OR- Getting scooped as a 6th year grad student one week before submitting your manuscript? Being submerged in a pool of bloodsucking worms -OR- Contaminating the cell line it took you nearly two months to make? Spending the night in a haunted mansion alone with no electricity -OR- Discovering the plasmid you thought you were working with for the last five years is actually a completely different construct? Seems like every day is Halloween in lab…
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Hi. My name’s Belle. And I’m a recovering postdoc.
Maybe you think it will never happen to you. You were a successful graduate student. You got along with your dissertation adviser and your committee members. Your project progressed, and when it was stalled, you had something else to work on. You worked, you published, you defended, and you moved to the postdoc position of your dreams.
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One way or another, we’ve all ended up in science. As you talk to fellow scientists about how they got to where they are today, the answers are as diverse as the projects we work on. Some were influenced by a great teacher, some by their friends and others, it seems, were just born with a passion for science.
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Dear Dora,
I finished my PhD with a single publication, which was based on one of my 4 projects. The other projects were not completely finished, but I still generated useful data. My boss does not want to publish them. Can I go at it alone?
– Md Sha
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To illustrate the value of the H-index, we turn to a classic educational movie…Caddyshack. The uptight and competitive Judge Smails (played by Ted Knight) asks his new competition, Ty Webb (Chevy Chase):
Judge Smails: Ty, what did you shoot today?
Ty Webb: Oh judge, I don’t keep score.
Judge Smails: Then how do you measure yourself with other golfers?
Ty Webb: By height.
As scientists, we’re always looking for new ways to analyze, measure and compare things – including our own performance as scientists.
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Occasionally, we need to drop the assay, turn off the HPLC, freeze the cells and take a vacation. At first pass, disconnecting from lab sounds easy- as research seems like a profession in which making progress is heavily dependent on physically being in lab. After all, it’s hard to express and purify protein (other than melanin) while sitting on a beach in Aruba. Yet there are always papers to read, emails to respond to or friends to keep up with – and the internet has made it very hard to escape these responsibilities.
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I was trying to make a plasmid that had various parts from five other plasmids. Normally, I’d say “good luck” to anyone trying a three point ligation and so I considered a five point ligation to be a bit beyond mere mortals such as myself. But with the isothermal assembly reaction, the lab downstairs has had good luck with three and four point ligations. So it was worth a shot…
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Dear Dora,
I am a first year PhD student from a foreign country, and I work 12 or 13 hrs a day in a molecular biology lab. I get no guidance from my advisor and the people around me are unfriendly. I used to cook and play the ukulele but now I work all the time. I am exhausted and feel guilty, because I do not get good results. I am doubting this career choice, wondering whether I can do it, and approaching first year burnout.
A hopeless PhD student
