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Dear Dora,
I recently completed my postdoc (finally!) and took a job at a small company, who shall remain nameless. I am generally a very respectful person, both of people’s position within the company and their tenure there. However, there seems to be one employee who is technically lower than me by title, but who has been at the company for 6 years and they treat me like I’m their personal technician. I don’t want to be a jerk, but how can I make it clear that they’re supposed to do what I say, not the other way around?
Newby, Scientist I
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I am terrified of cockroaches. The high-pitched-screaming, jumping-on-a-chair, shaking-in-my-boots kind of terrified. Before my department moved into the lovely facility I work in now, the labs were located in a rather dilapidated building that was infested with South American cockroaches. They usually hung out in the autoclave room, but every so often they would venture out for a joyride in the elevator. After discovering this the hard way, I exclusively took the stairs. (more…)
Given that finely-honed writing skills are an essential component of successful research, it should come as no surprise that many graduate students and postdocs gravitate toward science journalism as a career option. What is surprising, however, is the lack of guidance we’re given in pursuit of this goal. To see how one scientist made the transition, we spoke with Katharine Sanderson, freelance science writer and former chemist, about her unconventional path to journalism and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
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A member of my dissertation committee once remarked “Grades will keep you in graduate school but research will get you out.” The implication was that coursework is a necessary evil on the road to a Ph.D. Indeed, most of the discussions on BenchFly focus on research projects, research advisors, scoring the big paper or passing the dreaded prelim exam. However, the fact is that graduate students spend most of their first year-and-a-half or two years taking courses while they do research rotations and begin their research projects. Someone is paying for that coursework, students are spending a lot of time taking it, and faculty are spending time teaching it. So what is everyone getting for their money and time?
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By the end of the day I feel like I’m covered in “lab”. So when my friends want to go out after work I really feel like I need to go home to regroup, but home is too far away- not practical. Is there anything I can do in the dingy bathroom at lab to refresh?
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Dear Dora,
My PI often overstates my results when he presents my work in talks. How do I know if it’s just a little bit of hype versus being a lie, or even worse unethical?
- TJ, grad student
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To say email changed the way we communicate is like saying Saturday morning group meeting is a bad idea – it’s obvious. For most of us, email (including messaging through Facebook and related sites) is the reason we write with the penmanship of a second-grader. (For those born after 1990, “writing” means holding a pen in your hand and physically creating the letters and words on a piece of paper that would then be mailed to the recipient. “Mail” means…) Since it’s inception, people have debated the appropriateness of sending an email versus a physical letter for a range of life’s occasions. In our professional lives we fear choosing the wrong vehicle will put an end to our candidacy before our merits are even considered. Accordingly, one of the most common questions we receive from the lab is whether we should contact potential postdoctoral advisors by email or a traditional letter.
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One of my biggest pet peeves is “vague-booking”. You know, when people change their Facebook status to read “sigh” or “really?” or “I can’t believe that just happened :(“. Vague with a capital “V”. I know that the author of these atrocities just wants someone to ask them what happened, or express concern that they had a tough day, but my response is the exact opposite. To put it gently, I start to dislike the vague-booker.
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Many events in life come with defined timetables. It takes 21 years to buy alcohol, four years to avenge an Olympic loss, and 11 seconds to lose your lunch if watching a Real Housewives episode. Yet in our scientific lives the time required to complete our most important milestones are undefined and arbitrary. Is five years just right for grad school, too much for postdocs and not enough for tenure decisions? Catalyzed by numerous conversations with fellow scientists, we’ve decided to examine each phase of our career development pathway to determine whether the phases are truly optimized for our success, or whether it’s time to overhaul the system.
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Dear Dora,
What’s the best way to get the conversation going about graduation dates with your PI?
- Henry, grad student
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