Graduate school can be pretty overwhelming at first. So many questions, so few answers. With all of these new responsibilities, it’s hard to know how to prioritize them. As a result, every decision can seem epic and therefore incredibly stressful.
What’s the Most Valuable Part of Grad School?
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How to Perform Colony PCR
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Ligations can be painful. Let’s just get that out of the way up front. When I was first learning them as a grad student they were significantly more painful because I had no idea how sensitive they were to the amount of DNA added. So as a beginner, I thought “I’m having trouble getting this insert to go in, I’ll just add more insert.” Bad call.
Lessons from EM Purcell
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Sundays represent many things to many people. For chemists, this Sunday marks the birthday of physicist E.M. Purcell, discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Born on August 30, 1912, Purcell discovered NMR in 1945 and shared the Nobel Prize in 1952 with Felix Bloch, who independently discovered it one month after Purcell.
Bananas: Chemists in Little Yellow Labcoats
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Until we perfect the teleporter, transporting fruit will always pose a problem – particularly when the transport involves thousands of miles. However, by elucidating the mechanisms of ripening for individual fruits, producers have developed reliable methods of transportation, which is why we can enjoy a banana split in the middle of winter.
Technology Transfer: Applying the PhD Away from the Bench
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Training to be a research scientist as a graduate student and postdoc does not mean that our only career options are at the bench. In fact, these days more than ever, Ph.D.s are finding new opportunities to apply their expertise to a diverse range of exciting career paths. We spoke with Nicole Mahoney, Ph.D. about her decision to pursue a position in technology transfer and how the skills she learned in her graduate and postdoctoral work benefit her now.
The Non-U.S. Postdoc, Part 2
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Life as a new postdoc is tough. Life as a new postdoc in a new country can be tougher. In Part 2 of our interview with Wesley Straub, Ph.D. (Read Part 1 here) we asked the former postdoc to provide a survival guide for the first six months of the position. Here’s a breakdown of what to expect when starting a foreign postdoc.
The Non-U.S. Postdoc, Part 1
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Choosing a postdoc is a very important decision in a scientist’s career. Selecting the P.I., institution and field are all factors in creating the perfect springboard for our careers. However, where you perform the postdoc can be just as important. To help understand the realities of selecting a postdoc outside of the United States, we talked with Wesley McGinn-Straub, Ph.D. about his decision to perform a postdoc in Germany.
Say it with us: Vay…cay…shin
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Circle the word that doesn’t fit: Notebook, Bacteria, Spreader, Transform, Vacation.
If you selected “Vacation”, you’d be…
Polypropylene vs Polystyrene
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I sometimes feel like there is only one way to learn anything in lab: the hard way. A lot of little details in lab go unmentioned, yet can make or break an experiment, and you won’t know it until things either don’t work, or go horribly awry. Losing a day and a half because you didn’t realize that all plastic is not created equal falls into the latter category. Losing someone else’s day and a half is, well, infinitely worse.
Why Did I Become a Scientist?
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This is a question that I asked myself a lot through grad school and well into my post-doc. The phrasing was a little different though. The question I asked myself was something more like “why in the hell am I putting myself through this crap?” Everyone figures that the process of becoming an independent scientist will be an academically challenging one, but what one may not count on is that it is also psychologically challenging.
