While nearly all of us face challenges during our postdoctoral years, we often feel alone in our struggles. In this series, we hope to share encouraging and uplifting stories of how other scientists were able to turn their situation around and move forward, despite a non-ideal situation. Like snowflakes, fingerprints, and nightmares, every postdoctoral experience is unique, so today we share the Postdoc Story of another successful scientist.
My Postdoc Story: Pre-faculty Fellow
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How to Manage Junior Labmates Who are Older than You
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Dear Dora,
I am currently half way through my Ph.D. Recently a new Ph.D. candidate joined our group. She is 35 this year while I’m in 25. She used to be a lecturer in another private university. She always bragged and boasted about her knowledge and achievements prior to joining our team. But then again, things turned out rather differently. She doesn’t seem to have basic lab skills like using the pH meter and unable to use some common sense in doing everyday work. In our culture, the older ones want respect from the younger ones but they don’t understand respect is something to be earned. The new Ph.D. student is also very egoistic despite her lack of experience in labwork but she constantly needs us to teach her. Some of the instruments were spoilt due to her negligence and her reluctance to ask–how should we deal with her? How do we deal with “juniors” who are very much older than us, in terms of age. I have been working in the lab for 3 years so I have a few publications which clearly demonstrated my ability while she has none. In certain ways I feel she is jealous of my achievement. What can I do? How can I improve the situations without hurting her feelings?
-Anonymous
Nanoparticles and Proteins, Part I
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Dear BenchFly readers,
I’ve been absent for far, far too long, and before anything else, I’ll need to apologize for that. This new Enzyme Corner article will thus serve a dual-function: 1) telling a new enzyme/protein story, which is far overdue, and 2) bringing you up to speed on what I’ve been up to lately.
[Continue Reading…]
Using Your PhD Outside of Research
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Dear Dora,
Are there certain career paths outside of research where the PhD dramatically helps your career advancement? I’m a third-year grad student planning on leaving the bench (to do what, I’m not sure) but I feel like I’m half way there so if getting the letters is important I could tough it out.
—MM, grad student
The Broken Graduate Education Experience
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The life of a scientist can be very hard. Some of us find ourselves fighting through graduate school and postdoctoral fellowships, battling for jobs in a saturated job market, and then bootstrapping our way through the progression of our career trajectory. Regardless of that, obtaining a PhD is extraordinarily rewarding and impactful to society!
The Conferencation: Adding Personal Time to a Scientific Meeting
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Dear Dora,
Any tips on how to tack a vacation on to a conference without my PI getting angry? I’m traveling to a conference in a great location and I want to stay an extra week after the conference (which itself is a week long), but I’m really nervous to tell the boss.
-RJ, graduate student
My (non)Postdoc Story: Marketing at Scientific Publisher
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While nearly all of us face challenges during our postdoctoral years, we often feel alone in our struggles. In this series, we hope to share encouraging and uplifting stories of how other scientists were able to turn their situation around and move forward, despite a non-ideal situation. Like snowflakes, fingerprints, and nightmares, every postdoctoral experience is unique, so today we share the (non)Postdoc Story of another successful scientist.
Keeping Preliminary Results Private with an Overexcited PI
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Dear Dora,
Is there a nice way to tell your boss to “keep his trap shut”?! Every time I share preliminary results, I find out later he tells our collaborators and a few times this has backfired when I wasn’t able to validate my preliminary result. I know I could just stay quiet until the data are validated, but I value his input and don’t want to lose his insights and feedback simply because I can’t trust him to keep new results quiet.
-Angie, graduate student
Rules of a Scientist’s Life
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We’re three weeks into the new year. By now, most of us have decided that the “all organic raw nuts and berries” diet we were so gung ho about probably isn’t going to make it into February. Nor is the six-days-a-week workout schedule we undertook on January 2nd, after the hangover wore off. For now, three days a week will do. By March, we won’t even remember which gym we signed up with. Reflecting upon the over-optimistic personal goals we set for ourselves every January, we pondered whether their were rules of a scientist’s life that we should adhere to at all times, regardless of the month.
2012: A Killer Year Impossible Without You…and You…and You
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As 2012 winds down and people start hiding their pipetman stash in anticipation of heading home for the holidays, we wanted to take a minute to reflect on the year and say thanks to those who helped make it a great success.
