Too many thoughts

I've had a lot of ideas for blog posts lately, but haven't been able to get any of them onto paper in any meaningful way. So here are some random bullets of things I've been thinking about and that I hope to flesh out in longer posts later.

• I had a conversation this week that for the first time got me thinking about women in science. I've never felt like being a woman changed the way my work was seen or how people interacted with me. But I had a conversation wherein a senior researcher in my area described another female scientist to me in a way that, while very kind, made it clear that this other woman was kind of a bitch and insecure. Now I know that he meant this as just a way for me to understand this other woman's approach and as a warning of how to interpret interactions with her in the future. But it made me wonder, would he ever describe a male researcher in the same way? There's a long blog post in there somewhere, but I have to keep thinking before I can get it out.
• Lab notebooks, is there any 'best' way to keep one? I've been trying different methods for years now and I'm still not sure if there's a really good way to do it.
• Working with and living with your partner can be challenging. When things are good, it's awesome, but when things get a little weird at home, it makes going to work even weirder.
• My undergrad helpers are awesome! They are considerate, polite, hard workers, who work really well together as a team. I'm so proud of them! Not sure how I managed to make this work, but I have some theories on why they are doing so well...that may be worth writing about.
• I'm missing home. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while, I miss my old school. I miss my old friends, my old coworkers, I miss knowing how everything worked. I miss all of it right now. No real reason, things here are great, I just miss that comfortable feeling you get when you are in a setting that totally makes sense to you and where you are around people you have known for years.
• Balance. How the hell do you do it? I need to learn how to balance my life. I either feel like I'm totally wrapped up in work, or that I'm blowing off work to spend time on things outside of it. I need to learn how to balance the two.
• Focus. I seem to have lost my focus entirely. I can't make myself focus for more than a few minutes before my mind wanders and I'm off checking email or facebook. How do I make myself stop doing that? The answer may be more caffeine. I have to figure that out too!

So there's what I've been thinking about. I'm not sure that anyone is actually reading this, but so I'll just post next about one of those things. But if anyone is reading this and wants to read about any of that, let me know.

Note to undergrads working in labs:

It is really not cool to come in in the morning wearing the clothes you so obviously wore 'out' last night.

I appreciate that you are going home to change during the waiting periods of your experiment, but....

Could you not just pack a change of clothes in your car/bag so that when you wake up, wherever it is that you wake up, that you would have clean clothes to put on before going to work?

Now you are an adult and can therefore do whatever you want, but...I hate that the other people in the lab are talking about you and the wardrobe changes between the morning and afternoons.

I hired you because you are amazing and this does not change my opinion of your abilities in the lab. In fact, I'm impressed that you are coming in before going home, that's awesome!

I just really hate how it makes you look. And I'm sad that it matters, but it does...

Just a thought...

Attitude

It seems like it's that time of year again, when new people arrive to work in the lab.

This is interesting. Last year I was one of the new people so I didn't get to observe things the way I do this year.

Some thoughts:

1. I think it's best to come into a new place humble and willing to learn. I find it amazing how many people show up seeming to think they know everything already. Now, I am willing to admit that I don't know how much of this attitude is just a defense mechanism / a way to make themselves feel better. Regardless, I can't make myself like/respect these people. I just can't relate to it.

2. How much of the attitude a new person adopts has to do with the person training them? There are 2 new people here that I'm thinking of. One being trained by a quiet diligent worker and one being trained by a loud, fairly lazy worker. It appears at this point, that they are adopting the attitudes of the people training them. Is this the case? Or do they get assigned to be trained by people that the PIs think are most like them? I don't know if there's an answer to this question, but I'm curious to see if other people see this too.

3. Smiling makes a huge difference in how I see people. Of the 2 new people, one smiles all the time, the other doesn't. I like the one that smiles and really dislike the one that doesn't. Is this just me too?

4. I'm sure there is a TON of social psych research on this topic, but it's amazing to me how I decide a person's merit and worth based on their outward attitude and appearance. Maybe I'm shallow, but the new person who is cranky and frowning all the time...I just don't like them. They've been here a few weeks and I've tried, but I can't get past the outward attitude.

I guess what I'm saying here is what has been said a million times in other places...attitude is everything.

I've just never seen it presented quite like this before.

It worked

Quick update...my experiment from last week worked.

Well, to be more correct, the first one from last week worked...the second one, not so much.

But this is progress.

I did it!

Well, as promised, it's time to blog about my first attempt at this new technique.

It went...well let's say that it was a medium success.

Not bad for a first attempt...at least I think it's not bad.

So this new technique is supposed to be really simple. I mean REALLY simple. It's supposed to work ALL the time.

My first attempt was last week...I got in early, did some prep and then started. It was SOOOO much harder than I thought it would be. I've been watching people do this for weeks now so I thought I knew what I was doing. -Why don't I believe my own advice? I tell my undergrads all the time that watching and doing are very different and that even though you think you know how to do it when you are watching, that you don't really know until you do it. - This is good advice...I might should listen to it sometime.

Because boy was it different! The first big difference is actually using some of the equipment. It's really really really old. I thought I knew how to work it, I mean I'd watch people do it a bunch of times. Shocker...I did not know how to use it. I had to get someone to show me again! But after doing it, I think I might finally, actually know how to use it! PROGRESS!

Then it was on to actually running the experiment. WOW. The people I'd watched have been running this experiment for YEARS and they just made it look so easy! They alwasy had plenty of time, were totally calm, and just walked through the process. That's not so much how it went for me. I was frantic! There are a lot of time-sensitive parts of this experiment, requiring the use of 3 different timers...that was new all on its own. But to keep that many moving parts clear in my head and to be able to remember what came next was so much harder than I thought.

Without having done it before, I also didn't know just how to set everything up. So I didn't know how to operationalize things or how to multi-task. That meant that an experiment that should have taken a few hours took me ALL DAY LONG! I didn't eat lunch until late afternoon and I have never been so tired! I felt like I was running around the whole time!

And, to top it all off. That experiment, the one that is supposed to work ALL the time...it didn't really work. It kinda worked, in that the drug did what it was supposed to, but the whole thing was about an order of magnitude off of where it should have been. Fun right?

So I did it again today. It went so much better! I felt mostly calm (there were still parts that freaked me out) but it was SO much better than last time. And...the best part...check it out...I was done by EARLY afternoon! This means that I shaved HOURS off the time it took! Now does that translate into decent results? I'll know tomorrow. But for now, I did it!

Today I was all by myself. I planned it so that I would have to be by myself. It's too easy to ask for help if people are around, so by planning to do it when no one would be in the lab, I forced myself to figure it out. This is always the best way for me to learn. I never really learn things until I do it myself. **This has been the story of my life by the way, and a post for another day.**

But I did it! Today, from start to finish, I was on my own and it went well. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but it was a million times better than last week.

So thank you blog, for being a place for me to record this monumental event. Today, I ran my first biochemical assay all by myself! It feels so good to be able to say this. It means that I'm not stuck, that I CAN learn new things, and that even if I don't care at all about something, I still have the ability to force myself through it and come out successful on the other side. I tend to forget that I can do that.

This is a big day for me blog. A big day.

-----The results will be ready tomorrow. I'll let you know how it went...

Where to do a post-doc?

So I've been reading a lot of blogs lately that have been talking about where people do thier post-docs. And whether or not the institution matters as much as the lab.

It's been making me review the decision I made a year and a half ago. I'm very happy where I am and of the choices I had, I really think I made the right one. But it was HARD!

I got a lot of advice from a lot of different people.

I was fortunate. I had choices, which in this job market and this economy, is no small feat. I'm not sure how this happened. In my field I'm really behind in publishing. I mean REALLY far behind. And I was told repeatedly that it would hurt my chances of finding a job. ---In my defense, and I'm pretty sure that this is why it didn't matter, my lab just wasn't publishing a lot. Like maybe 3 papers in my 8 years. So I suppose that my lack of publications may have been chalked up to my lab. We'll see.

But I also came from a lab that wasn't well known. My PI wasn't a superstar, or a rising star. He was just, him. A nice guy who just started to fall out of love with science. I thought that would be a problem too...but it wasn't.

I did the job search almost entirely on my own. Well, really, all on my own. I started because I just got fed up with being a grad student and wanted to know if there were any options for me. So I emailed my research idol to thank him for a protocol he made available and then mentioned that if he ever needed a post-doc to let me know.


Well holy crap, it worked. We started emailing and decided to meet at a conference. The meeting went well and I was invited out to give a talk and see the lab.


While I was going to this conference, I decided to put my CV up on their job searching site and got another interview through that. It was with a lab that I had never heard of and didn't know anything about, but I figured I'd interview anyway. What could it hurt? I met with the PI from this lab at the conference too and had a great chat. It was interesting and the PI was really nice! Within a week I had an invitation to go out to see the place/give a talk. ---Spoiler alert---This is the job I have now.

Over drinks with my PI at the conference I was told that I hadn't applied for enough jobs and that I really needed to do more if I ever wanted to actually get a job. So I applied for a job at an Ivy League university, that I never thought I'd get. This way, I thought, I can say that I applied for more jobs. Well, suprise suprise! I got a phone interview. Which turned into a visit out to said amazing university.


The visits all went well. I gave talks at all of them. Got to experience each place, and decided, much to my suprise, to take the job with a lab that did some completely different work than mine and was a job I'd never even really thought to consider.

The whole point of this post, is to say that I had some faculty members on my committee who thought I made the perfect choice, and some that thought I'd made a HUGE mistake by not going to the Ivy League school. The truth is that the lab at the Ivy League school just wasn't a good fit for me. I didn't really like the PI and the research just wasn't that interesting to me. But I was told over and over that it didn't matter what the research was, that I really needed to have that school's name on my CV.

It's too early to tell if that's true. I'm only a year into my post-doc and don't really know yet what the next job search will look like.


I guess I just really wanted to say that all of this talk about institution vs PI/lab for post-doc has gotten me thinking again.


I'm still really sure I made the right choice, but sometimes, I do wonder...

Working

Well, I've started learning the new technique that I didn't want to learn. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. It's not super fun, and I'll probably NEVER do it again, but I will say that it's nice to learn something new.

It's been a while since I've learned something completely new and I had forgotten about how much fun it can be. That is once I've gotten over how stupid I feel.

We'll see..should be an interesting few weeks. With any luck I'll get to run an assay by the end of the week and I can then regail you with amazing stories of my screw-ups.

Wish me luck!

One more thought...

Before I put my head down and focus for the rest of the afternoon...back to my 'manuscript that won't go away'...I had one more thought.

If you are the PI of a lab. And you hire a new person to work as a tech in that lab. It might be in your best interest to talk to this new employee and make sure that they understand appropriate lab attaire.

Just in case you were wondering...it is NOT okay to wear tube top dressess every day to work in a lab. It is also NOT okay to wear sandals and shorts to work in the lab.

This is not a hard concept.

And there are nice ways of doing it. There are ways of presenting this information in a safe (non-sexual harassment lawsuit endangering), encouraging way, in which the employee understands that you are looking out for their safety and not trying to be mean or demean them. I have LOTS of thoughts on how this can be phrased!

But as far as I can tell you have one, exactly ONE chance to tell this new employee about how to dress. Because if you don't do it as soon as you hire them, and they wear this crap for weeks, and you don't say anything, you lose the ability to EVER say anything about it EVER!

Rant over...I just had to get that off my chest. Because really? No one at work needs to see that much of your skin. And really? Do you really want chemicals spilt all over you? Cuz I sure don't!

Back to work!

Expanding Horizons

In my new lab I have a set of skills that no one else has. That's been really fun! I love what I do and I really love that no one else does it. I like getting to explain my work to the group and being able to provide my PI with data he wouldn't have been able to get otherwise.

But, part of the plan when I took this job was that I would bring my skills and that I would, in exchange, learn some of theirs. It sounded great! It still sounds great in theory.

The problem is that I'm not really into what they do. They do some cool work, don't get me wrong, but it's just not work that I've ever been interested in. Not only that, but it doesn't really compliment the work that I do.

Well things have been going on in the building (construction), that has made it impossible for me to do the work that I like to do. I have a TON to do, but the materials I work with are sensitive to vibrations and the jack-hammering that's been going on makes it so that I can't do what I want.

This construction will likely continue until the end of the month. And while I would love to just spend my time working on my 'manuscript that just won't go away', I have to do something else. I just can't sit at my desk any more.

So I'm trying to learn some new techniques. It's hard though. It's just not that interesting. And I feel like a fraud. I've always loved my research and worked very hard to make sure that I really only did things that were interesting. Of course as a grad student I've done stuff that wasn't thrilling, but for the most part, I've really been into my research! My philosophy has been that research is hard enough without really liking what you're doing, so you had better LOVE what you do. And so far it's worked.

But not now.

It feels like whining to complain about not really liking what I'm learning. But that's how I feel. I'll do it, because the work has to be done and there aren't a ton of people to do it. And I'll learn new things because, as my PI tells me, it's time to expand my horizons...but it's so hard to fake it!

There may be some interesting posts in the next few weeks as I push myself out of my comfort zone and try this new stuff. I'm sure to have some great stories about my epic failures. And that alone may be good for me.

But I really don't want to.

I'm going to be a grown up and do it...but it's just so hard for me to not love what I'm doing.

Writing

So I have this manuscript that I've been trying to work on for about a year now. I hate it. There are just a few more paragraphs to write and then with a little editing it will be done. But I can't seem to get myself to do it.

Part of the problem is that I think I'm just burnt out on the topic...been looking at it for too long. The other part is that this last section is on an area that doesn't come naturally to me. It takes me a very very long time to read through things and figure out what I want to say.

The other part of the problem is that it should have been done a year ago. A YEAR ago! And it's taken me so long now that it just seems so much harder to write.

I'm not sure how to fix this problem. I don't know how to make myself do it.

So I'm just forcing myself to do it. I hate it though. And I'm finding that I'll do ANYTHING before I work on the manuscript. That's why I'm writing this post. Because maybe if I write about how guilty I feel for not having finished this stupid thing already that maybe it will motivate me to finish it.

I'll let you know if it works.

This must happen to other people. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get past it?

Meetings

There are days when I just love my research group! We have a meeting once a week, every week, and it can be torture sometimes. But there are rare weeks, when that hour or so is just refreshing. Today was one of those days.

The group was supportive, encouraging, and the meeting was just fun. In grad school I don't feel like I got a lot of good scientific discussion outside of the classroom and I think that's what I love most about where I am now.

Today was amazing. Last week was too now that I think about it. I'm not sure if this is because I'm finally starting (after a year) to feel comfortable with this group, or if I'm just finding my voice as a scientist, but I love it!

I love feeling like I can contribute to the group. That I can understand and follow conversations that a year ago were foreign. And I really love that I feel like I'm being heard.

Anyway, in a world where really good days and really good meetings are few and far between, it's amazing to have a day when things just feel right!

A little about myself

I guess it's time to tell you a little about myself. I finished my Ph.D. a little over a year ago in a broad field at the intersection of social science and life science. I've since left grad school city (GRC) and moved to post-doc city (PDC) where I am much happier.

I put most of my life on hold to focus on grad school. This may not have been the best decision, but it worked for me. So now I'm rediscovering life with weekends and enjoying every second. My significant other (SO) is in a related field which makes for some fun and lively dinner-table discussions. We moved together from GRC to PDC and have been so much happier now that we are out of GRC.

Grad school was a challenge for me. I had a difficult advisor to work with. In the grand scheme of things he wasn't that bad (I've heard stories of much worse advisors) but it was a struggle for me to work with him. He is a great person, just not the best at guidance. But despite those challenges, and many others that may or may not make it into the blog, I've finished and escaped!

I did the post-doc job search mostly on my own. I'm not sure how I managed, but I pulled it off and am more proud of that accomplishment that just about any other. Not only did I find a job for myself but I managed to be able to help SO to find one as well. It worked out better than I could have ever imagined! This is likely due to my skill set/area of expertise that enables me to adapt to many different lab environments.

It's been an interesting year full of firsts. This is the first time I've moved as an adult from the state I grew up in, and I've been doing all kinds of activities that I never thought I'd try.

This is all inentionally vague, but it should give you a little better sense of who I am.

When working in a lab...

Don't wear your lab coat into the bathroom

Don't wear open-toed sandals

Don't wear shirts that show your belly - no one wants/needs to see that at work

Not cool people, not cool.

This week

So it's Monday. I'm not a fan of Monday. It means the start of another week and my weeks all feel so LONG!

I figure the first thing I'll do is to tell you what my plans are for the week. You can help keep me accountable! My biggest goal is to read more papers and to try to figure out the last piece of the puzzle for a manuscript I'm working on. My secondary goal is to keep working on figuring out a new-ish method that I'm working on.

I'm trying to learn how to balance working on the manuscript from my last job while getting work done at the new one. This has been harder than I thought. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Later this week I'll tell you more about who I am and what I do. But for now I'm off to work.

Hello World,

So this is my first attempt at blogging after reading other people's blogs for years. My hope for this blog is similar to many others, to get me to write more. I'm not a big fan of writing (I would much rather read) so hopefully this will be an outlet for me to start really finding my voice both as a scientist and as a regular person. I'm not sure what the content will be yet, I think that will just have to develop organically but that can come later. For now, I think I just need to jump in.

I have two big issues with blogging that have kept me from doing this sooner. First, that someone will figure out who I am. I'm likely to say snarky things (I think them all the time but don't have a great outlet for them) so they may end up here. I'm afraid that after I say something snarky, if people know who I am, that this blog will have some negative long-term consequences for my career. Second, and really quite self-centered, that no one will read the blog, or that they will read it and think it's just crap. So please, if you read this, please let me know! I'm likely to chicken out and not keep up with this if I think people don't care. It's stupid and juvenile, but...

So please join me on this adventure through my post-doc time and hopefully into an TT job. If it's anything like my grad school experience it should be one hell of a ride.