Good riddance 2010

Although 2010 brought great enjoyment to my life; the birth of my first child in April and submitting a successful post-doctoral fellowship application, Thanksgiving to Christmas sucked some serious ass. First of all mini-xx got sick and then my husband and I got mildly sick. Not that big of a deal. Just sore throats and snot. He chose to stay home for a few days, while I stayed home for one day. By the end of the week his mild sickness was gone and I was sicker than ever. I ended up staying home another three days with a horrible cough that didn't fully clear up until around Christmas. During that cold medicine-induced haze, I made and totally fucked up a reagent that is essential for an assay I am performing. Of course, I didn't realize at the time I messed it up. Oh no, that realization didn't come until the end of December after multiple assay failures. On the one hand - it was an easy fix. On the other hand - it was a stupid mistake and I feel like an idiot.

So far 2011 is going well. I am NOT coughing my ass off and my assay is working again! As a result, I should actually generate data again by the end of the week.

Although meager, the statement above is enough to make me pretty happy, but Magnum, PI recently informed me of something fanFUCKINGtastic. He is going to get me an anaerobic chamber. This is huge, because I need this piece of equipment to get my project for my own lab moving. No more band-aid solutions!!

I hope that everyone else is going strong on day 10 of 2011.

on being a mentee

Disclaimer: I’m only on my first (and hopefully last) post-doc, so I could be wrong about the following.

I did not take my post-doc position with the expectation that I would learn anything from my new PI regarding bench work. Hell, the last time this dude was at the bench, fire was still a novelty. Well, he's not quite that old, but his working at the bench days were a while back. Don’t get me wrong, he is smart, has good ideas and he totally gets the concept of everything we do in the lab, but he is not likely to provide a lot of technical assistance.

Even in graduate school, I didn’t find my PI to helpful with technical aspects beyond my second year in the lab. Don’t get me wrong, we still discussed ideas, hypotheses, data, presenting and writing, but trouble-shooting experiments was largely left to the individual. Personally, I think I learned a lot from this approach because it forced me to learn every aspect of every experiment that I performed, thus allowing me to pinpoint the problem or potential problems when things went awry as things tend to do.

Some of the post-docs in my current lab seem a little frustrated with Magnum, PI and don’t think he is a good mentor. They think he doesn't provide them with enough help. I do not share this opinion, but maybe these people came from labs where the PI directed their efforts. If so, then I can see why they might struggle. This lab is not a good fit for someone who can’t work independently.

I do not need someone to talk to me about every single experiment that I do, or think about doing. I don’t need to discuss every result and I don’t need to ask what type of experiment to embark on next. I do expect to discuss the data, as a whole, when it starts to take shape, when I get confirmed, yet, unexpected results or when I think things need to move in a significantly different direction. Of course, when I do talk to him about any of these topics, I am prepared. I don’t just show up, barf the data on his desk and wait for him to tell me what it means and what to do. It’s more like, here is the data, this is what I think and these are the reasons why. What do you think?

However, the mentoring that I really want and need is in relation to my future as an academic scientist. Specifically, applying for grants, fellowships, etc. I also hope that he can guide me from being a green post-doc to a prepared post-doc, with all the skills needed to interview for and obtain a junior faculty position. These are things I don’t know a whole helluva lot about. So far, I am pleased with the guidance I am receiving and I really don’t anticipate any problems in the future.

Of course, my sample size is n=1. What do you guys expect from your post-doc mentor? If you are a P.I., what type of mentoring do you provide your post-docs?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

My first degree was essentially a communications degree with an emphasis in public relations. I parlayed this degree into my first job, a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It was fun and at the end of the day, it was nice to know that I helped someone. Unfortunately, once I learned how to do the job, I got bored...really, really bored. I considered finding a new job, but I figured it would end the same way. I needed to change career fields, not just jobs. This lead to two important realizations about myself:

1. I find many topics interesting, so no matter what I majored in, I probably would have thought it was the right career for me until I took a job in that field.
2. No matter how much I didn't want to admit it before, I was better at analytical subjects like math and science.

Ultimately, I decided that a career in science or health care was exactly what I needed. Why? Let's revisit numbers 1 and 2 from above.
Like I stated above, I like to learn and I find many things interesting, but I couldn't very well go back to school, major in something new, enjoy it while learning about it and then find out again that the actual application of the new degree was boring. I needed the job itself to require or consist of learning so that I could avoid the boredom. So, I thought about what careers would require constant learning while allowing me to analyze the crap out of things. The answer was science.

Now for the transition.
I went back to school and started taking prerequisites for graduate school. Unfortunately, this required moving back in with my parents for a year so that I could take more classes at a time and get into graduate school faster. This was difficult for me, but not because of my parents. They were pretty excited about it, but it embarrassed me terribly. I swore to myself and my parents to never, no matter what, move back home after I went to college.
Everyone in my classes were a couple of years younger than me and I wasted a lot of time and energy feeling like a loser because of this. Since I started school early, I was accustomed to being the youngest. Now, I felt like a loser that lived with their parents who was behind. Not a feeling I relished.
When I finally started graduate school, things didn't exactly change. I did not actually obtain a degree in science. I only took the prerequisites and even though I made good grades in those required courses, my learning curve at the beginning of graduate school was steep as hell. Right away I enjoyed two more new experiences: studying and near-failing. I scored the second lowest grade on my first graduate school exam. Studying and making low grades...wtf? There were even rumors that faculty thought I wouldn't make it, but I did.

In the end, it only took that fist semester to get up to speed. Thank goodness. Later, I passed my candidacy exam unconditionally and a committee member informed me that it was the best oral exam he had ever witnessed. Not too bad for a communications major with no science degree that nearly failed out of graduate school in semester one.

Despite how well everything turned out, I still view this as a difficult transitional time in my life and lately I find myself thinking about it because I am nearing the end of my graduate career and moving to a new lab that studies microbes, but not in the same way graduate school lab (GSL) studies them. Post-doc lab is heavy on the biochemistry and structure while GSL is into gene regulation. I look forward to learning new techniques and I know that when it is over I will be an extremely well-rounded microbiologist, but I am a little intimidated by all the new equipment.

I think it is going to be fine. My past experience tells me so.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

I'm choosing to do my post-doc in the same city where I completed graduate school. Is it the right decision? I really don't know, and after finalizing the decision recently by formally accepting a post-doc position, I am starting to have reservations. This would happen either way, mind you. For myself, and maybe for others in a similar situation, I am going to revisit why I ultimately decided to stay. (Note: These are in no particular order.)

1 . Significant others career to consider.
My soon-to-be husband is doing very well in his chosen field (not a research scientist) at the moment, and the city we reside in is one of the best markets in the country for his profession. He can get the same job in another city, but in most of the places we looked at, the cost of living increase would not correspond to the same increase in salary for him because the market we currently live in pays extremely well. The opportunities in his field are endless in the city we currently reside in.

2. Money.
Reason one is tightly linked to reason two. We all know that the increase from graduate student stipend to post-doc salary is very small, so that would not help alleviate the cost-of-living increase mentioned in reason one. Furthermore, a post-doc salary can go a long way where we live now, and that is nice. This will allow us to save and invest more now, which ultimately results in more money for retirement in the long run. (I know, BORING. But, important and stupid not to consider.) So the bottom line, fiscally, for us, this makes more sense.

3. Good options for me. Yay!
The city I live in has a large medical center, multiple universities with research programs (so, lots of labs), a growing biotech industry as well as other types of industry. There are some pretty big names here, but not to the degree that a city like Boston would have. But still, very good options for me. These PIs are well-known and have produced post-docs that have gone on to get faculty positions as well. Post-docs in their labs often obtain their own funding, and this is something I completely intend on attempting. (Note: I have accepted a job in one such lab...whew.)

4. Families and friends are close.
We live reasonably close to both mine and my (almost) husbands families. If we start a family, this will be very helpful, considering we both plan on continuing to work outside the home. Having family close by to help out with these responsibilities would ultimately help mediate career goals, not hinder them.
We have close friends here too. Spending time with friends is one of the enjoyable parts of life. While I really like my chosen career path and can't really imagine doing something else, I think that enjoying life outside of work is equally important, at least to me.

Those aren't all the reasons, but they were the most significant. No one reason tipped the balance to stay, it was more of a combination of these reasons.