About the author

Richard Myers

Richard Myers is a Ph.D. student at the University of California in Davis, currently involved in cardiovascular research. He has Biotech and teaching experience and is an avid fan of science writing for the general population.

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For beginning PhD students, few things evoke a sense of mild dread more than the Qualifying Exam (QE). QEs differ among the many schools and programs throughout the USA but generally, they act a turning point to advance a graduate student into PhD candidacy. In most other countries, there is no QE as such, but much of the the advice contained in this article will be useful for helping you to negotiate any major step in your PhD program, including the final thesis defence.

My QE was oral and covered both my research proposal and coursework. I was one of those graduate students who trembled at the thought of this intimidating hurdle, but preparing for the exam forced me to a higher level of performance in mastering general knowledge of my subject, designing experiments, and communicating my ideas.

Here are some tips that helped me (and others) to not just pass their QE, but prosper because of it.

Regarding your committee:

1. Know your QE committee. For each committee member, identify their area of expertise and what classes they teach. Consult other grad students who work with them, have taken classes from them, or have had them on their own QE. Try to anticipate the questions they are likely to ask and be sure to have great answers ready.

2. Know what is expected of you. Meet with your committee members early and at least twice before taking your exam. Open a dialogue about what you are expected to cover for the exam and don’t be afraid to ask specifics.

Studying:

3. Give yourself time to prepare. Begin organizing data and writing your proposal as soon as possible as you will likely need to go through many drafts. Allot yourself 1-2 months of intense studying prior to the exam to master all the background and general knowledge you will need to know.

4. Hit the books. There’s no substitute for planting yourself in the library with a textbook and a spiral notebook. You will be tested on both the depth and breadth of your knowledge, so the more you know, the better off you’ll be. The month before my exam, this was my full time job, and I filled three notebooks with notes, diagrams, and drawings.

5. Involve your PI. Ask your PI to quiz you and critique your presentation of the material, especially when revising your proposal talk. Your PI will likely know the faculty members on your committee and can help you plan for their questions. Remember, your PI wants you to succeed!

6. Practice makes perfect. Each week for two months, I stood up at the white board during lab meetings and fielded questions on different aspects of my coursework and proposal. It was a brutal ordeal and I generally left feeling thoroughly beaten. But this practice prepared me for the worst and motivated me every week to redeem myself. By the time of the actual exam, I was ready to address criticisms in my proposal, elaborate on any subject in my field, and think on my feet to tackle any “curveballs.” In fact, my practice sessions were far more difficult than my actual exam!

During your exam:

7. Tell a good story. When presenting material in your QE, you have to make it interesting. Always start with the big picture and add details as you are asked. Don’t just memorize the facts of your subject, practice presenting it in a way that is clear and engaging. Your committee is not just testing your knowledge, but your ability to teach. A successful QE will often dissolve into a stimulating discussion among peers. This not only shows your skill in conversing with other researchers, but also your enthusiasm for your subject.

8. Points for guessing. If you don’t know the answer to a question, admit it, but offer a possible solution and a way to test it. The amount of knowledge in your brain is not nearly as important as how you use that knowledge to solve problems logically and approach questions creatively. Extensive presentation practice will train you to think on your feet and keep you sharp for your exam.

9. Master your proposal. Crafting and presenting a successful research proposal is THE most important aspect of your QE. If your proposal is well designed, your QE committee is more likely to overlook small gaps in your general knowledge. The first step is to write your proposal with the help of your PI and anyone else who will read it. Approach it as though you are writing a grant. A well written proposal will be easy to present and should address background information, your hypothesis, rationales, experimental design, expected outcomes, and potential pitfalls. If you can explain it to your non-science friends and family, you are doing well. You will be especially tested on the potential pitfalls and asked to propose alternative approaches to rescue your proposal. Be sure to have these topics well covered before you take your QE.

10. Draw pictures. Use the white board to your advantage by drawing pictures, diagrams, and graphs to give your presentation a point of focus. A good visual will give the committee a reference point and allow you to control the discussion. Again, start with the big picture and add details as they requested. If you start with an extremely detailed diagram, you only invite more detailed questions.

And don’t forget to relax. Keep yourself professional and composed, but a spark of enthusiasm is a great bonus. Your QE committee is not so much an obstacle as a group of prospective peers, and it will also help focus you intently on the research journey you are about to undertake. If you are well prepared and positive, your QE discussion can even be fun!

About the author

Aida Baida Gil

Aida is a geneticist and certified career and life coach. She helps scientists who are struggling to decide the next step in their career create clarity and an action plan. Visit www.experimentyourlife.com to schedule a free consultation, and subscribe to her newsletter to receive monthly coaching tips. Find out about her new program So now what? Career Reinvention for Scientists

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No matter where you work there will always be certain moments in your life when your feel you are going nowhere, you don’t have time for yourself, you miss your family etc etc. In short, you wonder if you are wasting your time, and whether you should quit.

Or maybe you’re sure you want to quit, but you are terrified. What if you regret it? Are you really going to throw away all the time and money you have invested? What are people going to think? You’d be such a failure, dropping your career at this point. What if you end up worse off than you are now? Of course these feelings might apply not only to your career, but to other areas of your life as well.

The Dip

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew when to quit and when to stick? And if you choose to quite, to do so with confidence and peace of mind?

If you are in a dilemma about whether to quit something, I highly recommend the book The Dip by Seth Godin. In barely an hour-and-a-half’s read, in which he explains three different situations that you might be facing, and what you should do about them. No, I’m not going to tell you whether to quit. You already know what I think: you are the one who knows better.

My thoughts on deciding when to quit

What I’m going to share with you today is what I’ve learned so far about quitting (and about sticking) both through my personal experience, and by reading great books (yes, I’ll be using some of the stuff from “The Dip”). So, this is what I know:

• ISomething is not necessarily worthwhile or productive just because you invested a lot of time and effort into it.
• If you have enjoyed all those years you have invested, that is reward enough.
• Quitting is not the same as failing, and it actually might be “a smart way to avoid failing” (Seth’s words). So, yes, quitting IS an option.
• The fact that you made a mistake in the past shouldn’t stop you from making a good decision now.
• If you let fear, pride and other people’s expectations get in the way, you’ll be in the same position 5 or 10 years from now (whose life is it anyway?).
• For every situation there are three choices: making progress, falling behind or standing still. And you need to keep moving forward, no matter how small your progress is.
• Coping with your situation because you are scared of quitting will make you feel miserable and drain your energy. Quitting will let you be free to excel at something else.
• Quitting a tactic (or lab) that is not working does not mean abandoning your long-term strategy (or scientific career).
• Quitting while you are panicking is not a good idea, and I’ll remit to this Chinese proverb: “If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” Decide when to quit beforehand.
• And, yes, I know that quitting is hard, very hard. But I also know that you can go through it, and that if you feel released when you do it’s a good sign.

And what about sticking? I’ll just use a great sentence from “The Dip”:

“Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”

When in doubt, ask yourself “Is my persistence going to pay off in the long run?”, “if I’m going to quit anyway, is there something dramatic I can do instead that might change the game?”

You know there are certain situations when persistence and hard work are not going to change anything; and there are other situations when being consistent and sticking pays off, when if you do whatever it takes, you will succeed.

Where are you? And what are you going to do about it?

About the author

Emily Crow

Emily Crow is a graduate student at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. While her current work is in the field of prion biology, she is interested in a broad range of topics, including epigenetics, microbiology, and emerging diseases.

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In an ideal world, every PI would be a nurturing and challenging mentor who carefully guides your project and is invested in developing your skills as a scientist. In the real world, however, that kind of leadership can be hard to find.

In any case, one of the most important and useful mental steps you can take in your career is to take responsibility for your own work and actions as early as possible. To help you along the way here are some suggestions to enable you to be your own boss. Take the reins and train yourself the way you want to be trained!

1. Read read read! Read all the papers that have come out of your lab recently and as many reviews and current research articles as you need to get a thorough understanding of the state of the field. Reading your competitors’ papers will clue you in on what has been done and what questions are still unanswered. Reading your colleagues’ papers will tell you what materials and experimental techniques are commonly used in the lab.

2. Write up a proposal of what you plan to do for your project. Students are fortunate (no really!) to be required to do this, but I’d strongly recommend this method for post-docs, too. Independence is good, but aimlessness is not, and it’s easy to get off-course unless you’ve established a road map for yourself. Don’t hesitate to put a timeline on your proposal. You may or may not be able to predict how long every step will take, but it can serve as a handy yardstick for measuring your accomplishments vs. your expectations.

3. Network within your university. Get familiar with your department and other PIs at your university. Does anyone else work on a subject similar to your lab’s focus? Who has skills or interests that may make them useful resources? Are there established “in-house” collaborations or informal relationships with other labs on your hall?

4. Get plugged into a seminar series. A lot of departments run their own presentation series, but don’t be afraid to check out other seminars that sound interesting. Stop in, eat a cookie, and get a sense of what topics are covered in the series and whether it’s relevant to you and your project. Smaller seminar series are a great way to make connections with faculty members, who will come to think of you as a familiar face, and be impressed with your interest (and contributions?).

5. Spend time on “housekeeping” tasks to keep your work running smoothly. Take an hour out on Monday to plan your experiments for the week; take another hour on Friday to update your lab notebook and backup your data files.

6. Make weekly lab meetings work for you. Turn unproductive meetings into teaching opportunities by challenging yourself to “do it better!”. Ask yourself: how would I have designed this experiment differently? What do I think is the most interesting question raised by this data? If this were my project, what would I do next?

7. Keep track of your progress with monthly reports. Without the benefit of a PI keeping an eye on your project, it’s important to self-evaluate on a regular basis. This article published a few years ago by Science Magazine suggests a great list of questions to ask yourself on a monthly basis.

8. Try setting up an informal data club. Pull together a group of friends for lunch every few weeks to talk over your research in a casual setting. This sort of forum is great for getting technical help, as well as gauging what parts of your research are interesting to people outside of your own field.

9. Write up a yearly report on how your progress compares to what you proposed to do. Give yourself a day or two at the end of the year to go back over your lab notebook from the previous year. Skim through it and get an idea of how much time you’ve spent on various projects, what you’ve learned, and how you’ve changed as a scientist over the year. The little changes are hard to see as they occur, but looking back over a body of work can really clarify how far you’ve come.

10. Stay focused on publishing. As you generate data, keep in mind that your top priority is publication. Ask yourself: what do I need to do to turn my results into a complete, publishable story? The answer to this question will inform your weekly and monthly goals, and ensure that your project stays focused.

Not everyone is in an ideal lab situation, but that doesn’t mean your time in the lab should be written off as a loss. Taking charge and being your own boss will help you get the scientific training you need, and teach you the even more valuable lessons of independence and self-confidence.

What are your top tips for taking charge of your career?

If you liked this, here are some further Bitesize Bio articles you might find useful:

• 10 Do’s and Don’ts for PhD Students
• Pointers for New Grad Students
• 10 Things you MUST Do Before Starting a New Project
• The Easier Way to Write a PhD Thesis

About the author

Guest Writer

If you would like to contribute an article as a guest writer, please get in touch with us via the contact form.

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There are, of course, times when it’s ok to just read one part of a paper.  For example, if you only need to know how an experiment was done, just read the methods section or when you simply want what happened, just read the results.   But much of the time this targeted sort of reading will not do.  You need to read the whole paper, as Suzanne discussed in an earlier article.

A checklist can help

A useful tool in training yourself to read the whole paper is a checklist of questions to work through and ask yourself as you read.   This helps you look at all the sections, be critical, and ensure that you aren’t tempted to skip anything!

There are lots of these critical appraisal (the official term for RTFP!) checklists out there. Here are a few examples of books and resources that have them:

• The book Practical Skills in Biology, by A Jones, R Reed and J Weyers (Harlow, Benjamin Cummings, 4^th ed., 2007) contains some great lists to help you read graphs and tables.
• On the web there is a nice article on How to read a scientific paper, by J.W. Little and R. Parker (2004) from the University of Arizona.
• Two articles in Advances in Physiology Education contain much more detailed lists:

Rangachari, P. K. and S. Mierson (1995). “A checklist to help students analyze published articles in basic medical sciences.” Advances in Physiology Education 13(1): S21-S25.  Available via http://advan.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/268/6/S21.

Seals, D.R. and H. Tanaka (2000) “Manuscript peer review: a helpful checklist for students and novice referees.” Advances in Physiology Education 23(1):  52-58.  Available via http://advan.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/1/S52.  (not all the questions will be relevant, perhaps)

My checklist

I teach critical appraisal to biological science and medical students at the University of Leicester and have devised my own list of questions, which ask:

• What the authors set out to prove, and also if they are making any assumptions;
• How exactly they went about things, and whether there is (in your opinion) anything they could have done differently;
• What their results were, and what you think they mean;
• What the authors concluded, and how your conclusions and theirs compare.
• What else they could have done, and asks if you think they proved what they set out to prove.
• There is then a final “anything else” question, for recording any other observations.  This is just in case there is anything not covered by the other questions!

My list is available from http://www2.le.ac.uk/Members/khn5/. It is licensed with a Creative Commons licence, so use for non commercial purposes is encouraged (with acknowledgement).   If you like the idea, give it a try.

If you want to share any suggestions for improving or adapting the list, please leave a comment.

This article was written by guest author Keith Nockels, a librarian who teaches critical appraisal to various groups of medicine and biological science students at the University of Leicester, UK.

About the author

Aida Baida Gil

Aida is a geneticist and certified career and life coach. She helps scientists who are struggling to decide the next step in their career create clarity and an action plan. Visit www.experimentyourlife.com to schedule a free consultation, and subscribe to her newsletter to receive monthly coaching tips. Find out about her new program So now what? Career Reinvention for Scientists

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Which grad school should you go to?… should you take that new job?… should you quit your current job?… should you stay in science?… should you get married, go for a run, eat that chocolate bar?…..

You have a multitude of decisions to make in your life. But now you are facing a particularly important decision, and you don’t know what to do. You keep mulling through the choices, scared to make a mistake and fixed on the worst thing that could happen.

You feel stuck, frustrated and drained of energy. You’d rather make the decision, yet you still can’t decide…

Why can’t you decide?

Then why is it so difficult to make a decision sometimes? Common reasons are that…

• You think that what you decide is going to be permanent
• You are obsessing on making the “best” decision (which incidentally would entail you predicting the future)
• You don’t want to make a mistake
• You feel pressurized by what other people think and expect of you.

Wow! Did you just read all that? No wonder you are struggling… too much pressure, too many expectations and you even have to foresee the future!

Here is some simple advice about making decisions

• You already know what to do. Yes, you do. Either you want it or you don´t. Be honest with yourself.
• The number of reasons you have for doing something is inversely proportional to how much you want to do it. Think of any time you really wanted something. Did you need any reasons for that? Nope. When you really want to do something you don´t need reasons. If you are giving yourself a list of reasons you are probably trying to justify an irrational decision or action.
• You can almost always change your mind. We usually think that our decisions are irrevocable, and of course that causes anxiety and struggling. But most of them are not, and it’s fine if you change your mind later.
• What you decide will never have as much significance in your life as how you handle the consequences of that decision. That means almost all your decisions can turn out well if you know how to deal with the result. Did you make a mistake? That’s not a bad decision, a bad decision would be to hold on to your mistake and do nothing about it.
• Shift your mindset. Stop focusing on making the best choice, focus instead on the choice that involves the most growth. And if after a while you are not happy anymore, you didn’t make a mistake, you just stop growing.

So what is the simplest way to make a decision?

Easy – just ask yourself these two questions ‘Do I want to?’ and ‘Will it make me grow?’

And what if the options you are pondering are equally compelling? Listen to your inner voice (actually always do that). Try this, a method I frequently use when I’m stuck with two similar options: grab a coin (I’m not joking, keep reading), promise yourself you’re going to actually do what the coin says. Flip the coin. See the result.

How did you feel while the coin was in the air? What result where you expecting? And after it landed? Relieved, disappointed, excited? That will tell you what you want to know.

Will these always lead to making the best possible decisions? No. Nor does it have to be. Remember it´s OK to make mistakes. You learn from mistakes, you grow, you’ll do better next time. How many scientific discoveries came from a mistake…

About the author

Travis Medley

Travis is the President of Simply Biotech, a specialized recruiting and staffing firm dedicated exclusively to the biotech industry in San Diego County. More information may be found at www.simplybiotech.com

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We recently attended a meeting for job seekers in the biotech industry during which a panel of senior Human Resources professionals answered questions and provided insight for people looking to find work within biotech. The points that they shared were not all that different from what we have discussed in previous blogs, but I think there are many things they said that bear repeating and serve as a reminder of how adept a job seeker must be in today’s marketplace. These are the highlights of what these people shared:

1. Tailor your resume to the position for which you are applying – include specific elements of the job description in your resume (make it easy for them to see that you are a good fit).
2. Do not rely on a cover letter to explain why you are a fit. You may want to use it to explain reasons for relocation, but your skills and experience need to be evident within your customized resume. If anything, the cover letter may be used to weed you out.
3. Do not apply for more than one position within one company. It creates the perception that you are not sure which position is best for you. We recommend applying to one but including a variety of skill sets on your resume so that you indicate you are qualified for more than one position.
4. Keep everything positive – in your resume and in your communication with the company. Don’t dwell on bad experiences, frustrations, or ineffective bosses. Talk about what you learned, why you are better for it and how you will leverage those experiences to make your new company successful.
5. Honesty rules – the biotech industry tends to be a tight-knit community. Hiring managers and HR professionals will do informal reference checks with people they know at other firms and you do not want them to be surprised.
6. Answer salary questions definitively and transparently. Do not try to circumvent these questions. Tell them specifically what you were making and what you are looking to make.
7. Don’t be shy – let your personality come through in your answers. During an interview, you might be thrown some questions that are asked to assess how your brain works or to find out more about your personality.
8. When accepting an offer, be enthusiastic. They want to hear the smile and excitement in your voice. This will lay the foundation of a very positive transition into your new company.
9. Don’t engage in a counteroffer negotiations – you risk alienating yourself from the new hiring manager and your old company. Consider the offer and decide.
10. Being overqualified is a serious concern for companies, but the solution is not to remove things from your resume as it may create the perception of dishonesty.
11. End interviews with assertiveness and proactivity. It is very appropriate to end interviews by asking “When would it be appropriate for me to follow-up?”.
12. Be prepared for behavioral interview questions. Come to the interview prepared with several anecdotes about challenges you have faced before and how you dealt with them. Demonstrate a positive and measurable result whenever possible.
13. Do your best to incorporate the firm’s core values into your interview responses.
14. Keep up your knowledge. Companies understand that people may have been out of work for extended periods of time in this economy. However, you must demonstrate your ability to stay current (seminars, certifications, etc.) and to get up to speed quickly.
15. LinkedIn is a recognized tool, but they disregard most of what they see, including recommendations. Be prepared to provide a supplemental reference sheet during interviews.
16. Identify and ease their pain. Ask hiring managers about “gaps in their department” to find out where their pain is – and suggest how you can help ease that pain. They need to be sure they are hiring someone who can help with their issues.
17. Ask good questions. Like, “What does success look like 6 months into this position?” and “What obstacles might I run into?”
18. Be careful with Facebook – they review these pages and screen people out as a result!

This event covered a multitude of topics; but it’s great insight to see how HR and hiring managers are thinking in the current environment.

About the author

Emily Crow

Emily Crow is a graduate student at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. While her current work is in the field of prion biology, she is interested in a broad range of topics, including epigenetics, microbiology, and emerging diseases.

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Presenting your work is a fantastic opportunity to get feedback on your project, demonstrate the significance of your results, and make the connections that will enhance your future career. And yet, how many incomprehensible lab meetings have we all sat through? How many seminars have you attended that left you feeling more confused than inspired?

The key to delivering a strong talk is designing a well-crafted PowerPoint presentation to serve as your framework. Here are my thoughts on how to create a PowerPoint presentation that will enable you to effectively communicate your results, benefit from your colleagues’ invaluable input and maybe even show off a little!

The title slide
This is the easy part. The title of your talk is a phrase describing the topic of your presentation. Make it large, simple, and readable. Your title slide should also have your name, your lab and school affiliations, and the date. If you have a really nice image from your work (for example, a microscopy picture), you can include it as the background of the title slide, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the readability of the title. Some schools require that the school crest or symbol is also included on the title slide. Check this with your institution.

Background
The background section of your talk is where you set your audience up to be able to understand your experiments and the significance of your results. The background information you present should be tightly focused: provide just enough information to understand your talk, and nothing more.

You generally want to stick to two to three slides of background, depending on the length of your talk. Use bullet points, and try to avoid slides that are all text. Using images from preliminary data or small model figures is a good way to break up the text in this portion of the presentation. If you use figures from someone else’s work, cite them in the lower right hand corner of the slide. A simple format such as “Smith et al., PNAS 2006” is appropriate. Unpublished preliminary data should be cited as “Jones, unpublished”. It’s up to you whether you cite your own unpublished data, but you must cite all data that you did not generate.

The most important thing to do before you get into your results is to state the main question that your research is addressing, and put it in context. Don’t leave the audience wondering why you’re doing what you’re doing. It is your job to convince them that this is an important question that you are addressing in a thoughtful manner.

Results
The results section is the meat of the presentation, when you get to talk about all the exciting work you’re doing. Keep in mind that while you have been thinking about these experiments day in and day out, it will all be new to the majority of your audience, so keep things as simple and clear as possible.

Each slide should contain one figure only, whether it is a graph, a set of microscopy images, or a blot. The title of the slide should state the conclusion drawn from the data shown on the slide, as a sort of shorthand for people who may have zoned out during your explanation of the experiment, and need to catch up quickly. If you used any unusual techniques, be sure to explain them before presenting data from the relevant experiments.

Use a consistent color scheme throughout the presentation. Black and white is always a good choice for the text and background color, respectively. Stick to two to three “contrast colors” within one presentation, and keep it constant. For example, if sample “A” shows up as a blue bar in a graph on slide two, then it should be a blue line in the graph on slide three. Use animation in moderation, and only if it helps clarify your point.

Conclusions
When you’ve finished presenting the data, you need to sum it all up to show that your work forms a cohesive whole and tells a compelling story. In most cases, your conclusions should be limited to a single slide. Use bullet points to list the main conclusions, without going into experimental detail; this is the time to show what you learned, not how you did it. Conclude by referring back to your main question: did you answer it? Are you on your way to answering it? Did you encounter anything unexpected? Depending on the forum in which you are presenting, you may want to include a slide of future directions after your summary slide. This is especially appropriate for graduate students, and is always important for lab meetings.

Acknowledgments
The final slide of your presentation is the acknowledgments slide. You must cite every person and every funding source that was involved in your research. Most people list all the members of their lab; you can choose to mention only those individuals who actually contributed when you give the presentation. Graduate students should be sure to thank the members of their thesis committee. If you borrowed materials from another lab, remember to thank the PI as well as the individual that gave them to you.

General tips

• You can usually count on an average of one minute per slide, excluding the title and acknowledgments. So, if you are giving a 45 minute talk, shoot for around 45 slides.
• Keep in mind that there may be color-blind scientists in your audience: avoid using close shades of color on a single slide, and specifically avoid using red and green to distinguish between two items.
• Upload your presentation ahead of time, so you can deal with Mac/PC conversion issues or compatibility problems caused by different versions of Windows or Microsoft Office.

Good luck with your presentations! Let us know in the comments what your favorite presentation tips are…

About the author

Aida Baida Gil

Aida is a geneticist and certified career and life coach. She helps scientists who are struggling to decide the next step in their career create clarity and an action plan. Visit www.experimentyourlife.com to schedule a free consultation, and subscribe to her newsletter to receive monthly coaching tips. Find out about her new program So now what? Career Reinvention for Scientists

To enable tagging you will need to register on Bitesize Bio. We're sorry for the inconvenience, but it's free, only takes a few seconds, and it will enable you to view our seminars for free, ask questions from the professional community, and take part in the lively community of Bitesize Bio

You are going to spend at least 4 years or more in graduate school, and around 3-5 years in a postdoc position. That’s a big chunk of your life, so apart from doing experiments, writing papers or your thesis and maybe doing some teaching, what else are you doing?

To paraphrase one of my favorite books (So What Are You Going to Do With That?: A Guide for M.A.’s and Ph.D’s Seeking Careers Outside the Academy by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius), what will you have to show for yourself besides teaching and research at the end of it all? For most people, the answer is “probably not much”. But what Basalla, Debelius and I suggest is that it would be very beneficial for you to actively pursue other interests or hobbies while in grad school or doing a post doc.

Why you should make time for your interests and hobbies

Teaching and research involve a variety skills, including project management, organization, complex problem-solving, and analytical skills, to name just a few. But expanding your skillset by pursuing other interests or hobbies is well worth your time. Not only will it make you a more interesting person, it will also make you more marketable to both academic and non-academic employers. But the most important reason of all is that it will make you feel alive, and maintain your sanity. Science is exciting  and it’s your passion (or is it?), but it’s also demanding so having other passions can help you keep your life balanced.

Consider new options

It’s always a good thing to be open to new possibilities and options that you might never have considered before. My hobby is learning, and consequently, I am a raving fan of courses. In doing one of these courses I discovered that I love translating, and that I’m good at it (so my alternative career could be in translating scientific texts, I’d love that), and it was also through a course that I discovered my affinity for life coaching. Both of these courses began as hobbies, just for fun, and developed into something more.  Just pick something that interests you and go for it — you’ll have lots of fun and recharge your batteries at the same time.

The career benefits

Apart from personal satisfaction, having a hobby has added benefits to your career. New activities will broad your experience, add important skills (for example group activities will show your ability to work as a part of a team), strengthen your network and expand you options. You can also get recommendations, and it’s an ideal way to learn about a new field and experience first hand if you’d enjoy or not doing something similar professionally.

This is especially important if you are considering a career outside academia as you can show potential employers that you have other interests and abilities beyond the lab. But even if you’re happy inside academia, it will serve you well too.

Fitting it all in

I know you’re busy and don’t have much time. Or that’s what you tell yourself. But how much time do you spend actually working? And how much time do you spend pretending to be working, feeling guilty because you should be working or avoiding getting to work? If you track down how you use your time (and how you waste your time) you can be more efficient and find time for other things. Check out this article on measuring your fudge factor to get some ideas on how to do this.

So what are you waiting for? Make the most out of you grad school and postdoc years. There are lots of different things you can do, from learning a new language, to developing skills like leadership or communication, or volunteering your time, taking a part time job, writing for a university publication or writing a blog…. Take advantage of your University or department programs.

And if you don’t know what to do, drop me a comment, I’d love to help you find out.

About the author

Travis Medley

Travis is the President of Simply Biotech, a specialized recruiting and staffing firm dedicated exclusively to the biotech industry in San Diego County. More information may be found at www.simplybiotech.com

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We all know how important image is to a job search. It’s crucial. This is why we wear a nice suit and print our resumes on thick paper. It’s all about image. And yet, sometimes job seekers fail to remember the image that they are presenting on the internet.

Be careful about what you Tweet!
Pictures and statements of wild parties, drinking or just a friends’ night out on the town may seem fun and innocuous, but they may cost you your next job. More and more articles are appearing citing examples of people whose social networking profiles (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc) are causing them to be passed over for job opportunities. A recent study in Time Magazine cited that 70% of HR professionals claim they have passed over a job candidate because of their internet profile. These sites are checked by a growing number of firms and you must be mindful of your public image. None of these are truly private. Most of us have found friends or colleagues’ profiles who were supposed to be “private”. Be mindful of how you present yourself.

Would you “friend” your boss on Facebook?
It’s worth noting that this is not limited to job seekers. Many of us have had a co-worker or boss ask to “friend” us on Facebook. This is a potential minefield. What are your options? Tell them “no” and risk causing an issue? Tell them yes and insist all of your friends keep comments “professional”? (I don’t know about you, but I would worry about what my friends would post if I suggested this!) You could ignore the request..until they ask you about it face-to-face at work

So what’s the solution?
These are the image struggles of the 21st century and they are very real to each of us. The easiest solutions are to stay off of social networking sites or keep them “professional” in content or appearance. But seeing how this is not a realistic option for many, I would suggest that at the very least, you “clean up” your site, remove comments you have made that could reflect poorly, and change out the pictures on your site to make them a bit more conservative until you have started your new job.

I would strongly encourage you to objectively review any of your social networking sites (I am confident your professional networking sites like LinkedIn are already “professional”). If there is anything you would not want your employer, prospective employer, co-workers or your grandmother to see, remove it. If you can’t/won’t/don’t want to do this, you should ensure your accounts are set to the most private settings possible; this will help prevent unwanted visitors to your profile.

The 21st century is full of electronic marvels; just don’t let them interfere with your 21st century career.

About the author

Suzanne Kennedy

Suzanne is Director of R&D at Mo Bio Laboratories in California, and the author of their blog, The Culture Dish. She has a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Virginia Commonwealth University.

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This past week I found myself asking this question quite a few times. What is going on with the peer review process? Is anyone actually reviewing the papers getting into journals anymore?

This is due to some recent experiences I’ve had with papers published in both the larger highly reputable journals and smaller niche journals that has left me wondering.  I review papers for Current Issues in Molecular Biology and I have run the peer review process for them so I understand what is expected as an editor or a reviewer. The journal is counting on me to ensure that a high quality paper is approved and nothing less. As an editor running the peer review process and selecting reviewers of the paper, it is my responsibility to make sure I choose people who will be fair, unbiased, and have the time to actually read the paper.

I am incredibly busy, but this is a responsibility I take seriously because not only does a poorly written paper reflect badly on the journal and on the authors, it reflects on the editor.

How did this get published?

Recently I came across a paper that was published in a popular journal for microbiologists despite the fact that it had no control experiments, the conclusions didn’t match the data (see the previous article on the importance of reading a paper thoroughly), and the entire study missed the opportunity to make any scientific contribution to the field by focusing on the wrong points.  How did this make it through peer-review, I asked myself?

Letters can be written to the authors and the editor, however, it doesn’t correct the problem. How does a scientific study gone awry get published anyway? How does every reviewer miss such obvious flaws in a paper?

More examples…

Recently I read a paper from a smaller niche journal for microbiologists that a scientist/friend asked me to comment on. We both came to the same conclusions: the paper was garbage. The authors used the incorrect name for their organism, making one up that doesn’t exist and mislabeled a figure so that the results section did not match the figure legend, making interpretation confusing. Furthermore, they left a key piece of information out of their methods (how much bacteria they used to inoculate the soil), so the data obtained was uninterpretable, and to cap it all they misinterpreted their very own data in the conclusions.

How does this get published? Was it reviewed at all? A paper of this low quality brings down the journal and its editors, and affects the whole field.

It’s not just microbiology journals!

The popular science and general methods type journals are not immune to this problem. Several months ago I read an article in a very popular magazine that used qPCR for their study and attempted to use the MIQE guidelines to validate their work. It was great to see people attempting to use the guidelines.

However, upon opening the attached spreadsheet in the Supplemental Data, I was shocked to see that most of it was empty. The authors actually wrote “NA” in almost every field of the MIQE checklist and didn’t provide any information on yields, purities, etc.  How many people do you think took the time to go to the Supplemental Data and actually see the checklist? I’ll hazard a guess that it is very few since no one else noticed the alarming lack of information contained in their “supplemental data”.

I know we are all busy and I know that we want to help our colleagues to get published, but there needs to be more measures in place that ensure that the standards are high. 

Here’s what I suggest

My suggestion is that if the journal allows the authors to choose reviewers for the paper, the editor running the peer-review process should use only one name from their list and the others are not. Chances are that the reviewers suggested by the authors are going to be very lenient (after all, they are going to ask for the return favor when they publish their next paper) and the one with nothing to gain by approving the paper will give a more accurate assessment.

And editors need to stay objective to the body of work regardless if the authors are friends or collaborators.  It is just like referring someone for a job- it reflects on us as editors if we recommend a piece of work that really is not up to par. No journal wants to publish papers that need erratum published later, or worse, no one takes the time to let the journal or authors know that an article needs erratum and instead the community decides that that the journal is too low tier to even publish there or that the people who publish there are those who get rejected everywhere else.  And of course, no one wants to cite a paper with obvious flaws so the citation index continues to go down.

Ok, so maybe it’s not ALL broken…

I know that the peer-review process does work successfully and that there are many journals making sure that their review process is stringent. It’s probably no coincidence that these journals usually have the highest citation indexes as well.

My advice to all the readers out there preparing papers for submission to journals is to step back and look at your data as objectively as you can. I know you have a theory or model you are trying to prove and want the data to support you. So knowing that, step back and read it again from an outside point of view. What other interpretations could there be? What else could be going on? Let the data tell you what is going on.  Be open to other interpretations of the data and write it up objectively.

Not only will you have a stronger paper that more people will cite, but, it will mean that you were the first to think of it and when other people follow your lead and build on your work, they will have to say you suggested it first. 

And don’t be disappointed if you need to make revisions to the paper when it comes back for review. Thank the reviewers for taking the time to read your work carefully and know that you will be able to re-submit a much stronger and more citable paper in the next round.