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Facing hours of cell culture, or some other repetitive and mundane lab task? Why not cheer things up with a podcast or two! Discover our top 10 favorite science podcasts for researchers, from Sawbones to The Life Scientific.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of setting self-applied limits on what we want to do and achieve. Discover the benefits of expanding your comfort zone to foster personal growth, resilience, and new experiences that enhance your life.
By removing the word ‘because’ from your vocabulary, you can gain a newfound sense of freedom, creativity, and authority in your decisions. Learn to make choices without justifications and experience the world with a fresh set of eyes.
We all have patterns for tasks. While good patterns are helpful, bad ones can sabotage your career. Learn to identify and destroy harmful patterns.
Are you frazzled? Constantly rushing from task to task? Stop and learn how cultivating awareness can make you calmer and happier in the lab.
For the longest time I just couldn’t decide between medical school and graduate school. I mean come on, being a physician would be great. I could save lives just like they do on TV! But on the other hand, being a biomedical scientist excited me just as much. You can’t tell me you’ve never dreamt…
When you think about having a baby, you picture all kinds of things. The good: cute baby clothes, new baby smell, unlimited cuddles. The bad: sleepless nights, bodily fluids, being on-call 24-7. You probably also give some thought to coming back to work. You planned out your maternity leave, paid or not, and figured out…
A lot of grad students have probably seen this blog post on the development of science and had a good laugh about it. Long story short, if you imagine that all of human knowledge is a circle, the specialized research that you do is just a small part of the circle. When you contribute to your…
Advocating for the research that scientists perform is important. Your advocacy helps politicians and the general public understand why funding is needed. In fact, many funding agencies require a disease to be associated with the research, because citizens and politicians do not typically care to fund projects unless they foresee a cure or treatment. Scientific advocacy…
Part of the fun of science is the opportunity to conjure up hypotheses and ways in which to test them. Of course, being scientists, our ideas are highly thought out and logical. We aim to test the hypothesis which we think is the most likely explanation using the available supporting evidence. In addition, it is…
I’m an anxiety-ridden stress ball 90% of the time. Graduate school only amplifies my nervous energy, and it’s a struggle. However, recently, while I rushed to catch a bus, I had a life altering experience using a mental technique called “reframing” From “Flipping Out” to Flipping the Switch to “Cool” It rained heavily. I balanced…
You’ve had a rough day at the bench, putting in long, grueling hours with no pay-off. Your fantasy of running away to join the circus starts sounding rational. The last thing on your mind is to add to your already overloaded schedule. Yet as crazy as it sounds, participating in science outreach really improved my…
How often have you looked at slides down the microscope and your thoughts have been miles away? Have you ever been sitting at the bench pipetting and preparing a PCR and wondered if you had really added your forward primer to all your samples (I’ll put my hand up to this one!)? Or spent time…
This article mentions of suicidal thoughts. If you are having thoughts of self-harm, I encourage finding someone to talk to. It can be a family member, friend, or professional counselor. Many countries also have suicide hotlines. Mental Health is often not a priority for institutions or individuals in academia. Making institutions friendlier will take time,…
Do you fear failure every time you do an experiment?Do you feel constantly stressed about obtaining poor results?Do you feel personally culpable when an experiment goes wrong?If you answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, you may be suffering from perfectionism. For a scientist, this is a particularly damaging trait that needs to…
It is amazing to get that “Eureka!” moment or finally get that assay to work, but the downside of those moments is that we do face a lot of rejection. Scientists push the envelope of human knowledge and that means we have to deal with a fair amount of negativity in our line of work….
Deciding to start a family with your partner is one of the most exhilarating and frightening times you’ll likely ever experience, outside of welcoming the little F1 to the world that is. Your job should not be an inhibitory factor in making that decision. We all know that post-docs live in a purgatory of sorts:…
The prospect of walking into the lab for the first time to do some ‘real’ research is hugely exciting. Ambitious thoughts fill your mind about what a brilliant research scientist you are about to become, making that all-important difference and saving the world. That is, until you step over the threshold and The Fear overcomes…
The great thing about being a scientist is, well… that you get to be a scientist! And it can be fun and rewarding. But being a scientist can be a nasty stressful business too. As I come to a turning point in my ‘academic career’, I find myself making mental notes of the pros and…
A while back, I read an article on Bitesize Bio entitled “When Your Partner is NOT a Scientist” that piqued my interest…for the wrong reasons. And I discovered that I hold polar opposite views on balancing a marriage and an occupation as a scientist. So I was compelled to write this article, not to be…
Unlike Nick Oswald I think I can multitask in the lab. If I organize my day efficiently and perform lots of experiments and other tasks in parallel, I get more done. But there is a school of thought – the one described in Nick’s article – that says no-one can really multitask, that our brains…
I’m sure you’ve heard of Parkinson’s Law, or at least the modern-day generalisation of it. It states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” When I first heard this, back in the mists of time, I thought Mr Parkinson was damn right, had a chuckle at a very accurate…
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…
A recent article published by The Scientist called Power Couples gave advice and examples for scientist couples who have successfully balanced their life at home and in the lab. It was interesting from the perspective of how two very busy and career motivated people work together to have it all: raise a family, run a lab, and stay in love…
Undergrad courses teach you to learn in a specific way. You have to cram in as much information into your brain as possible, hold it in there, then regurgitate as much of it as possible on exam day. Of course, actually understanding what you are talking about, and working from basic principles, helps but the…
Everyone is worried about getting results, aren’t they? Results are what you need for success in science – they are essential for bringing the funding in. But focusing on results per se is not a good way to work because, as a scientist, you can’t “get” results. You can’t “make” them happen. Essentially in every…
Calculating your fudge ratio can help you get your work done on time and get home before dark. Here’s how.
Only a handful of people ever become world experts in their field. The rest attain somewhere between a functional and world expert level of knowledge. So what makes the best better than the rest? Are they born with greater knowledge? Intelligence? Inner strength? Well, the latter is the more likely. Although some world experts are…
Spare a thought for your poor over-worked neurons. In the information age, they are bombarded with input from the moment they are dragged into consciousness by the radio alarm clock each morning then throughout the day by e-mail, Google searches, RSS feeds, mobile phones, newspapers, books, blogs and more. In the post genomic era, it’s…
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