Stephanie Bora, a 4th year IID student and CMIID member, recently attended the National Science Policy Group's (NSPG) Congressional Visit Day in Washington, DC. This allows students to experience science advocacy in action.
Click HERE to read about her experience:
If you are interested in learning more about this, more information can be found at the Penn State Center for Science Advocacy website. :
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
A Tale of Two Projects
I don’t think my
graduate school experience is unique. I entered a PhD program fresh out of
undergrad, wide-eyed and excited to research anything my PI told me to. But a
couple years into my program I was assigned a lot of random, unrelated things
to look into, and none of them seemed to be going anywhere. I expressed this
concern to my PI when I thought I should be thinking about my Comprehensive
Exams, and was told we were trying “to make something stick.” Finally somewhere
in my 3rd year (too late in my opinion), something did stick!
Positive data! Oh happy day! Then something stuck on a different project, so
cool! I went from five aimless projects, to two promising projects I could pick
a thesis from. I just had to pick one, hooray science!
But somehow a year later, when I
should be focusing on developing a strong thesis, I’m still splitting my time
between two completely unrelated projects. The joy in having options for a
thesis project faded when I realized I wouldn’t be able to work on just one
thesis project. Let’s be honest: as researchers, we have our favorite projects.
My thesis project is my favorite; it’s exciting, it’s new, and not least of all
it’s what I’m using to get my degree and move on. So when I have to work on my
other project, it’s a distraction. The result is I don’t feel like I’m making
enough progress in either project; both are moving forward, but at what I think
is a glacial pace.
As graduate students, and post-docs,
we’re expected to multi-task. I understand that. But when you’re juggling
multiple projects that are independent of each other and both have enough going
for them to be separate thesis projects, it gets to be overwhelming. But I have
learned a few things on how to manage:
1)
Make the project you like best the
priority. This is a lot
easier to do if it’s your thesis project. Every graduate student I’ve met is a
hard-worker, and sometimes that means we feel like failures when we let things
go. But devoting your time and thinking abilities to one major project probably
means you’ll make more progress, rather than spreading your resources and
abilities too thin. I don’t advise splitting your time evenly between two
unrelated things: pick one to focus on.
2)
Make your PI like your priority best. Again, this is a lot easer to do if it’s
your thesis project. However you feel about your PI, they know it’s in their
best interest that you make progress on your thesis. Sometimes reminding them
of that helps throw their support and their resources behind your favorite
project. In my case, my other project is not one we’re funded to do, while we
have grants for my thesis project. A reminder that my other project is using
money we aren’t secure in helped shift her focus back to my thesis project.
3)
Don’t completely neglect your other
project. My PI doesn’t
really remember what I’m working on; I suspect that if I never mentioned my
other project she would never ask about it. It’s tempting to pretend the mice
for this project don’t exist. But when I have downtime between experiments for
my thesis, I still work on it, and think about how to get to the mechanism
behind what we’ve observed. This way I’m still furthering the project, and will
probably get a paper out of it.
4)
Be willing to teach. There may come a time when your PI or
collaborator will take on a new student, and that new student will take that
other project off your hands. I’m still waiting for that blessed day, but I
know it won’t be a clean break: someone will have to train the hypothetical
person who carries on my other project. My PI and our collaborator on the other
project both know I’m frustrated with how I have to split my time, but by
making it known that I’m happy to help and teach a new person, I think our
collaborator is reassured that the project won’t completely fall off the grid
if I stop working on it. In being willing to teach, I’m also preserving a
decent relationship with our collaborator, and again keeping opportunities for
authorship and future collaboration open. And that’s never a bad thing.
This post was written by Stephanie Bora, a 4th year IID PhD student.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Four Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Started Writing A Manuscript
We all await for those sweet words to come our way, “I think
we’re ready to start writing up your data in to a manuscript.” Finally, you get a chance to start writing up
your projects as a first author and can tell the world (or rather the small
group of people that study the same thing you do) about all the cool science
you’ve been doing. I was excited when I
started to write up my data. Finally I
felt like I was making some progress.
However as I started the manuscript writing process, I realized I was in
for an experience. One that I wish
somebody had told me about. So for right
now, I will share some of the major things I’ve learn as I am currently writing
my first manuscript as a first author.
Once my manuscript has been sent back (most likely), revised and is
published (fingers crossed), I’ll share what else I learned along the way.
Four things I wish I
had known before starting to write a manuscript
1) Ultimately, it your PI’s call as to what
goes into your paper.
Even though you did the hands on work and
have been actively writing and editing the paper, your PI has the final say. Their grants funded your work and paid for
your salary. Also, it is their name and
reputation on the line when they publish your work. This may vary from PI to PI as to how much
input you get to have on the content of your paper. I know that I started out with a certain idea
of how my work should be written and presented however it was not the best
way. And it can be challenging getting
used to having your idea for your work being changed into somebody else’s idea
for your work. I’ve been told that this is
part of the process that everybody goes through. I felt like I was doing something wrong every
time the draft came back and was substantially from what I had sent two days
before. Apparently, this is normal. Crappy, but normal.
2) Communication
between you and your co-authors is really important.
The clearer you and your PI are about the
direction of your paper the better. You
both waste less time trying to get on the same page about how to write up your
work and which experiments to you need to prioritize to fill in the hole in
your story. I recommend having a meeting
with your PI before you start writing so you can start on the same page and
then have regular meetings to keep you on schedule with your writing and also
to keep communication flowing.
3) It is
another full time job – so now you have two: research and writing. And they are supposed to be done at the same
time.
Finding a balance between writing and doing
bench work is challenging not to mention balancing your interests outside of
lab. Good luck. I feel like all grad school is a balancing
act.
4) It
will take way longer than you think to write the paper.
Even the best planned
timeline for getting a draft to co-authors and getting a draft submitted will
go awry. Get used to it. It gets done when it get done. Learn from all the delays that come your way.
This was written Kaitlin McDaniel, a 5th year Pathobiology student.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Good Fall Eats on a Graduate Student Budget
Hello CMIID students!
Regardless of our status, first year graduate student, fifth year
graduate student, or post doc, we typically live paycheck to paycheck (maybe
tossing some money into savings). I know for myself that after rent, utilities,
and a car payment, my weekly grocery budget is fairly set. To stretch that budget,
I try to shop in season. By that I mean purchasing vegetables and fruits that
are currently being harvested and are thus fresh and inexpensive.
We are currently smack dab in the middle of the fall season and there
are a plethora of veggies and fruits in season. These include:
Fruits Vegetables
Apples Arugula
Clementines Root
veggies (carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, turnips)
Cranberries Pumpkin
Dates Kale
and spinach
Figs Brussel
sprouts
Pears Squash
(spaghetti, acorn, buttercup, delicata)
Onions
Celery
Local farmers markets obviously have
some great deals on produce. The grocery stores are also worth a look though.
Wegman’s, for example, will stock some locally grown and produced foods. Trader
Joe’s is where I buy a lot of my winter squash. They sell it at a flat rate
whereas most other stores sell per pound. It all just takes some willingness to
shop around and become familiar with seasonal produce.
And once you’ve got the produce, it
all comes down to preparing some tasty dishes; perhaps a hearty soup, roasted
squash, or stuffed baked sweet potatoes. Below are a few links to some tasty
looking recipes:
Happy shopping and cooking!
Lindsay
Lindsay Snyder is a 4th yr Immunology and Infectious Disease graduate student in Dr. Cantorna's lab.
Lindsay Snyder is a 4th yr Immunology and Infectious Disease graduate student in Dr. Cantorna's lab.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Starting Over: 5 things you didn’t realize would slow you down in a new post doc.
You leave your PhD lab feeling confident because you just
spent 4-8 years in your field, where you have read, researched, and written
parts of your field. You believe that you
have a strong technical background in what you’ve done, and you may decide to
change fields slightly for your post-doc. Doing this opens you up to expanding
your knowledge much further than if you maintained a position in your current
field, and it also opens you up to feeling
stupid most of the time. (See The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific
Research: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full.pdf+html).
Don’t worry – this is
normal.
Just like when you first started graduate school and knew
nothing about the field, you will need time to adapt. I changed from a
microbiology lab with a focus on the immune response against whooping cough
(vaccinate your kids!), to an erythropoiesis lab, learning how the body deals
with stresses that cause dramatic loss of red blood cells due to either trauma
or leukemia. Because these fields are very different, I expected it to take
some time to adapt, but I wasn’t sure how long before I started to really get
going.
Here is what I’ve
learned:
1. Paperwork doesn’t
normally transfer. Even though I have decided to continue my career at the
same institution that I carried out my graduate work in, new paperwork is
needed as an employee that was either different because of my change in status
from graduate student to employee or did not transfer to my new laboratory. You
will be expected to complete the same training you have already completed
because you are in a different building, lab, or department. You will need to
be added to new IACUCs, IRBs, and IBCs, because these are laboratory specific.
This paperwork will take a while.
2. Just because you
learned a technique previously doesn’t mean you know how to do it. Every lab has their own way of doing things.
Some may extract bone marrow by drilling into the bone and flushing the marrow
out while others may just pulverize the whole bone and filter out the unwanted
cells. Neither of these versions are incorrect, but labs have a tendency to
maintain their standard operating procedures (SOPs) to make sure that data are comparable
among members within the lab. It will take time to learn from the lab members
to know how certain procedures and techniques are expected to be performed,
which leads to our next point.
3. You will need to
work on someone else’s schedule until you have learned those SOPs. When you
first start a lab and are trying to learn how that lab does things, you will
need to observe other labmates, and even work side by side with them until you
can master their SOPs.
4. You will need to
learn a new set of jargon and the literature of a new field. This one is
pretty obvious. Whether you change course slightly or hop into a brand new
field that you know little to nothing about, you will need to learn the update
views, big names in the field, and
5. You will need to
learn how your new boss operates. How often do you meet? Are you expecting
to share data on a specific day at a specific time or should you report new
data as it comes in? Is there a regular lab meeting, and if so, what is the
format? Will you share or present data every time? Is this a general update on
progress? Are important journal articles discussed? How closely related are the
journal articles to people’s work? This is very much so lab specific, and every
lab has a different way of doing things. The best advice suggests that you talk
to labmates to discover how things run and how you should contribute.
For these reasons, it really will take you about 2 months to
start being a productive member of the lab when you change field. Most PIs
expect this, and although you should be working hard to get yourself deeper
into the new field, give yourself a break now and then to step back and realize
how much you will have learned when starting over.
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