Hello PhD

It’s a well worn analogy, but an apt one: grad school is a mental and emotional marathon, not a sprint.

This week, we answer listener mail from ‘runners’ at different stages of the race!

This episode is Part 2 of our conversation with Susanna Harris of PhDBalance.com. You can listen to the first episode here:

126: Listener Mailbag – Ghost PIs, Dress Codes, and Mental Health with Susanna Harris

Finishing Strong

We begin near the end with Katie, who is really feeling the pain with the finish line in sight. It’s that time when you start to wonder why you got into this race in the first place!

Katie asks:

How do you let go of your proposed PhD plan, and breath life/love into wherever it’s going now, which feels like you’re scraping up the dirt on the floor and mushing it into the vague resemblance of a thesis?

We cheer her on, and let her know that EVERYONE feels that way near the end of grad school. The key is to keep pushing over the finish line and be done with it.

You’ll have time to analyze your impact once you have those three little letters at the end of your email signature…

Gear Guides

Next up, we take a brief detour to talk about the tools of the trade. Runners love gear, right?

Xin Fei asks:

What is your opinion on electronic lab notebooks? I find paper lab notes tedious and hard to keep track with. Any recommendations on E-lab books? Pros and Cons? I was thinking of using note taking apps (Notion, Evernote, etc) but wasn’t sure if that’s the best way to do it.

Electronic lab notebooks are a complex topic (one to which we could devote an entire episode!) but the bottom line here is to talk to your ‘trainer.’

Your PI and lab mates need to approve of whatever technology you choose for keeping notes. In most cases, they’re the ones who will want to access your records after you move on from the lab.

Second Wind

Rounding the last leg of the race is Josh, who wants to know about keeping up his motivation as the miles tick by.

Have any of you gone through a “motivational slump” during your PhD training, and if so, do you have any tricks to help pull yourself out of it? It’d also be great to hear any related advice from a mental health perspective (eg. If the slump is wrapped in some longer-term mental health issues).

After having a good laugh/cry about the vast quantity of motivational slumps we’ve ALL been through, we get down to the layers in Josh’s question.

First, Susanna illustrates the difference between a temporary ‘motivational slump’ and the more serious implications of declining mental health.

For a science-slump, we recommend getting out to talk or write about your work to an audience that will be truly fascinated by the problems you’re trying to solve. That might mean presenting at a high school or chatting with your friend at the coffee shop.

Sometimes simply ‘zooming out’ from the project will help you realize what inspired you about it in the f...

It’s that time again – the virtual mail bag is overflowing, so we invited Susanna Harris of PhDBalance.com to help us answer YOUR emails, Tweets, and messages.

Bringing the Heat

We start with a few burning questions about applications and interviews.

The first question comes from a listener who was promised a strong letter of recommendation by research PI, but when the application period rolled around, the PI was ‘too busy’ to write the letter.

What should I do when I can’t get ahold of the PI? Maybe he is purposely ghosting me… How do I explain this situation without sounding like I am bad mouthing the PI if I get asked about this? Please help. 

Susanna, Josh, and Daniel spend some time describing why those letters of recommendation are so important, and lay out plans A, B, and C for what to do when the PI just won’t deliver.

Next, we hear from a listener who is embarking on her first interviews, and wants to know what to wear!

 I have received my first interview invitations for biomedical umbrella programs and I realize I don’t know what I should wear to these events. I realize some of the activities during an interview weekend are more informal, but how formally should I be dressed for the faculty interviews?

The answer is not quite as cut-and-dried as you may think – different universities, even within a single city, can have different expectations.

We talk about what you should definitely NOT wear, and offer some guidelines on how to look professional while still feeling comfortable.

Finally, we hear from a student who suffered a major setback. Due to a traumatic event, she had to leave school for a period of time, and failed several classes in the process.

Fortunately, she’s recovering and back to finish her senior year. But she’s concerned that the low grades and gap in her transcript will prevent her from going to graduate school.

Moreover, she doesn’t know how to talk about this event that so challenged her life.

My main question is how do you frame personal and difficult life experiences when asked about them in interviews, applications, etc? I know that I am driven, tenacious, and ready to pursue a graduate degree but unsure how to frame my past experience to my advantage. I am also unsure of how to anticipate others’ reactions if I do speak candidly. I know that I have an empowering story but am finding it hard to balance oversharing and not being detailed enough. I don’t want to seem like I am flaky or give up when facing a challenge, which is how it currently appears on my transcript. I would be interested in hearing from graduate students with similar experiences of taking a mental health break from university life and later returning. 

We answer those questions, and more, this week on the show. In fact, we had SO many listener questions this week, we’ll be back next time with more of your inquiries and more Susanna Harris!

To hear more from Susanna, check out these epsiodes:

110: The Secret Life of Pets (in Grad School)

100: The One Where We Celebrate

...

See our previous episodes in this series:

* 101: HelloPhD Guide to Grad School Applications – Knowing When, and Where, to Apply with Dr. Beth Bowman* 102: HelloPhD Guide to Grad School Applications – Crafting the Perfect Personal Statement with Dr. Brian Rybarczyk

With most jobs, you’ll need to submit a polished resume along with a handful of ebullient references. Maybe you’ll pass through a phone-screen with HR and then spend 20 minutes with the hiring manager.  

To get into grad school, the interview process will take days.

Grad school interviews often start with a flight to a new city.  You’ll have a casual chat with the grad student assigned to retrieve you from the airport, then meet the fellow candidate with whom you’ll share a hotel room.

The moment you get settled, you’re off to dinner with some faculty, followed by an early bedtime.  That’s because tomorrow morning, you’ll pass through a series of orientation sessions, faculty interviews, a tour of the city, and finally, a late-night out with the current students in the program.

You’ll fly back home the next day, grateful to be sleeping in your own bed.  And just when you get settled, you’ll need to hop on a plane to reach the next school where you’ll start the process again.

Best Foot Forward

Interview season can be rough on prospective students, and there’s plenty of work to be done.  But that doesn’t mean you need to be stressed.

This week, we talk with Dr. Beth Bowman, Assistant Director of Graduate Programs in Biomedical Sciences and Co-Director of the Summer Science Academy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

Dr. Bowman has spent her career recruiting top-tier students to her program, and advising applicants on their own grad-school journeys.  She’s the author of the Materials and Methods blog, where she explores the grad school application process and the intricacies of scientific training.

In this episode, we explain what you can expect from a typical interview weekend, from booking your flight to making a plan for the NEXT weekend in your schedule.

On the way, we answer some burning questions:

* Should I pretend that I want a career in academic science, or can I be honest about my career goals?* What kinds of questions will my faculty interviewers ask me?* What if I’m shy? How can I make it through dinner?* What is the dress code?* Should I go out to a bar or party with the current grad students?* How can I reschedule my interview if I have a conflict with another school?* And many more!

Though interviews make most applicants very nervous, just know that by getting the interview, you’ve received a great vote of confidence from the admissions committee.  

It’s expensive to purchase plane tickets, hotel rooms, and food, and to commit the time of faculty, students, and staff to your visit.  If they invited you to visit, they REALLY want you to choose their program!

You should feel proud!

Most PhD students attend traditional academic institutions of higher educations. It’s the world of classes, campuses, and mortarboards you probably think of when you think about a University.

But there’s a less-traveled path to a PhD that may actually hold some benefits for certain students, including those coming back to school after working for awhile, or those with families.

We’re talking about research institutes, and it’s possible you’ve never even heard about this alternative path to a PhD.

Research on the Brink

Research institutes may not be on every student’s radar. Though there are several varieties, most research institutes exist as hybrids – not quite academic, but not quite industry. Not quite public, but not quite private either.

Of the 10,000-15,000 research institutes in the United States, many were formed either to explore specific topics (agriculture, defense, or energy) or to bridge the gap between the lab and the wider world. These bridge-focused institutes can be industry partnerships or organizations that interface directly with patients through hospitals or clinical trials.

This hybrid approach appeals to many scientists who want to see the tangible effects of their science out in the world. Instead of waiting for basic research to wind its way through publications, they can work directly on technologies that benefit patients.

And happily, many institutes will actually train students and grant PhDs. This may be in collaboration with a traditional university (like the Max Planck Research Institutes), or a PhD may be granted by the institute itself (like Scripps).

Voices from Beyond

We talked with Kaylee Helfrich, a fourth-year PhD student at the UNC-Chapel Hill Nutrition Research Institute. The Institute is located about 2 hours away from the Chapel Hill campus in Kannapolis, NC, and that gave Kaylee a different experience from her campus-centric peers.

This week on the show, she shares the challenges and benefits of doing research at an institute. We learn about classwork, how she finds collaborators and mentors, and tips for staying in touch with other students.

We also learn about how the lifestyle differences could be either a blessing or a curse, depending on the student. Because most of the employees of the institute are career scientists and administrators, there are fewer students with whom to socialize after hours.

On the plus side, those hours tend to follow a standard office work day from 9 AM to 5 PM with weekends off. For some PhD students, that may sound too good to be true!

Leave a comment below and tell us about YOUR experience at a research institute. Was it the right choice for you? How does it differ from Kaylee’s experience?

The King of (Pumpkin) Beers

We nearly missed it this year, but we managed to sneak it in under the wire – it’s our annual tasting of the seasonal pumpkin beer!

This time, we taste-test the Pumking Imperial Ale from Southern Tier Brewing.

Curious what we thought?

Let’s just say, the best thing about this beer is the mascot.

We’re bringing you this bonus episode to encourage our listeners to submit their artwork to the Promega Art Contest for Creative Scientists. This isn’t for everyone – it’s just for listeners of Hello PhD!

The deadline is nearly here (December 1st, 2019), but you can still visit the contest page to submit a digital image of your fine artwork, photography, microscopy, or whatever!

Five winners will receive prizes by mail and have their art on display at the Promega Employee Art Showcase.

One Grand Prize Winner will win a free trip to the Art Show opening in Madison Wisconsin!

We called Dr. Aparna Shah, who was last year’s grand-prize winner. Her submission, “an image of an immuno-histochemically stained mouse brain slice acquired on a confocal microscope” came from a project she had since abandoned. Thankfully, that image was still a winner.

You can read all about her experience here:

Oh, the Places You’ll Go, Thanks to Science!

So don’t wait! Submit your images today!

In a world where it’s “Publish or Perish,” you’d expect “publish” to be the more favorable option.

But, if you’ve ever spent a year or more performing experiments, crafting figures, writing a manuscript, finding a friendly editor and arguing with reviewers, that “perish” option might just sound pretty sweet right about now….

It’s no secret that the publishing industry has an inexplicable choke-hold on the scientific community. A handful of companies exercise editorial control, deciding which findings are permitted to enter the information stream. They charge the researcher who submits the paper, then charge exorbitant fees to the reader to see what was ‘printed.’

While the information age has flooded nearly every aspect of our daily lives, its transformative power sometimes seems to be walled off at the laboratory door.

Luckily, there are a few scientists who are willing to chip away at that wall.

Minimum Viable Publication

Nate Jacobs wasn’t far into his postdoctoral training when he realized that the joy of publishing a paper had faded.

Nate Jacobs, PhDCEO of Flashpub

“I started getting really frustrated with the publishing process. Every time I published, it kind of felt like a failure. I wasn’t sure if other people would be able to reproduce it. It didn’t feel collaborative.”

Nate said it started to feel almost as if he was talking to himself, rather than engaging in the back-and-forth communication of a scientific debate.

“The best example of this,” he says, “is the discussion section. It’s called ‘discussion,’ but you proceed to have a conversation with yourself and create these straw-man arguments. It started feeling really fake to me.”

Access was another problem. If your university can’t afford to subscribe to a journal, you’ll be forced to write to the paper’s authors, or to scour SciHub or other less-than-legal sources.

“Of course I’m going to have to be a criminal to get my PhD done,” Nate adds wryly.

So what’s a postdoc to do? Nate decided to give new life to an old idea whose time had come.

Making a Micropublication

“If you think of the current literature as big, slow, and exclusive, micropublication is the opposite of that,” Nate says.

He summarizes a micropublication this way: “It is a single figure, a single finding. What differentiates it is that you’re not waiting until you have a full, complete, clear narrative. You’re really publishing individual findings.”

Imagine an average cell biology paper. You might have multiple figures showing Western blots, immunofluorescence, DNA purifications, or statistics. Presumably, those are all referenced in the narrative arc of your paper, supporting some new conclusion.

But along the way, you probably did a few experiments that “didn’t work.” Or maybe they contradicted your central finding, and you left them out in the interest of finally finishing up your manuscript.

Some of those experiments would probably benefit from additional controls, or better antibodies held in another lab. You won’t learn about those improvements until the reviewers send the paper back,

Please recount your life story, all of your future plans, and why this graduate program is uniquely suited to fulfill those dreams.  Limit your answer to 140 characters.

Okay, okay, the typical “Personal Statement” prompt on your grad school application is probably not that outrageous, but they CAN feel both cryptic and overwhelming.

Here’s a real prompt from a real grad school application at a major university:

In 1-2 pages, describe your career goals, research interests, past and present research experience, and why you’ve chosen the [Name Redacted] Program for your graduate studies.

This prompt can induce instant writer’s block in even the most prepared applicants.  So where do you begin?

This week on the show, we share tips for crafting the perfect personal statement that will highlight your grad-school-readiness and potential for greatness in a career beyond the degree.

Anatomy of an Application

The typical graduate school application has four main parts:

* Transcripts* Test Scores (GRE, TOEFL, etc.)* Letters of Recommendation* Personal Statement

Let’s unpack these one by one.

Transcripts

Transcripts are the easy part. If you’ve already done the hard work of researching schools that will be a good fit for your aspirations, you simply need to visit the registrar to send transcripts. 

Sure, it’ll cost you a few bucks, but the main concern here is timing.  It can take moments or months for official transcripts to make their way to the intended school, so start early.  Many programs will accept ‘unofficial’ transcripts with an application as long as you send the real-sealed-deal eventually.

Test Scores

It seems like only yesterday when every graduate program required applicants to submit GRE scores, as well as some GRE subject tests.  That’s because it pretty much WAS yesterday.

In the last year, nearly 100 programs have dropped their GRE requirement.  You can find a running list, maintained by our very own Josh, in a Google Doc he updates regularly.

And while the GRE may not be required, many applicants will still take it.  Our advice is that if you choose to take the exam, you should definitely study.  Check you university’s website for test-prep classes and guides.

If English is not your first language, you’ll also need to take a language proficiency exam like the TOEFL.  Typically, grad programs will expect scores to be recent – within the last year or two – to ensure you’ve kept up with the language.

To learn more about the GRE requirement and why it’s falling from favor in biomedical graduate programs, check out our previous episodes:

023: Seriously, can we ditch the GRE already?

065: Does the GRE Predict Which Students Will Succeed?

Letters of Recommendation

While you probably won’t need to spend a lot of time on this section of your application,

Dr. Jimena Giudice has all the traits of a promising new faculty member.

Through her training and early career, she has earned more than a dozen grants and awards. She’s co-authored two dozen papers. And she has trained students and postdocs, gaining a reputation as a highly effective mentor.

You’d expect that Dr. Giudice’s undeniable success was the natural result of an early immersion in science and a dogged adherence to the well-worn path through college, grad school, and postdoc.

But of course, you’d be wrong. Before discovering a love for scientific research, Dr. Giudice spent ten years answering a different calling.

Changing Focus

Dr. Jimena Giudice

Growing up in Argentina, Jimena didn’t know that her eventual career in science was even an option.

“My parents are architects, my sister is an architect, my cousins are architects, uncles are architects or graphic designers. So I really didn’t have anyone close that I could imagine you could do science as a career,” she recalls.

So after high school, she enrolled in college to study industrial engineering.

Four years into a six year degree, she put her studies on hold and made a personal decision.

“I changed my path, and that’s when I started considering being a nun. I entered a congregation when I was 21.”

Jimena knew that after three years in the congregation, she’d have the opportunity get back to school to continue her studies. Her congregation was focused on education, which gave her valuable experience.

“I was teaching at different levels. Primary school, kindergarten, secondary school, people in the street, rural schools. I was full time working and teaching,” she says.

As her fourth year of service approached, she started to think about what she could study during the next three years that would help in her congregation. She visited the university to explore the available courses, and found that her options expanded well beyond the architecture and engineering paths she had known as a child.

“I remember the first image I have in my head is seeing students with white lab coats and the labs with glass windows and walls. And I have that image in my mind. I said ‘That’s what I want. I want to do that. I want to be with a white lab coat doing what they were doing.'”

That moment was transformative. Afterwards, she says, “I always had the dream of doing experiments, even though I liked education and teaching. Thats when I saw for the first time that science is something where you can study and work and have a career.”

One Good Turn

With her passion for science ignited, Jimena had a new problem. A chemistry degree in Argentina takes six years, but her congregation allowed just three years to pursue a degree while also working during the day.

She did the majority her classes at night, and traveled an hour and a half between the community where she lived and the university.

“I had to multi-task a lot of things. My philosophy was: when I am in classes, I am in classes, and I have to get as much as I can from here because I don’t have a lot of time to study at home,” she remembers.

You’ve gotten this far, which means you have probably read the episode title by now. And that means you have questions. So… many… questions….

Let’s answer a few of them right up front.

First, if you want to enter graduate school at age seventeen, you should probably start college around age eleven. That’s what this week’s guest Dr. Julia Nepper did.

Second, you should know that even though Julia’s educational biography is unusual, the lessons she learned along the way will feel familiar to every graduate student.

The Same New Story

As a child, Julia Nepper loved to read. “I would read for eight or ten hours a day, every single day,” she recalls.

Her parents decided to homeschool, which afforded her the flexibility to learn at her own pace. Her voracious appetite for books, and an intrinsic love of learning, propelled her through entire grade levels every few months.

By age eleven, she had scored highly on the SAT, and enrolled in a community college near home.

“You had to be at least sixteen to live in the dorms on campus,” she notes. “For the first two years, the college required me to have a guardian with me at all times, so my dad had to sit in the hallway outside of all of my classes.”

Julia completed her undergraduate degree in Biology. She was fifteen when she first applied to graduate school.

“I think I encountered my first big failure when I started applying to grad school, because I got rejected.”

Her age and limited research experience probably impacted the admissions decision, but that was not the end of her story. Julia learned about a post-baccalaureate research program that would give her time and training in a lab environment.

“I was going to get a year of ‘pre-grad-school’ where I would get to do research in the lab and act like a grad student, live like a grad student, bulk up my resume, learn more about whether or not I even wanted to do this… It was very exciting,” Julia explains.

Post-bac programs available to other students who want to gain a year of experience before engaging in the 4+ year commitment of graduate training. To learn more about them, check out the Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) and Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (Postbac IRTA/CRTA)

After a year of post-bac training, Julia was accepted to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She was elated, and eagerly moved to a new city to start her next adventure.

But it wasn’t long until she faced an uncomfortable reality familiar to many graduate students. Though Julia had a long history of success – of good grades and academic accolades – graduate school demanded something different from the studying and testing that measured her progress in high school or college.

“What made graduate school different was just the sheer amount of failure you encounter. And a lot of times, the complete lack of direction. Failing every single day starts to wear on you after awhile,” she remembers.

Dr. Julia Nepper (Photo By: Michelle Stocker)

In this episode, we ask Julia more about her unique experience as a teenager in graduate school. She tells us how she coped with failed experim...

As a researcher, you may brag about the open, collegial way that scientists share their findings in lab meetings, poster sessions, and journal articles.

But if you dig beneath the surface, you’ll find a darker tendency built into our habits and institutions that actually cover up a lot of what we learn.

For example, you might spend months testing the efficacy of a new cancer drug in vitro. But if that drug doesn’t have a significant impact on cancer growth, you’ll conclude your work is ‘not publishable,’ and the discovery will languish in your lab notebook.

Meanwhile, in some other lab, at some other University, another scientist might get the same idea you had, and spend their own weeks or months doing the same tests, only to learn the same result.

And so, year after year, the research community wastes immeasurable time re-learning the same lessons. And because of that, the march toward real insights and real cures slows to a crawl.

This week on the show, we talk with Jon Tennant, PhD, who wants to re-open the channels of scientific communication and transform the way we build on what others have learned.

Open Source Science

The “Open Science” movement goes far beyond sharing negative results. It builds on the “Open Source” software movement that has been vital to the software engineering community for a generation.

It encompasses all aspects of the scientific process, from planning experiments to sharing raw data to educating the public.

Jon described just a handful of ways that scientists are opening their methods to the wider world.

The first idea is the microPublication. Rather than gathering reams of data in the hopes of crafting a ‘story’ that a journal is willing to pick up, micropublishing focuses on sharing the results of individual experiments – pushing the data out to other scientists as they happen. In this way, you can collaborate in near-real-time, and inspire new paths of inquiry – even if the original idea doesn’t pan out.

Another way to open your research is through pre-registration. In this mode, you present your hypothesis and research plan to a third party for review before you begin to collect data. That way, no matter the result, the world gets to learn about your experimental approach and whether the hypothesis was supported or rejected.

While these novel modes of publication might sound exciting, they can have a hard time gaining traction in an academic setting where the Impact Factor of a journal can mean a promotion or a dismissal. How are postdocs and junior faculty members supposed to adopt these new publishing methods when the hiring or tenure committee puts so much stock in the ‘top-tier journals?’

Weaning academics from their addiction to Cell, Science, and Nature requires a cultural solution. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment encourages signatories in academia and funding agencies to look beyond the Journal Impact Factor when making hiring and funding decisions.

They highlight “the need to assess research on its own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which the research is published.”

Another campaign called “Free Our Knowledge” takes the pledge for open science on...