Hello PhD

You might believe that because you’re in grad school and receiving a research stipend, you don’t really need to worry about paying an income tax.  You don’t have a ‘real job’ and no one asked you to fill out any paperwork so you’re off the hook, right?

Wrong.  Utterly, expensively, illegally wrong.

The Tax Man Cometh

The truth is, graduate students and postdocs who receive paychecks, stipends, fellowships, grants, and any other type of pay are expected to pay income taxes.  Unfortunately, that’s not always made clear by your department.

This week on the show, we talk with Emily Roberts, PhD, about the special tax questions grad students and postdocs should be asking.  Emily earned her degree in Biomedical Engineering, but now spends her time helping trainees navigate the world of personal finance.

Emily explains that there are two broad categories of trainee income:

* Compensatory pay – this is money you receive for doing work, like research assistant, teaching assistant, or any other ‘real job’ you’ll have in your life.  You’ll get a W-2 form, and your employer will withhold taxes throughout the year.  This is how normal people do taxes.* Non-compensatory pay – this is ‘awarded’ to you.  It might be a fellowship, scholarship, or training grant, but it’s not considered pay for performance.  And that can lead to a whole heap of side effects when it’s time to pay Uncle Sam.

Students and postdocs who receive non-compensatory pay may not have taxes withheld, and their department may not even let them know they’re required to pay taxes! They’re also not eligible for certain tax breaks.

What can you do?  Check out some of the following resources to learn more, and be sure to ask a tax professional for details on your own situation. That way, you won’t get a nasty surprise in year three of your training when an IRS auditor shows up at your door!

* IRS Publication 970 Chapters 1, 3, and 6 (particularly p. 5-6)* Compensatory and non-compensatory pay and their tax implications.* Tax lies told to graduate students* How do I calculate and report my taxable income?* Can a grad student contribute to an IRA using his stipend?* Do I have to pay income tax throughout the year and how do I do it?

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Also in this episode, Josh takes his love of gaming to a whole new level by exploring the non-random outcome of a coin flip.  It turns out people are actually doing peer-reviewed research on coin flipping, including magician-turned-mathematician Professor Persi Diaconis!

And since we’re bemoaning the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution (income tax), we might as well celebrate the 21st (the repeal of prohibition!) with

After a tough day of negative results and an ornery PI, it can be nice to come home to someone who thinks you’re amazing, loves you unconditionally, and wants nothing more than to cuddle with you on the couch.

Of course, we’re talking about pets; dogs, cats, gerbils, rabbits, birds, horses and, I’m told, snakes and reptiles, can brighten even the darkest day.

But despite their well-known restorative powers, pets can be a lot of work. Does a grad student or postdoc really have time to take care of another creature?

This week, we assess the pros, and cons, of caring for pets in grad school.

Woof, Meow, Tweet

Susannah Harris was a fourth-year graduate student when she noticed a post on facebook about two stray puppies.

“These were the cutest, and saddest puppies you’ve ever seen,” she remembers. As a long-time pet owner, she had thought about adopting a dog, but wasn’t sure how they’d fit into her busy research schedule.

She set up a time to meet the puppies and to assess the option of adopting them. But, she also set up a veterinarian appointment for the very next day.

In other words, there was NO WAY she was coming home without puppies.

As strays, Hermes and Athena needed some serious care in the early days, but Susannah took it one day at a time. It wasn’t long before her care for the pups started to teach her about caring for herself.

“There’s something really amazing about taking care of something else that is fully dependent on you, that reminds you YOU are fully dependent on you. You need to take care of yourself.”

That can be difficult in graduate school, where long hours in the lab are both an expectation and a badge of honor.

“People were more worried that my dogs weren’t getting enough attention or time outside, than they were for me.”

Susannah’s dogs helped her to see that just as they needed time, attention and care, so did she.

She says that as a grad student, “we put these things on hold because we can, but you would never say that about your dog. You would never treat a pet like that.”

Though having a pet in graduate school can be a real comfort, it is not without its challenges.

“It is WAY more expensive than you realize,” Susannah observes. And if you work long hours or need to travel for conferences, you’ll need to recruit helpers that can care for your pet in your absence.

Susannah has taken to asking friends or colleagues for help.

“Everyone in grad school secretly wants a pet. There’s always someone willing to help if you ask them.”

We also asked our friends on Twitter whether they thought it was a good idea to foster a pet in graduate school. The response was overwhelming!

Pets are really important during grad school. Free cuddles. Nonjudgmental. Needs you. Loves you. That baseline level of responsibility that also ensures you take care of you, cause you have to in order to take care of them.— Anna Scharnagl (@AnnaScharnagl) November 25, 2018

Sure if you want a resilliance building experience, a permanent narcissistic co-author that insists on editing your work with nonsense feedback and constan...

It’s been an exhausting journey, but you’re nearing the end. You slogged through reams of application forms, personal statements, and letters of reference. You gave up every weekend for two months, traveling to interview at different schools.

But the blessed day has finally arrived when your inbox ‘dings’ with the sound of a grad school offer letter!

It’s time to take everything you’ve learned about research programs, college towns, and faculty advisors and add another layer to your decision making: Can I actually afford to go to grad school?

Fellowship of the Bling

Getting an offer letter from a top-tier graduate school is absolutely enthralling, but before you pop the bubbly, it’s worth taking a few minutes to understand the details behind the ‘Yes!’

That’s why we asked our friend and frequent guest Dr. Emily Roberts from the website and podcast Personal Finance for PhDs to help us break down the numbers.

Read on for a look at the different parts of a typical offer letter, or check out Emily’s website for a full description and companion worksheet!

Stipend

We open the conversation by talking about the big number everyone looks for first: the stipend. This is akin to a salary you’d receive at your job, and it sets the basis for most of your financial decisions over the next few years.

While stipends that allow you to pursue your own research project are common, there are some flavors of funding that come with strings attached. For instance, there are research assistant fellowships that may require you to work on an unrelated project to earn your monthly allowance.

Other students may be required to act as a teaching assistant (TA) and commit 10-20 hours per week outside the lab and inside the classroom. This can be great experience if your career goals include teaching, but may slow down your progress on your main research topic.

It’s vitally important to find out where your money is coming from, and what you’ll be expected to do to earn it.

You’ll also want to compare your offer to other programs and regions. Dr. Roberts hosts an amazing website for doing just that. It’s called www.phdstipends.com, and it allows you to search by field, department, or region to see what other students are earning.

Your search results will also include a living-wage ratio, effectively letting you know how far your stipend will stretch in your new home.

Though the living-wage ratio can get you started, Dr. Roberts says there’s another resource that you shouldn’t overlook.

What you really need to do is to talk to students on the ground. That’s something you can do when you meet current grad students on your visit weekend or maybe you can do it later on via email. But it’s very important.

Tuition and Fees

In many cases, a PhD program will include funding for your tuition. Take a minute to confirm that’s true for the school you’re considering and move along.

If your tuition is not completely covered, find out how much you’ll be expected to pay per semester. Tuition costs can change from year to year based on your progress through the program, so it’s vital that you take the long view and not get fixated on years one and two.

It’s Monday morning and you arrive in lab a little late. No worries, you drop your tissue culture media into the warming bath, turn on the hood, and head down the hall while things ‘warm up.’

Next stop is the -80 freezer. You dig through the drifting piles of frost and snow, around the boxes of samples with labels that wore off ages ago, and find your quarry. You throw your weight into the door, and manage to get it latched – just barely – and head to the lab.

Once there, you dump yesterday’s gel buffer down the drain and start measuring out agarose and ethidium bromide for today’s experiments. With the gel poured, it’s finally time for coffee. Then maybe you’ll get around to splitting your cells.

It may be an easy morning for a cell biologist, but it was pretty rough on the planet. This week we explore some simple tweaks this busy scientist could make to be greener and more sustainable!

It’s Easy Being Green

Allison Paradise started working in a biomedical research lab when she was in high school. On her very first day, she completed a cloning protocol and went to ask the PI where she could recycle the uncontaminated pipette tips and boxes.

Allison Paradise, CEO and Founder of My Green Lab

Her question was met with a glare of mixed astonishment and disgust.

“We don’t recycle here.”

Allison was incredulous. Recycling was second nature for her family at home – why should these clean plastics be incinerated rather than repurposed?

Over the next few years, Allison noticed other counterintuitive lab behaviors. Why were the heat blocks and water baths left on 24/7? Why had the -70 degree freezers come to be called, and set to, -80 degrees? And what about all of those laboratory chemicals that were being dumped down the drain and into the water supply.

In 2013, Allison left her industry gig to become CEO and founder of My Green Lab, a non-profit organization committed to making research science more sustainable.

My Green Lab supports programs to conserve water, energy, consumables, and to reduce the lab’s dependence on toxic chemicals. They also offer a Green Lab Certification, measuring your lab’s performance on everything from fume hoods to field work.

This week on the show, we asked Allison to share some ideas that lab scientists could do TODAY to start making a difference for the environment.

Her solutions, like putting the water bath on an outlet timer, use simple strategies for an outsized impact.

To learn more, visit MyGreenLab.org or follow them on Twitter or Facebook.

And to cool us off (as if that’s a problem in January) we sip the Copperline Amber Ale from Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This beer takes its place as one of the first craft brews we tried way back in the day.

And don’t worry, we definitely recycled the cans!

When you’re a graduate student, your conception of ‘industry’ has a lot in common with your understanding of a black-hole.

First, you’ve been told it’s a scary and unpredictable place. (“Did you know they can just change your project or fire you at will?”)

Second, it’s a one-way trip. (“Once you step off the tenure track, there’s no going back!”)

And finally, information doesn’t escape its gravitational pull. You get plenty of visits and seminars from academic postdocs and PIs, but how many times has your department invited an industry scientist?

This week on the show, we escape the industry event-horizon by interviewing three very real, and very successful PhDs currently working at 23andMe.

23andPhD

Let’s meet the PhDs!

Jennifer McCreight is a Scientist, Research Communications and joined 23andMe in 2017. She communicates their research studies to broader scientific audiences via social media and blog posts and oversees their conference attendance strategy.

Previously she ran a science blog and gave 50+ lectures on genetics and evolution for the general public. Jennifer earned her PhD in Genome Sciences from the University of Washington, where she studied the evolution of microRNA in primates and was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow.

Fah Sathirapongsasuti is a Senior Scientist, Computational Biology and joined 23andMe in 2013. He analyzes research participant data to identify new therapeutic targets through the integration of genomic and biomedical data with the goal of realizing precision medicine.

Research Fah conducted for his PhD studies at Harvard – developing the first method to detect copy number variations from exome sequencing data – has been cited more than 100 times. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he earned the President’s Award for Academic Excellence.

Janie Shelton is a Senior Scientist, Data Collection and joined 23andMe in 2015. She is responsible for developing novel areas of online data collection and analyzing data on a wide-range of phenotypes.

Prior to 23andMe, she worked at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime where she focused on survey methods and analytical techniques to estimate the number of people among various hidden populations. Janie has also worked at the University of California, Davis, investigating environmental causes for the increase in autism spectrum disorders observed in California.

Janie earned her PhD in Epidemiology at University of California, Davis and her Masters in Public Health, Biostatistics & Epidemiology from the University of Southern California.

We asked Jennifer, Fah, and Janie to reflect on their graduate school journeys, and how their training prepared them for industry.

In our interview, they talk about the importance of extra-curricular activities to career success, ways to learn more about industry jobs through internships and informational interviews, and why academia needs to improve its policies for student work-life balance and mental health.

Whether you’re committed to the tenure track or are thinking about exploring an industry career, these three successful scientists will give you valuable insights to help you navigate your own path.

You may also like:

079: The Insider’s Guide to Industry – with Randall Ribaudo, PhD

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!

Kick Back and Celebrate

Well, you’ve done it again… Our inboxes are full-to-bursting and it’s time to answer your questions in this week’s episode.

We start with some feedback on episode 098: I’m in Grad School and I’m Pregnant! How to Have Kids AND a Career in Science. Listener Sara shares her experience of being pregnant while working with some dangerous chemicals in her experiments.

She shares how the Environmental Health and Safety  (EHS) team on campus made sure she was safe through observation and a chemical exposure badge.

Next up, “K” wonders whether she’s ready to apply to grad school.  She’s currently a technician with years of experience, but her boss has encouraged her to wait another year.  

Should she follow his advice? Or is it time to follow her instincts by changing subjects and enrolling in a graduate program?

Matt asks a real head-scratcher:

Over this past summer, I did a research project at a pharmaceutical company. My supervisor only received a B.S., but had enough experience that he made his way up to being a “PI.” He said he would be able to write me a recommendation in the future if I needed it, but he’d have to use his personal email since anything directly affiliated with the company has too many privacy terms associated with it. Given this, and the fact that he never went to grad school, would a letter from him be something admissions committees would want to see?

We unravel Matt’s question and help him navigate both the private email address and the work for an advisor that doesn’t have a PhD.

Lis is interested in earning a PhD, but she’s concerned that her background may be a barrier.  It would be far beyond anything her family has achieved academically, but she still wants to try.

Can she succeed in the face of inexperience and impostor syndrome?  And is she interested in the degree for the right reasons?

Last, but not least, Lena is dealing with a new collaboration where she’s expected to give a critical read to a paper authored by the PI.  

I am a PhD student and have recently been invited to co-author an article related to our project. I find it challenging to criticize others’ work in a good way, especially when the main author is the PI. Can you discuss giving good feedback as a co-author? How much feedback is appropriate?

Great questions, and please keep them coming.  You can reach us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter or Facebook!

To wash down all of these thorny questions, we’re sampling the Westmalle Trappist Tripel brewed by Westmalle Abbey in Belgium.

This beer is courtesy of a listener who brought it back to the States from Europe.  It was worth the trip, and randomly established a new Hello PhD tradition: Belgian beers whenever we open the mailbag!

It’s a tragic fact: many jaw-dropping, eye-opening, and heart-pounding research results never makes an impact on the scientific community.

And it’s partly your fault.

By “your,” of course,  I mean all of us.  Because when we waste the opportunity to share our results in their best light at a scientific conference or poster session, our viewers may overlook this valuable insight.

But we can do better!  With a little planning, collaboration, and hard work, we can make even a humble poster presentation a vehicle for inspiring the next discovery and building our scientific network.

Let’s get started!

Poster Perfect

A poster session is a unique opportunity for a young scientist.

As a viewer, you get the chance to engage in a casual conversation with other scientists, often one-on-one, about a topic that interests you.  It’s an opportunity to ask for clarity, pose a question, or offer ideas without an audience of 200 staring at the back of your head.

As a presenter, you get all of those benefits, as well as an opportunity to build your network and identify collaborators.  You also get many chances to practice your ‘pitch’ as new visitors step up every few minutes.  It will sharpen both your skill as a communicator and your research plan.

And while there are probably some guidelines for being a good poster-viewer, in this episode, we focused our discussion on the best ways to prepare and present a poster.

Before You Begin

As with any presentation, answering a few questions before you get started will save you hours in front of the computer.

Know Your Audience

If you are presenting to the Microbiology Conference, you may want to include more detailed background information than if you’re presenting to other experts in your sub-field at a Malaria Symposium.  Space is limited, and thinking ahead about what your audience may, or may not, know will help you prepare for the proper range of visitor experience.

Start Early

You may be a wizard of poster creation and can put off your design until the night before you fly to the conference, but that’s a bad idea.  Instead, leave extra time before printing share your file with collaborators for review.  They need time to look over your work and offer feedback before it’s committed to (gigantic) paper.

Practice, Practice, Practice

You’ll also need time to practice presenting the poster.  More on this later, but sometimes the act of presentation lets us see where we have gaps or mistakes in the logic or design.  It’s a good idea to practice with people from outside your lab because if they are already familiar with your work, they won’t notice when you skip steps or fail to explain a concept clearly.

Find Your Story

It may sound odd, but poster presentation is a form of story-telling.  The best posters make that story clear and concise.

Even if you have multiple projects in the lab, choose ONE to present in your poster.  Start by jotting down a central question you’re trying to answer, or a hypothesis your lab is testing.  Keeping this key idea in mind as you prepare the presentation will give you a firm structure on which to hang the other elements.

Making a Poster

Guidelines

“Hey, I won’t be able to make it over for movies tonight.  I’ve got to finish these timepoints…  Yeah, I know it’s the third time this week, but I promise I’ll leave a early tomorrow…  Okay, sorry.  Goodnight.”

Gary ends the phone call and sighs.  This is not the first time he’s had to cancel a date to finish up an experiment.   He’s starting to detect some resentment in his girlfriend’s voice.

As the minutes tick by on his timer, Gary sees lights flip off in the adjacent laboratory bays.  Even the postdocs have gone home.  Looks like it’ll be another long, lonely night – just him and an incubator full of cells.

He’s scrolling through his phone to find a playlist that can keep him awake for the next few hours when there’s a faint clink of glass somewhere in the darkened part of the lab.

He finds the playlist just as he hears a faint tap, tap, tap coming from the same direction.

“Maybe one of the postdocs left a cage of mice here by accident,” he thinks.  He pops out his ear buds and listens again… tap… tap… tap…

But the sound is too rhythmic to be mice. 

“They really need to fix that faucet.  That thing has been leaking for weeks.”

Tap… tap… tappity tappity tap.  Whatever is dripping seems to be coming faster now.

“Is someone there?” Gary asks, feeling stupid for the uncanny tightness now rising in his chest.  Tap… tappity tap tap… 

The sound that was just dripping is now streaming, a thin drizzle falling onto the soapstone bench.

Gary stands, and keeping his eyes toward the source of the sound, creeps carefully toward the light switch.  That’s when a nauseating wave of stench hits his nostrils.

His pupils constrict as he reaches the switch and the lights flash across a viscous puddle slowly growing larger on the bench to his right.  The pool has spilled over the edge, dripping foul, sticky liquid onto the floor. 

The odor is unmistakable and overpowering. He tears up, each breath a painful struggle to get enough air.

His eyes slowly follow the vile stream to its source…

“Dammit!  Who spilled that bottle of β-mercaptoethanol and didn’t clean it up!?”

Little Lab of Horrors

Life in grad school may not have many horror-movie freak-outs, but there are plenty of harrowing and traumatic experiences to thrill even the most stoic scientist.

In celebration of Halloween, we asked our listeners about their lab and grad school horror stories!

We heard chilling tales of fires, floods, and freezers on the fritz.  There are stories of dissertations delayed, pilfering PIs, and even explosions! Eeeek!

When you tune in, be sure to sample our new favorite pumpkin ale from Rogue Brewing.  It’s the Limited Edition Pumpkin Patch Ale, made from pumpkins they grow themselves!  

And here are a few of the resources we mentioned in the show:

* Caminos en Ciencia podcast*

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, there are a few keys you need to know.