Hello PhD show

Hello PhD

Summary: Science is hard work, but making it through a PhD program and into a rewarding career can seem downright impossible. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone shared the secrets for success at every stage? Admissions, rotations, classes, quals, research, dissertations, job-hunting – avoid the pitfalls and get back to doing what you love. It's like getting a PhD in getting a PhD!

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 177. Mailbag: Is Academia Lonely? And, Lab Tech vs. Med Tech | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 35:33

You send questions to podcast@hellophd.com, and we answer them on the show! Is research always this lonely? This week, we hear from “Foobar”, a computer science PhD student in Germany, who is wondering whether academia is always as lonely as she is feeling right now. She writes: Just like every other student, I had to find a teeny-tiny problem which lies in a sub-field of a sub-field and make it the topic of my PhD studies. The group that I am in counts five people, me included, and everybody studies different problems in different sub-fields. Each student has their own experiments, which are not related, to the point where I am not familiar with the technical details of their work, and they are also not familiar with my experiments. Collaborations are not really encouraged, as we need first-author publications, and there is no immediate incentive for them to discuss any detail of my day-to-day experiments with me (let’s not even mention helping). People come in and are polite, but there’s not much to talk about, and our PI is incredibly busy — we get one hour a week to discuss whatever we need and that’s it.Am I under the wrong impression that PhD students / academics may work more closely? Is it normal to be 100% on your own? Most of my friends are outside the university, and they are not computer scientists, thus it happens often that I cannot discuss my everyday work life with anybody. “Foobar” is in a tough situation. She finds herself in a lab where collaboration is not only difficult because of disparate subjects, but it’s actively discouraged in favor of first-author papers. The good news is, academic research ISN’T always so siloed. Not only have we experienced great scientific collaborations, we’ve also enjoyed the camaraderie working in a lab with some truly wonderful people. Our advice for “Foobar” is to make collegiality one of her criteria as she graduates and looks for a new lab. She can also find ‘research buddies’ within the department, on Science Twitter, and at conferences. Will a medical lab technician job help me get into grad school? Next, we have a question from Grant, who is wondering whether getting a job running medical lab tests will help prepare him for a PhD program. Thanks for your inspiring pod! I have a BS and want to get research experience in order to attend grad school, and like the recommendation to become a lab tech first. I am considering a two-year program that would make me a Medical Lab Technician, but am not sure this is the kind of lab tech experience grad schools would value; I don’t think it would count as research experience. What are your thoughts? As an avid listener, Grant has heard us say time and time again that a great way to get experience for your grad school application is to work as a lab tech for a year or two. But what he points out is that we use the term ‘lab tech’ pretty loosely, and never really define it! First, we encourage Grant to think a bit about his career goals. There ARE jobs for which a Medical Lab Technician role can be a stepping stone to a career he’d love. But for a PhD program doing basic, exploratory scientific research, that medical lab tech role might not be as helpful. Basic research is dedicated to answering questions no one has ever asked before. It’s tied intimately to the Scientific Method that starts with a hypothesis, tests that through a series of experiments, and reaches a conclusion.

 176. Stop Calling Yourself a ‘Grad Student’ w/ Dr. Alaina Talboy | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:00:08

Titles are a part of our identity. If you meet a school teacher, computer programmer, or rocket scientist, you will instantly form an impression of what kind of person they are without any additional information. The bias we impose upon hearing a title can be good or bad, of course. But we all invariably take these mental shortcuts, and it influences how we treat the people we meet. What’s interesting is that these titles reflect on us, as well. What I call myself impacts what I expect from my work, and how I expect others to treat me in my role. This week on the show, we talk with a PhD who helps current graduate students as they explore careers outside of academia. And she has some advice on how you can reimagine your graduate title. What I Wish I Knew This week, we’re joined by Dr. Alaina Talboy. She’s an educator and cognitive neuroscientist who successfully transitioned to industry after graduate school, turning down the opportunity to take a faculty position. “Both offers had their pros and cons”, she recalls. “But ultimately I had to make the choice, not just for me, but for my family.” And though the choice to leave academia was intimidating, she found happiness and success ‘on the outside’. Now, she devotes a few hours each Friday afternoon to the service of current graduate students. She opens her calendar to ‘coffee chats’ where grad students can connect and find a listening supporter. Dr. Talboy describes it this way: “In these coffee chats, people from academia – whether they’re currently enrolled, thinking about enrolling, just finished their PhD, or any kind of conversation that comes from an academic background – they are free to come and talk to me, get any advice that I could possibly give and, in my way, help them make their next decision just by providing information.” Over the years, she noticed some common themes and threads that tied the conversations together, and that inspired her to write her new book, What I Wish I Knew: A Field Guide for Thriving in Graduate Studies. The Graduate Career One of Dr. Talboy’s insights is that when we think of ourselves as ‘grad students’, all sorts of other issues will follow. She says that new students often have the misconception that graduate school is ‘just more school’. They are often surprised and overwhelmed to learn that the skills they honed as an undergraduate will not be enough to get them through graduate training. “You’re no longer just a student.” she says. “You are also an educator. You’re going to be teaching courses, probably. Or you might have a research stipend where you’re engaging in research activities. You’re working in a lab seven or eight hours a day.” “So there are a whole bunch of hats that people take on as a ‘graduate student’ that really changes their experience.” Aside from the culture shock of expecting to be a ‘student’ in the way they remember, graduate trainees also fall in the trap of believing that their new role is still not a ‘real job’. That has many consequences. In a ‘real job’,

 175. Four Research Traps (And How to Avoid Them) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 43:18

The day-to-day reality of many graduate programs is that you’ll spend most of your time doing research. Even if you don’t end up working in a lab or doing experiments forever in your career (and most people don’t!), being able complete experiments is going to help you efficiently progress through your program and eventually GRADUATE. And isn’t that what we all want? This week, we cover some common pitfalls that suck your time and erode your confidence. We’ve got advice for avoiding those traps and making the most of your time in the lab. Yes, it’s about getting stuff done. But it’s also about getting the RIGHT stuff done in the right way. Trap 1. Not Knowing Your Central Question When Josh works with students, he always pushes them to make sure they have a clear understanding of what their research question is. No matter what field you’re in or how broad or focused your specific project is, you probably have SOME specific question you’re trying to answer, and it’s important to be able to articulate that. When a student doesn’t have a clear idea of what the research question is, it’s hard for them to effectively talk about the project either formally in a seminar or at lab meeting, or even informally with their PI or other lab mates. This advice may seem obvious, but it happens too often that when you start in a new lab, you’re barraged with new info and techniques and papers. You’re trying to keep up, and the next thing you know, a week, a month, or even a year has gone by! It’s only then that you realize… “Hey wait, what am I trying to do here?” Besides making it hard to think or talk about your science, losing sight of your central question can make it harder to maintain your motivation. You lose sight of the connection between what you’re doing day-to-day and the big picture: WHY you are doing it. If this describes you, stop what you’re doing, scrap your experiments for the afternoon, and take enough time to understand your central question. What you MIGHT find out is that you don’t know because no one told you, or there truly is some hole in the logic or flaw in the experimental design. Maybe you can figure it out on your own, but honestly, don’t be afraid to just come clean with your PI or another trusted person in your lab. And don’t give up until you understand what you’re doing, why, and how it fits into the big picture. Once you have a firm grasp on that, a lot of other productivity and confidence will follow because now you’re able to frame each of your experiments, conversations, and presentations with that solid understanding of your main question. Trap 2: Making Your Plans in the Morning There’s an old cliche: “A failure to plan is a plan to fail.” This next tip is about just that… making a plan. Early on in graduate school, Josh’s general way of being organized and having a plan was to show up in the morning, get a cup of coffee, chat with folks in the lab about last night’s episode of American Idol (or whatever show was popular in the mid 2000s) and then finally sit down at the lab bench with a notebook to start making a list of the experiments he wanted to do.   It would be 10:30 AM and he hadn’t even started pipetting anything yet, or even worse, he was hungry and ready for lunch before he even got started! Beyond the loss of productivity and time, this led to hectic afternoons as he frantically tried to fit in all the things he was hoping to get d...

 116. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Summer Students (R) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 48:46

Ten weeks is not a long time. It feels even shorter when you’re tossed into the deep-end of a top-tier research lab. If you’re spending your summer as a Research Assistant between semesters, or you’ve graduated and want to get some summer experience before grad school, we have ideas to help you hit the ground running. This week, we respond to a listener question. Talia wrote: This summer I had an AMAZING opportunity to do research at my dream school. I am a public health undergraduate and I have experience mostly in qualitative methods and community-based research. This summer I’ll be in a really cool epigenetics lab. I have very little background in biology and even less bench lab experience.For all of you bench lab folks and people in a mentoring capacity, what makes an undergraduate research assistant “coachable”? What habits do you love/don’t love in your RAs? Great question, and we’re sure Talia is not alone in feeling unprepared for her first foray in the lab. Classes and textbooks are worlds away from the hands-on experience of research. That’s why we crowd-sourced the traits other scientists want to see in summer research students. If you follow these guidelines, you can expect to make lifelong friends and have a solid letter of recommendation by the end of the summer 7 Habits for Summer Research Show Humility If you’re interested in a research career, you’ve probably done well in your classes and often been the smartest person in the room. That’s great for your self-confidence, but it’s going to drive your lab-mates and mentors crazy. When you start as an undergraduate student research assistant, recognize that no one expects you to be an expert. They expect you to be teachable. That means asking questions when you are unsure about the material or getting help on the experiment where things are unclear. And even if you have some prior experience, no one wants to hear you say “That’s not how we did it in my old lab…” Take a breath and be ready to learn a new way of doing things. Maybe the ‘old way’ was better, but you’ll never know until you try the new way! Pay Attention to Detail Research is all about the details, and your ability to focus and follow directions precisely will help you succeed. Have your mentor observe and offer tips on improving your technique – things like pipetting accuracy or clearly labeling samples will make or break an experiment. And in the first few weeks, we recommend keeping your headphones in your pocket and out of your ears. Get a few successful trials under your belt before you add other distractions while you work. Engage with the Science Having a summer student means an ‘extra set of hands’ in the lab, and that’s valuable, but you should strive to be more than a gel-running robot. To get the most out of your summer research experience, do what you can to actually understand the work you’re doing. That means asking about how your experiments fit in with the broader goals of the lab. Maybe you’re working toward a figure in a paper – take the time to see the forest for the trees. It also means trying to understand the techniques and reagents you’re using. How does this enzyme work? Why are we adding this buffer?

 174. I Have a Degree – Why Can’t I Find a Job? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 58:41

Andrew felt like he was on top of the world when he finished his Master’s degree in History. He had excellent grades, experience teaching, and a willingness to explore new fields. But as he submitted resumes and job applications, he noticed a pattern. Either he didn’t hear back from the employer, or they turned him down due to his lack of experience. “It’s this cart and horse or chicken and egg thing where you can’t get a job because you don’t have the experience, but you can’t get experience because no one will give you a job,” he lamented. Andrew’s job search stretched on for month after month, and he realized he had a problem. “I didn’t know how to articulate my skills,” he said. “I really had trouble figuring out what was transferrable, what was not. And I had a lot of misconceptions about the face value of an advanced degree, and I was emphasizing all the wrong things” That’s when he turned his attention to the study and practice of finding a job. What I Wish I Knew This week, we talk with Andrew Webb, a Master’s graduate and creator of employedhistorian.com where he helps humanities students in their own career development. We begin our discussion with a focus on his article titled “I have a master’s degree and can’t find a job!” In it, Andrew begins by sharing that he was not alone in his months-long job search. He cites a Consumer Affairs article that says recent grads take an average of 7.4 months to find a job – nearly double the 4 months an established professional takes. But Andrew emphasizes that this is not due to a lack of skill for the recent grads – their talents and experience are extremely valuable. Instead, he says, it’s due to a limited professional network and an inability to translate their training into the language a hiring manager hopes to see. “The skills are there,” he says. “You need to know how to articulate some of that in real, measurable terms.” Andrew shares a wide variety of tips and tricks you can apply in your own job search, including: * How to leverage your existing professional network even if it’s friends and family.* How to write a resume that catches the attention of a screener.* Why you should create a professional portfolio website to showcase the quality of your work.* What employers ask for in a job description, versus what they actually want from an employee.* Why acting desperate or obsequious in an interview will hurt your chances of getting an offer.* How to track down the email address for a hiring manager so you can reach out directly.* How to find recruiters and have them work for you – for free!* and MUCH more If you’re a Master’s or PhD grad struggling to find a job, you’ll want to check out EmployeedHistorian.com or follow Andrew on LinkedIn. You can also pick up his eBook: 7 Steps to Get Hired with a Humanities Degree – we promise it’s not just for humanities grads!

 173. Mailbag: I Have a Master’s Degree – Now I Want a PhD | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 39:19

There are many paths to a PhD. In the humanities, it’s common to earn a Master’s degree first (or so we’re told…) In the biomedical sciences, students regularly skip the Master’s degree entirely, enrolling in a PhD program that includes coursework. This week, we hear from two aspiring scientists who used the Master’s degree as a stepping stone, and now they’re looking to take the next leap. Defining a Scientist Nikki is a research scientist for a cosmetics company. She began as a lab tech, and over just three short years, was promoted to the position of Scientist. She got support from work to begin a Master’s degree program part time, defraying the costs but also fraying her nerves. “The benefits are that my company pays for the majority of my tuition, but I’m starting to get burnt out juggling both,” she wrote. What she really wants is to deepen her scientific training in a PhD program, but she’s wrestling with that choice. After all, she’s been successful in her career so far, and expects to come back to industry after her training. Is it worth it to earn a PhD if she’s got a Master’s degree and a good job? And can she still consider herself a ‘scientist’ if she doesn’t hold the doctorate? We answer these questions and more! The Price of Prestige Next up, “C”, is working on his backup plan to get into graduate school. After a couple of rejection letters, he enrolled in a Master’s degree program and got some additional experience in the lab. That was enough to get him accepted to a PhD program, but there was one catch – it was at the same University where he did his undergrad. Is it okay to do your PhD at the same school you earned your Bachelor’s degree? Should C hold out for a ‘more prestigious’ school, or go with the program that has accepted him? To make matters even more confounding, the lab C was going to join is now moving to another University that doesn’t have a PhD program, so he needs to figure out a backup plan to his backup plan. We’ve got advice (some of it good!) and wish both Nikki and C the best of luck in the next stage of their journeys.

 172. Research Software Engineer | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 50:29

If you work in a lab, you’re collecting data. And as the volume of data increases, many researchers find they can’t process or analyze that data in a spreadsheet or stats program anymore. Instead, they’re writing code in Python, R, or C++ to do that processing for them. But this creates a new challenge: what happens to that code over time? Can your Python script be shared with other labs who might find it useful? When the graduate student who wrote the analysis package graduates, is there anyone around to maintain and update it so the lab can continue to reap the benefits? Unfortunately, many researchers who know how to code don’t know how to shepherd that resource so it can be useful to others. But luckily, there are experts who know how to help. Introducing the Research Software Engineer This week, we talk with Nicole Brewer, a Research Software Engineer (RSE), about her quest to make scientific computing accessible. We learn about the how scientific computing has expanded over the last 20 years, but academics didn’t always have the skills and practices to make their code useful to others. Universities recognized the value of dedicated software engineers, but basically treated them as an afterthought. They hired programmers, but didn’t pay them a competitive salary, and didn’t offer opportunities to advance. In fact, in a survey of 10,000 academic job postings, about 400 were for software related roles, but they used 200 different titles for the job! That’s when a group of researchers got together to define the Research Software Engineering role. They felt that by standardizing and highlighting this valuable service, they could improve academic research by attracting and retaining talented programmers. The Job You Didn’t Know You’d Love Nicole shares her experience as a Research Software engineer, and how it has allowed her to combine her love of coding with her love of science. “We work with everyone. Everyone needs software, right?” she says. “We work with an economics group. We work with a bioinformatics group and psychology and engineering – the whole gamut… I get to interact with all kinds of sciences and that feels really meaningful to me.” That work includes everything from making a user interface for filtering data to running simulations on a supercomputer cluster. And like a consultant, Nicole may be juggling several projects at once! “One of the consequences of pulling in our own funding as a group is that we have, I don’t know, 12 grants proposals on the table at any one time as a group, and everyone is working on, like, three projects. So that requires a lot of context switching and it is terribly interesting.” How to Get Started But Nicole is a bit of a trailblazer – as the RSE role expands and gains momentum, there will hopefully be less need for outside funding, and more recognition of the value an RSE provides. There are organizations dedicated to spreading that message. Research Software Engineers International recognizes several regional organizations, including US-RSE in the United States. Students, engineers, and RSE allies can sign up for free to find

 171. The Life and Times of a Humanities PhD Candidate | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 55:36

Sometimes, your humble HelloPhD hosts forget how narrow our experience has been in graduate education. We’re both biomedical PhDs, and while we trained in different departments, there was a significant amount of overlap. For us, a PhD meant classes, comprehensive exams, rotations, lab meetings, experiments, seminars, and so on. While those experiences were common across biomedical programs, the similarity starts to fade when discussing other bench-sciences like chemistry, or even patient-focused fields like epidemiology. If those adjacent fields reveal unique and instructive differences, how much more exciting to explore the distant reaches of the PhD universe – the Humanities PhD! Alexandra Macdonald, Historian and PhD Candidate Thread Count This week, Josh sits down with Alexandra Macdonald, a Historian and PhD candidate at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Alexandra’s dissertation, provisionally titled “The Social Life of Time in the Anglo-Atlantic World, 1660-1830,” takes her to museums and university collections around the world to study art and materials and what they can tell us about the people who made them. We hear more about Alexandra’s fascinating research, but also about how she’s working to improve the training experience for other PhDs. Humanities PhDs can sometimes be isolating – the candidate may travel for months at a time, and be the only person in their department working on a particular question. That often means that they don’t receive guidance in the skills they’ll need to progress. Project management, professional networking, writing a book chapter, and myriad other skills are left untaught, and the student either sinks or swims. Alexandra is working to change that. She recently launched a ‘monthly check-in’ group where students can gather to share their experiences and provide support to keep their projects on track. If you’d like to participate, you can find her on Twitter, Instagram, or on her website: alexandrammacdonald.com!

 144. Finding a Career that Fits with Marlys Hanson (R) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:02:47

Sarah had achieved her dream. With a PhD in Physics, she had accepted a new position as a Theoretical Physicist. But as the months wore on, she started to feel overwhelmed and depressed. She’d done well in school and enjoyed her classes – why couldn’t she focus on her work? Sean graduated with honors from his engineering program. But after six months on the job as a field representative for a machine company, he was fired. He had been an excellent student, and excelled in class with top grades and praise from his professors. In the field, he had none of that feedback, and his motivation plummeted. He blamed himself for the failure, but he couldn’t understand how all his success had collapsed so quickly. Passion and Purpose Sarah and Sean are just two examples of what happens every day in academia. Bright, well trained students graduate to find all of that training led to a career that didn’t live up to their expectations. Or even more commonly, they may like aspects of the job, but other factors weigh them down. The research is interesting, but they clash with the PI, or lose motivation when the experiments don’t work. This week, we talk with psychologist and career expert Marlys Hanson. Her book PASSION AND PURPOSE: How to identify and leverage the powerful patterns that shape your work/life describes an evidence-based approach for discovering your unique “Motivated Abilities.” With that data in hand, you’ll have the confidence to choose your next opportunity and maximize your happiness and productivity. System for Identifying Motivated Abilities (SIMA) You may have taken a Meyers-Briggs test, or some other psychometric analysis aimed at describing your personality traits or interests that could improve your career. But, Ms. Hanson points out, those are preference-based tests, and our biases can creep into our choices and we actually select answers that don’t describe us well. “Our preferences are not clean evidence,” she says. “They’re so impacted by our biases. Their reliability and validity are not very high, and they’re not very effective in making informed career decisions.” The System for Identifying Motivated Abilities, on the other hand, is an “Evidence Based Assessment.” The process starts when you list achievements from your childhood onward. You choose eight such examples – things that you enjoyed doing and thought you did well – and describe each event in as much detail as possible. How did you get involved? What did you actually do step-by-step? What were you proud of after you accomplished this task? Then, you or your SIMA analyst can go through those stories looking for patterns – evidence of your past successes and how you achieved your goals. Building a Profile Those bits of evidence get sorted into five categories that make up your Motivational Profile. * Motivated Abilities – which of your skills do you frequently use when you’re happily working?* Subject Matter – What topics inspire you? Do you work with numbers or animals or abstract concepts?* Circumstances – How do you get involved in a project? Do you like to be asked or come up with the idea yourself? Do you prefer a deadline or an open ended engagement?

 170. Mailbag: Should I Quit Grad School? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 33:00

If you’re a grad student who hasn’t thought about leaving your PhD program at least once, you might not have a pulse. When experiments fail, grants are rejected, or you get reprimanded by the PI, it’s often comforting to remember that all of this suffering is self-imposed and you could simply leave the University and start a book shop somewhere. For most students, that moment passes and they move on with their training and career. But sometimes, the moment doesn’t pass, and students begin to ask more fundamental questions. Asking the Hard Questions Some students begin to examine their initial motivations for enrolling. Maybe they did well in college and a PhD seemed like a logical next-step. Or they really wanted to improve human health by making incredible discoveries in the lab. Only years later do they realize that the incremental improvements of biomedical research can’t satisfy their grander visions. Whatever the reason, when a student seriously stares down the prospect of leaving the PhD behind, it can shake them to the core. “Who am I?” they might wonder when the self-concepts of ‘scientist’ or ‘Doctor’ begin to fade. “If I don’t get this degree, will I ever find a job?” “What will people think of me?” Sometimes these practical considerations are just as painful. In Their Own Words This week on the show, we hear from two listeners who are considering these very questions. Both are graduate students, at different points in their training, that are seriously considering stepping off of the academic track and into something new. Ben just started grad school, but is having second thoughts. He writes: Listening to your show has helped me realize that uncertainty and anxiety is very normal among graduate students, but I wanted to get your advice regarding my situation and PhD career pathways in general. I am concerned that I jumped into this lab prematurely, and that I would enjoy an engineering position doing more day-to-day problem-solving work a lot more.Do you think it makes sense to stay put in my lab/position if I don’t enjoy the lab work much and find it hard to stay motivated, just because I am hopeful that an R&D-type position will be a good fit for me long-term? And “Bee”, a fourth year who has had many prior academic successes, writes: The past two-pandemic years made me reassess whether I was living urgently for the right path or simply living the path that was logical. In my fourth year as a PhD candidate, I decided that following my mission in science did not necessarily mean putting my name on a publication, having a stellar h-index or countless citations. Living for those metrics did not translate my passion for science or my capacity and desire to impact people’s lives. It is not easy to come to this decision and I’ve been trying to not be overwhelmed by what others may think as a failure. I’m trying to focus on everything this difficult learning time of the past four years have taught me and what could be the best future direction outside of academia. However, it is really tough to envision anything, or even start a job research. What kind of positions to look for with my job skills? We have plenty of advice, but more importantly, a lot of questions that will help these students make their difficult decisions.

 169. Change Your Plans, Not Your Goals | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:00:16

Even as a child, Alexandra wanted to study space. She had a Bachelor’s degree in physics from Cambridge University, so she seemed like the perfect candidate to for a PhD program. But after graduation, she didn’t feel ready. She’d need a Master’s degree first, but money was tight and her student visa had run out. She found a job prospect at a particle accelerator lab, but was turned down because they wanted more programming experience. So she packed her bags and headed home. Her goal remained the same – to study astrophysics and earn a PhD. But due to circumstances, her plans had to change. This week, we hear Alexandra’s journey in her own words. It’s a powerful story because so many of us will find our own experience in the obstacles she had to overcome: impostor syndrome, tight finances, moving and finding a job with a spouse, PIs that ignore your emails, balancing work with family, and so much more. What’s unique about her story is not that she faced so many obstacles, but that each and every time she picked up and continued on. She always made a backup plan, and sometimes her backup plans had their own backup plans. She offers some helpful advice to other PhD students and those who aspire to that path. Her experience with networking, skill-building jobs, and getting the inside scoop from current graduate students will be helpful to anyone applying this year or in the future. Here are a few of the HelloPhD episodes she mentions in the interview: 064: A PhD Internship Will Help You Get a Job 125. Demystifying the Research Institute 135. The Science Training Toolbox with Dr. Andres De Los Reyes. 137. Tools for Finding a Research Mentor And if you want to support her research, consider downloading the Einstein@Home app to share your compute power in the search for pulsars! If your computer helps uncover a new pulsar, you’ll receive a signed certificate of your discovery! If YOU have a great graduate-school story, or advice for your fellow travelers, why not email us and join the conversation?

 168. Academic Twitter: Step-By-Step | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 37:02

It’s no secret that a lot of scientific conversation happens on Twitter. It’s a great place to share your research, keep up with trends, and connect with collaborators. But many grad students and postdocs have questions. Is it okay to promote my own work? Can I just retweet other scientists, or do I have to write my own material? Which topics can I write about, and what should I avoid? Well, we’re here to help. Twitter can have wonderful benefits for your career and your research, but there are certainly pitfalls. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting started on Academic Twitter. Twitter can do wonders for your research career. In fact, we shared five ways scientists SHOULD be using Twitter to share their research, connect with colleagues, and keep up on the latest literature. But even if you know the benefits of Science Twitter, some researchers may feel hesitant to get started. Most researchers have experience with social media, but it’s sometimes hard to know how to separate the ‘personal’ from the ‘professional.’ That’s where Sarah Mojarad’s Medium post picks up. It’s called “A Beginner’s Guide to Joining Academic Twitter”, and it tells you everything you need to know to set up an account and send your first tweet. We walk through Sarah’s advice for setting up an account, step-by-step. She covers everything from choosing a user name, to taking a professional-looking photo, to writing a useful bio. But her advice goes beyond the basics. She encourages scientists to create some ‘personal rules’ that will guide how they tweet and retweet. Simple rules like “Only retweet high quality posts” and “Limit politics” can help new users check themselves before they hit ‘submit’. And it’s rules like these that keep your Academic Twitter account separate from your other social media expressions. This is a place to discuss your work and advance your career, not to post photos of your dog or share your love of Taylor Swift. If you follow the article step-by-step, you’ll be up and running with a Science Twitter account in no time. And we hope you’ll follow us and send a note to @hellophd! See you in the Twittersphere!

 086. Five Resolutions for Happier, Healthier Scientists (R) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 42:37

Turning over the last page of the calendar seems to naturally invite some reflection on the previous 365 days. When you look back at 2021, what went well? And what do you wish you could change in the coming year? This week, we take the opportunity to reflect back much farther – to our days in graduate and postdoctoral training!  With years of hindsight, we offer advice and perspective to the scientists we were, and devise some resolutions you can adopt in your scientific training. Grad School Resolutions  1.  Remember that training is temporary When you’re ‘on the inside,’ graduate training can seem like an endless tunnel – the light at the end just a distant pin-prick.  For many, the daily stress of lab life closes in and we begin to feel trapped and hopeless.  This year, pause to consider that your training is just a brief step in your scientific career, and that people do finish! We promise! 2. Be mindful of your unique skills and motivations Many students wait to think about a suitable career until they have a degree in their hands and a PI’s foot on their backside.  We recommend taking stock of your natural motivation and skill patterns early AND often. It can be as simple as reflecting at the end of the day or on a Friday afternoon.  What did you accomplish this week? Which activities left you feeling energized?  Which left you drained? When did you lose track of time because you were engrossed in the task? Jot each item in a notebook or on a post-it and save them. After a few months, you’ll have a detailed list of skills and activities you like to use and those you’d like to avoid.  These patterns can persist over a lifetime, so spend some time examining the notes and identifying the common themes.  That way, when you’re reading job postings, you’ll know exactly which positions fit your personality. 3. Push beyond your comfort zone Starting a graduate program often means moving to a new town, meeting hundreds of new people, and dropping the support networks you enjoyed in college. That makes many introverted science-types turn further inward as we try to avoid the stress of new situations. But remember that many of the people you meet feel exactly the same way.  Push yourself to engage, and you’ll be rewarded with new friends and colleagues that will last a lifetime.  Graduate training is full of never-to-be-repeated opportunities if you’re willing to step up and take them. 4. Make science fun again #MSFA Don’t forget that you chose a career in science because science is amazing.  Maybe it fascinated you as a child, but we quickly lose that child-like curiosity the moment Figure 4 of our paper is due. Every once in awhile, it’s okay to let loose and try an experiment because you think it’s fun, or you just can’t predict how it will turn out. This will not only stoke your love of science, it may lead to your next line of inquiry. 5. Find emotional support before you think you need it Graduate training may be one of the most stressful periods of your life.  That’s not unusual. But too many of us try to ‘power through’ on our own.  Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and worse are the rewards. But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Your mental health is as vitally important as your physical health.  If eating right and going to the gym are admirable,

 167. Mailbag – Am I Ready For Grad School? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 38:54

This week, we dive head-first into the mailbag to answer listener questions about grad school readiness, teaching experience, and more! Just Finished! Our first missive comes from Kaylee, who recently graduated! I just wanted to send an email to thank you for all of the hard work you have put into creating Hello PhD over the years. I can’t express in words how much this podcast has meant to me. It has helped me through supervisor problems, lab isolation, career path questions, and so many other graduate school struggles. I think the biggest impact has been on helping me feel less alone and showing me that the difficulties I have experienced are common for many graduate students. One of the biggest ways that Hello PhD has helped me has been in making me reevaluate the default of staying in academia. In fact, I just received job offers to move to a position as an R&D scientist in the biotechnology industry, which I will be starting in the new year! Since I may not listen to Hello PhD as religiously in the future, I just wanted to let you both know now how much this podcast has helped me survive graduate school. As you can imagine, we are over-the-moon excited for Kaylee, and so proud of what she’s accomplished. She went the extra mile to share her experience with other listeners, and we wish her the best in her new career! Just Beginning! Our next email comes from Judith, who is in her senior year of a bachelor’s degree, and wonders whether she’s ready to apply to grad school this year. Her fall research experience was cut short by a busy PI, and one of her previous lab rotations was virtual due to COVID. She has some high-school research experience, but she’s wondering whether those activities, and a challenge with letters of recommendation, will be enough to get into a graduate program. At this point I am not even sure if I should apply to grad school this year. I had three options after graduation: grad school, postbacs that the NIH funds (PREP), and lastly finding a job as a lab technician for one or two years until I apply to grad school again.I desperately decided to reach out because anything that could go wrong with my applications, has gone wrong… I would appreciate your advice on what my next steps should be. We emphasize the importance of those in-depth research experiences – not just because the admissions committee expects to see them – but also because it gives the student a better sense that research will be a fulfilling career. It’s a mistake to dive into the icy waters of graduate school before you’ve dipped your toe in. We’ve been there and done that! Those Who Can, Teach Last up, Will poses a unique question about teaching at the college level, and what kind of experience is necessary to pass the torch to an upcoming generation of students. In the past year, I recently graduated with a Bachelor’s in Nursing, and decided to jump straight back into the fire and am currently a year 1 graduate student pursuing a PhD in Nursing Science. I have a job as a GA [graduate assistant], however I also decided to work part time as a nurse in the hospital. I would be much happier only working as a GA and being able to dedicate more time to my science, but my problem is this:Would it make me a fraud to never have practiced directly in an area that I am going to train others to be in someday? My goal is to be faculty at a research university, with a large focus on research, but I imagine part of that will still include teaching undergrads planning to work in the field.

 075. When Research Sucks (R) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 50:08

It’s inevitable.  At some point in your research career, you’re going to get that sinking feeling. Your experiments will all fail, your PI will get on your case about finishing that paper, and your graduation date will drift maddeningly out of reach. So what can you do when your research starts to drag you down? Coming Up for Air This week on the show, we share some practical advice from the Academic Mental Health Collective on ways graduate students can get going when the going gets tough. Stress, anxiety, and depression are inevitable in your graduate training. At least they were for us! At the same time, these painful emotions can be a valuable signal that it’s time to step back, take stock of your situation, and ask for help.  There are resources on, and off, campus to help you through the hard times. By thinking ahead, you’ll meet your training challenges with a tactical plan and a team of supporters to help you through. It does get better, we promise! The Check is in the Mail Science in the News brings us the story of a New York court’s $15 million judgement against Sci Hub, the online research paper pirate ship.  We explore the legal and moral implications of the action, and make bold predictions about the future of scientific publishing. If you’re interested in the history of academic publishing and how we got into this quagmire in the first place, we highly recommend Stephen Buranyi’s Guardian piece titled: Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? We also celebrate the beginning of summer by breaking our IPA fast. We’re drinking the Nectar IPA from Humboldt Brewing Company. This golden beauty has a sweet start and a bitter finish, sort of like my first marriage!* (*Yes, this is a total lie, but the setup was perfect and impossible to resist.  Sort of like my first marriage!**) (**Okay, I’m done.)

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