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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Podcasts:

 040: Three Keys to Success in Grad School | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 24:28

Kenny Gibbs is a scientist who studies other scientists. After earning his PhD in Immunology from Stanford, he turned his attention to the broader topic of scientific careers and how PhDs choose and evolve in their work.  Through surveys and interviews with postdocs and research scientists, Dr. Gibbs explores issues like career-interest formation and postdoc development. Wouldn’t you like to ask someone like that for advice on your graduate training? Unlock your potential You’re in luck!  Dr. Gibbs recently did an interview with gradlogic.org where he revealed three keys to graduate school success. We take a deep dive on all three in this week’s podcast. 1. Remember that Ph.Ds. are beginnings not endings. It’s so easy to enter a PhD program with blinders on: your entire focus turns to attaching three letters after your name.  But that degree is not an endpoint, it’s just a beginning to a long and productive career.  Dr. Gibbs knows that better than anyone, as he’s actively studying what happens to students after they graduate. When the going gets tough and you can’t even imagine graduation day, Gibbs recommends that you take stock and remember why you came to grad school in the first place.  What motivated you to apply all those years ago? Keeping the big picture front of mind helps avoid those desperate days when you just feel ‘stuck.’ 2. Go to a school and work with an advisor where you can see yourself doing well as a person. Have kids?  Look for a program where you see people with kids succeeding.  Love to snowboard? Find a school where that’s popular (and possible!)  If you want to practice your faith, make sure you don’t land somewhere you’ll feel ostracized or worse. In other words, you can find great research almost anywhere, but the broader interpersonal and cultural values of your workplace can really change your experience.  Don’t ignore the subtle clues about how students and postdocs are feeling in their work – it can be an important indicator that people like you are either thriving, or slowly stifling. 3. Manuscripts (and theses) only get written when you write them. It’s tempting to put off writing that dissertation chapter until the 11th hour of your 6th year, but the truth is, writing is a requirement for graduating (and succeeding.)  Why not make it a habit? We offer some tips to get you over the ’empty page paralysis’ that keeps so many from moving on. Made from Real Heine This week, we dig deep in the back of the fridge and split a bright green bottle of Heinekin.  Long story short: the history is more interesting than the beer.  Sorry Holland!

 039: Two simple steps to better research mentors | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 34:26

Sometimes, we use the words ‘research advisor’ and ‘research mentor’ interchangeably, but be careful – they’re not the same thing. When you join the lab of a research faculty member in your second year of grad school, you’ve chosen a research advisor.  Whether that person turns out to be a ‘mentor’ remains to be seen. An advisor helps to direct your research and provides a space for you to work. But a mentor goes further, clarifying your academic potential, nurturing your strengths, and pushing to shore up your weaknesses. If an advisor is a teacher, a mentor is like a scientific parent. As valuable as a research mentor can be for students and postdocs, mentorship is not an innate skill all scientists possess at birth.  For some, it comes naturally, and others may never get it.  For most, it’s something that can be learned and developed over time. The key word is “can.” They won’t improve by accident. This week on the show, we outline two concrete steps toward making more advisors into mentors. Step 1: ‘Measure’ mentorship, and make it count If you want more of something, your first goal should be to figure out how much of it you have, and incentivize it.  For research advisors, that means collecting feedback on how they’re training students and postdocs.  With that information in hand, you can give them an incentive to improve. Last week, we observed that mentorship wasn’t on the tenure committee’s checklist, but feedback from some faculty listeners proved us wrong.  At some universities, mentorship is measured and counts toward tenure decisions. One school handles the tenure situation cleverly: they weight student-published papers more heavily than those that the PI published alone or in collaboration with other labs.  If your students are publishing, you’re probably doing a decent job at mentoring!  If you publish on your own, you’re not taking the time to include them in your research. On a broader scale, the Future of Research Group is working to grade institutions on mentorship, support, career development opportunities, benefits, and other criteria that make a training program successful.   Step 2: Mentor the mentors Faculty can learn to be better mentors, and some schools offer training to improve advisor-student relations. For example, the University of Wisconsin – Madison offers resources and mentorship training to all faculty through the Mentor Training Core of the National Research Mentoring Network. Check with a student affairs or postdoc affairs group on campus, or any faculty member to see if similar training opportunities are available at your university. From Table to Brain And first but not least, we pop the cork on Mystic Brewery’s Table Beer from Chelsea, Mass.  Don’t let the light golden color fool you – it’s bottle conditioned and full of flavor.  Even after a careful pour, we got a little more foam than we bargained for… We also got a look a the elusive hippocampus in this week’s show.

 038: Why aren’t bad research advisors held accountable? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 23:26

You’ve either heard the stories, or worse, you’ve lived them. They’re stories of the research advisors who scream at their students in front of the whole department. The PIs who put two or three postdocs on the same project, expecting only one to succeed. The ‘mentor’ who makes you feel like you’re not even qualified to wash the glassware. So why do academic institutions allow such bad behavior to continue year in, and year out?  Why aren’t bad PIs accountable? The fact is, they ARE accountable for things like getting grants, publishing papers, and participating in scientific discourse.  But it seems no one is measuring mentorship and that leaves students and postdocs with nowhere to turn when things go wrong. Nurture vs. Torture In this episode, we explore the broken system of academic mentorship, and how it can turn the wide-eyed excitement of a first-year grad student into depression, anxiety, and a vow never to work at the bench again. We’ll tell you how to identify, and avoid, toxic research advisors before you commit to 5+ years.  We also discuss alternatives if you should find yourself locked into a bad PI relationship. And if none of that works, at least we can have some fun finding HOT research advisors on RateMyProfessor.com!   Turn on, tune in, drop out Though you are unlikely to hallucinate, this week’s Citradelic IPA from New Belgium will certainly expand your senses.  With a solid hoppy bitterness and a hint of citrus, it’s like a tangerine wrapped in a hop wrapped in an enigma.  Groovy.  

 037: Consulting Jobs for PhDs | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 26:12

Management consulting is an exciting field, but actually getting a consulting job at one of the top firms can be extremely difficult.  Some people argue that you’ll have an easier time getting into Harvard than landing a spot at McKinsey… We talked to a postdoc-turned-consultant about how she left the bench and got a job in such a competitive field. Listen to your undergrads This week on the show, we wrap up our interview with Laura Terry, PhD.  Last week, she told us about what it’s like to work in management consulting day to day, and this week, we find out how she got there. From the start, Laura’s scientific career looked promising.  She completed her PhD at Vanderbilt and found a postdoc position at Princeton.  She seemed destined for the tenure track. But part-way through her postdoc, she started teaching and began to notice all of the organizational dynamics of a modern university.  Who decides on how to spend the budget?  What are the best ways to select and hire new faculty?  How can we structure degree programs to maximize student success? These weren’t questions about biology or human health, but they were questions with complex answers and profound importance.  And as a trained scientist, Laura knew how to explore complex questions. That’s when she received some advice from a helpful undergrad: management consulting firms, like McKinsey and Company, were hiring scientists like her to answer questions just like these. This week on the podcast, we get the rest of Laura’s story, including the reactions of her colleagues when she stepped out of the ivory tower. To prepare, Laura talks about using a combination of practice interviews and books like Case In Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation. There’s a tear in my beer Josh brings down the mood with the tragic tale of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975.  The entire crew was lost, but not forgotten, because the Great Lakes Brewing Company now produces Edmund Fitzgerald Porter.  Too soon?  

 036: What Do Consultants DO, Exactly? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 30:03

If you’ve worked at the bench for awhile, your only reference to the world of consulting is probably the two Bobs in the movie “Office Space.”  They’re the hatchet men who swoop into a company, fire a bunch of people, and fly back home.  But is that an accurate picture of consulting work, or a just bit of satire? This week, we turn the tables and ask a biomedical PhD/management consultant: “What would you say you do here?”  You’ll be surprised by her response! Someone’s got a case of the Monday’s Even if you do know a bit about the world of consulting, you may not know that some of the worlds largest firms are looking for people like you – PhDs from the biomedical sciences.  Consulting firms are actively recruiting scientists, and leveraging their ability to learn quickly and solve problems in a wide array of business situations. If you want a career away from the bench, then consulting is worth a look. But what do consultants DO?  We tracked down Laura Terry, PhD, to ask just that.  Laura did her graduate work at Vanderbilt University, and then did a postdoc at Princeton where she began teaching and exploring some career options outside the lab. Long story short, she got a job with McKinsey & Company, one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the world.  Over the last few years, she’s traveled to dozens of client sites to help them solve myriad scientific and business problems. In this episode, Laura gives us a glimpse at the types of questions she faces with her team of consultants and analysts.  She also describes a typical week, and lays out the pros and cons of this line of work. Next week we’ll return with Part 2 where we find out exactly how Laura went from working at the bench to flying around the world.  Stay tuned! Hop Torpedo This week, we sample the Torpedo Extra IPA from Sierra Nevada. They use a unique dry-hopping vessel they call the “torpedo” to extract the delicate flavor compounds from whole hops without all the alpha acids that add bitterness.  We love to find some science in our beer!

 035: Making Time for Outreach | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 18:33

Do you like to share your passion for science with others? Do you mentor undergrads or visit your local middle school to do scientific demonstrations? If so, stop it.  Your PI is going to hate you. Is It Safe to Go Outside? Okay, so that’s not exactly true, but it can feel risky to explore any opportunities away from the bench while you’re a grad student or postdoc.  Your PI is paying you to do research, right? In truth, you are in training, and that training should prepare you for the work you’d like to do.  For many of us, that includes science outreach, mentorship and teaching. How do you balance your personal growth with your PI’s research goals and schedule?  That’s exactly what Shawn wanted to know: One of the many things I want to continue to do during grad school is to volunteer and become part of outreach programs. I acknowledge I am going to have a lot on my plate very soon , but I still want to volunteer and continue doing some form of work that likens the after-school teaching I was doing [during my undergrad]. Is it feasible to find time for outreach while in graduate school? Escape Plan You could try the old ‘lab-bench-Doppelgänger’ trick and hope that the boss doesn’t notice that you’re missing, or you could talk to your mentor about your long term goals.  Remind the PI that communicating our research makes it more relevant, and improves public support for science funding.  In fact, some grants actually require or reward labs when they do outreach. At the end of the day, outreach can be a part of your training, but remember that your first goal is to hit the bench so that you can complete your departmental requirements and graduate. There is time for outreach, but only if you take it.  

 034: Sci-Hub and the Publication Pirates | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 21:59

Research budgets are tight, and many universities are canceling subscriptions to costly online science journals and publications.  But papers are the currency of science, and it’s impossible to stay at the top of your field when you can’t find out what your field is doing. One solution sails between the rock and the hard-place, as scientists and trainees turn to ‘pirated’ articles posted online. Avast ye scurvy dogs! Scientists have shared their work since the beginning of scientific discourse, and until very recently, most would order extra copies of their published papers to mail to colleagues around the world.  But with the internet and PDFs, that sharing became painless. As universities cut back on subscriptions, enterprising researchers have turned to Twitter, Reddit, and other online gathering places to “request” papers from those with access.  It’s largely illegal and fairly inefficient. But because the network is decentralized, it’s also difficult for publishers to squelch. Enter websites like Sci-Hub and LibGen – online repositories with a searchable interface and access to tens of millions of scientific articles.  These sites navigate through journal paywalls using university .edu proxies and archive all the content they can scrape. By all accounts, this ‘easy access’ to research is popular: Sci-Hub claimed to receive 200,000 visitors per day in January 2016.  Not surprisingly, the publishers who own the content are less than pleased. Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! Elsevier and other publishers have brought lawsuits against Sci-Hub and their ilk in international courts, and seized domain names in an effort to have the content removed.  In true piratical fashion, Sci-Hub’s crew have taken the site down only to have it reappear on foreign servers, peer-to-peer networks, and anywhere else the content can be hidden from the law. The legality of the situation is clear, but the morality is more nuanced than other cases of internet piracy.  In this case, restricting access to scientific research slows the pace of discovery, which harms all of us.  Are scientists and trainees justified in breaking the law, or should they find creative ways to pay for the content they need? This week on the show – we explore both sides of this daring, high-seas adventure! Three sheets to the wind For ethanol this week, we get tropical with Death By Coconut Irish Porter from Oskar Blues Brewing.  It’s surprisingly coconutty, wonderfully chocolatey, and a pretty tasty way to die if you had to pick.  Blow me down!

 033: It’s Tax Season – Here’s What You Need to Know | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 38:13

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 21st Amendment Brewery’s Brew Free or Die IPA. It’s an excellent West-Coast IPA from the heart of San Francisco and you may be able to find it in your area.  

 032: Help! I Hate Reading Papers! | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 28:45

Reading papers is part of the job, but keeping up with the literature can feel overwhelming sometimes.  If you’re developing a sense of dread for that stack of papers on your desk, it’s time to learn some shortcuts that will get you up to speed. Paper Pushers This week, we answer a listener question about keeping up with the literature: Hello, Hello PhD I know that scientists are supposed to have the trait that they critically read academic papers. However, I cannot stand reading papers. I find no interest or curiosity in even reading Science or Nature, let alone anything else. My best avenue of scientific reporting comes from IFLscience.com. Any tips (besides “read more and keep reading”) to overcome this? First off, we have to dispel the myth that all scientists just LOVE to read papers.  The truth is, literature is a tool and you need to learn how to use it to best effect. There are many reasons you might want to read a paper, and that reason should define your approach. Are you trying to learn a new technique?  Just read the Methods section. Checking out a rotation lab or mentor?  Focus on the abstract and introduction for an overview of the field. And if only one or two other labs study your protein of interest, skip the intro and go over the rest of their paper with a fine-toothed comb. If you’re still struggling to find the motivation to read, pause for a minute and think about the things you’re already reading for fun.  We’re more likely to enjoy a paper on a topic that piques our curiosity, and using that intellectual attraction can help steer you toward a new lab or research field. Bottom line: reading papers is a tool to help you with your research, not an obligation or burden. Use the tool to build your knowledge, and don’t worry about consuming every word on the page. Show us your Strawberries! To celebrate Mardi Gras, we enjoy some Abita Strawberry Harvest Lager from Abita Springs, Louisiana.  It’s apparently a winter tradition for residents of LA, and very difficult to get outside the state.  We’ve got a connection, and the flavor is Strawberrific!   Now if only we could figure out how Lousiana is harvesting strawberries in January…

 031: Making PowerPoint Presentations That Don’t Suck | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 43:13

Great science speaks for itself, right? So the next time you need to give a lab meeting or seminar, just drop a couple of figures into the prettiest PowerPoint template you can find. Make sure to take detailed bulleted notes so you won’t forget anything! And if you’re feeling cheeky, add one of those cool boomerang animations with a star wipe to get the audience’s attention on slide 28.  People love that! It burns my eyes! If you didn’t catch on, everything in that last paragraph is terrible advice.  Science doesn’t speak for itself, and every aspect of the PowerPoint described above should make you cringe like fingernails on a chalk board. The truth is, your important science isn’t worth much until you share it with the world, and one of the best ways to do that is to explain it to other scientists live and in person. Presentations are your chance to infect others with enthusiasm for your topic, to attract collaborators, and to impress hiring committees.  Why not take a few minutes to make your science sing? This week on the show, Daniel shares some specific tips for making your presentations better than the rest. You’ll learn how a pencil and paper can save you hours at the computer and hear some specific advice on how to show immunofluorescence and complex diagrams.  We’ll also share some advanced tricks to make slide transitions and animations a part of your message, rather than a distraction. But above all, remember the mantra: “Guns don’t kill people. Bullets kill people!”   Handy Handout Next time you put together a PowerPoint of your own, try out this handy checklist to remember the do’s and don’ts of good design.  It also has some less-common shortcuts that will help you finish in record time! PowerPoints that Don’t Suck Checklist   And if you’re looking to take your slides to the next level, check out slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte from your university library, or buy a copy for your shelf.  You’ll refer to it again and again. slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations   IPA Latte Also in this show, Josh explains how typing more slowly can improve your writing, and we get the jitters from a growler of  Debut Coffee IPA from Starr Hill Brewery in Crozet, Virginia.  It’s just a matter of time before you can order an “Eye-Opener-and-Closer” at your local coffee shop!

 030: Baby carrots, prime numbers, and invisible planets | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 28:12

If you are a scientist, then I know a little something about your personality.  Almost by definition, you are curious about the world.  And I’ll bet that extends beyond your particular laboratory or field of research.  If there’s something intriguing and knowable, you want to know it. Well, we are scientists too, and sometimes we get carried away.   Food for Thought This week on the show, we round up a smorgasbord of bite-sized stories, discoveries and games to share with the Hello PhD audience.  Why?  Because it’s in the news and on our minds! We start with the ethanol, of course.  This week, it’s the Dogfish Head Brewing Company’s Namaste White Ale.  It’s got lemongrass, peppercorn, and a strange hominid with jazz hands and a pig tail.   Carrots and Codenames Then it’s a rapid-fire roundup of science in the news. The “Big Game” is coming up in a few weeks, but did you know one NFL player is earning a PhD in mathematics and machine learning from MIT? Not to be outdone, a computer in Missouri discovered the latest, largest prime number way back in September, only to have its human overlords notice the result in January!  We can’t print the number here due to length (it’s over 22 million digits long) but we can give you the formula in case you’re itching to fry a calculator: 274,207,281 − 1. Don’t forget the minus 1 part! And the same scientist who killed Pluto is back in the news to tout his discovery of an invisible planet orbiting our sun.  He’s got the best one-line, drop-the-mic, argument-ender that you can use in your next laboratory debate. Along the way, we find out precisely where baby carrots come from and Josh reviews Codenames, a board game that’s fun to play with a group of your closest conspirators.  Just watch out for the assassins!   So buckle up and prepare for a random break from our regularly scheduled inanity.

 029: Tenure Tracker – Choose a Mentor, Not a Lab | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 41:52

Choosing a lab for your graduate or postdoc research is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Most people read papers and abstracts to find the coolest science.  Or they favor the big labs with lots of people and solid funding. But those features can distract you from the real secret of scientific success.   Your Mentor Matters This week on the show, we kick off a new series where we interview the people with truly alternative careers – the tenure track faculty!  Josh sits down with Natasha Snider, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a recent faculty hire (just over 1 year), Dr. Snider remembers all the details of graduate school and postdoc life that contributed to her success, and shares them on the show. First and foremost, she recalls the importance of good mentors in her scientific training.  Rather than choosing high-profile labs or being drawn into the latest research craze, she assessed the character of the PI and the culture of the lab. “[I did one interview with] one of the brilliant scientists where you know you’re going to get these hot papers, but one of the first things he said was that he doesn’t yell at his people as much as he used to… After that, I sat through the interview but I knew that wasn’t [the lab for me]” Aside from obvious anger issues, Dr. Snider shares the warning signs of monster mentors (those are anagrams!), and what type of lab environment you should seek instead. Good mentors were a foundation for her training, but she also took every opportunity to explore other careers and to build a solid network.  She talks about the importance of meeting as many scientists as possible, and tells the story of how she decided to take a faculty position instead of an industry job.   A foraging we will go And to celebrate the first cold-snap of the season, we enjoy the Fullsteam Brewery – First Frost 2015 Foraged Persimmon Ale.  If you haven’t gotten around to foraging your own persimmons this season, then you’re probably too late, and this high-gravity brew is your best bet for sampling the “Fruit of the Gods.”

 028: Making Time for Kids When Everyone Else Stays Late | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 30:40

If you have kids, you’ve experienced “the time shift.” Where you used to have hobbies, you now have a drive to soccer practice.  Where you used to have dinner out, you now have dinner, dishes, bath-time, stories, and bedtime, IN. And where you used to stay late in the lab to finish an experiment, you now rush out at 5 to avoid the late fee at daycare. Family matters Kids take time, and it’s time well spent, but what happens when your PI doesn’t understand your tight schedule?  Will you look like a slacker for working 8 to 5 on weekdays, and can you really make progress in a research lab with limited hours? This week on the show, we tackle a listener question that hits all-too-close to home: I have kids and have to drop them off at daycare at 8AM  and pick them up around 5PM.  My day is very well organized and I’m making progress on a paper, but other post docs and grad students spend a lot more time in the lab than I do.  I’m worried that the PI thinks I don’t work hard enough. The answer is: you can make it work, but it’s going to take discipline.  And in the end, you might actually be a better scientist because of the special constraints.   That’s one small step for a man… This week, we also cover some exciting research-related news from President Obama’s recent State of the Union speech.  He’s called for a modern moonshot, encouraging the nation to “cure cancer” over the next decade.  And he’s tasked VP Joe Biden, who recently lost his son to brain cancer, with leading the mission. You can check out the transcript of his speech, and Biden’s plan for more details.   Is this beer cage free? On the ethanol front, we sample Unity Vibration Bourbon Peach American Wild Ale Kombucha Beer.   Here, I’ll save you the trouble: Wikipedia article on kombucha.

 027: The Road More Travelled: Stepping Off of the Tenure Track | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 38:51

In 2011, a whopping 36,000 science and technology grad students earned their PhDs.  That same year, about 3,000 faculty positions were created.  So why did you feel like a failure when you decided to step off the tenure track? Taking the high road Scientists aren’t always as rational as we seem.  A rational person would look at the disparity between faculty positions and new PhDs and realize we need to support students and postdocs who choose careers outside of academia. But there remains a stigma. If you go to industry, you’re ‘selling out.’  If you find a job in policy or outreach, you’re ‘throwing away your training.’  And heaven forbid you take time off to raise your kids!  What gives? This week on the show, we talk with Dara Wilson-Grant about an article she wrote titled Standing at the Crossroads: When PhDs Abandon the Tenure Track Career Path.  Dara is a licensed professional counselor and associate director of the office of postdoctoral affairs and career counselor at UNC Chapel Hill, and she’s seen the struggle as postdocs come to terms with their “alternative” career plans. Her article is unique, because it addresses the deeply emotional issues of changing careers.  We’ve trained for years to be ‘scientists,’ so what do we become when we take a job in analysis, accounting, or administration?  How do you know when it’s just a rough couple of months in lab, and when it’s really time to reassess your life goals?  Dara answers all. Read her blog and get in touch at careersinbloom.com An IPA by any other name Also in this show, we try… you guessed it… another IPA!  This time, it’s Missile IPA from Champion Brewing Company in Charlottesville VA.  It’s explosively delicious, with lots of collateral liver damage.

 026: Career Advice from A Successful Scientist | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 27:27

When you’re worried about today’s experiments and tomorrow’s time points, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s really important for your career and your life.  Why not start the New Year with a new perspective? Looking Back and Moving Forward In this episode, we consider the advice of Robert J. Sternberg, PhD,  a self-described geezer and well-respected academic.  He’s Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, and has co-authored over 1,500 publications.  He wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education laying out his career advice for other academics. His tips range from simple (“Save as much money as you can”) to subtle (“Be true to yourself”), but all of them are worth a few moments of consideration as we enter 2016.  Here’s the list, with more detail included in the article: Career Advice From an Oldish Not-Quite Geezer * Put your family first. * Make your health a close second. * Save as much money as you can. * If you’re in the wrong place, get out. * Stay away from jerks. * If you’re not having fun, something’s wrong. * Be true to yourself. * Don’t tie up too much of your self-esteem in someone else’s evaluation of your work. * Take stock periodically. * Have a hobby. See the world. Or both. * Help others. * Take some risks. Pop a Cork Also in this episode, Josh and Dan pop some bubbly to celebrate the New Year and some exciting milestones for the Hello PhD podcast.  Thanks to all of you joining us on this journey, and we can’t wait to make science a friendlier, happier place in 2016!

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