Skip to main content

119. Ten Tips to Crush Your First Semester

Daniel 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

It’s that time of year again – summer days are growing shorter, your friends are trying to fit in one last trip to the beach, and the backpack aisle at Target is about to be cleared out to make way for the Halloween costumes.

Yes, it’s back-to-school time. From toddlers to teenagers, this time of year instills foreboding about the school-year ahead. But as a first-year graduate student, you may have other feelings.

For most, it’s the start of a new adventure. For the first time, you’re pursuing the one subject in the world you love best, surrounded by other equally brilliant and passionate people.

It’s the end of being told what to learn and how to study, and the beginning of blazing your own academic trail.

It IS a new experience – different from your matriculation in high school or college – and it may be difficult to know what to expect.

This week, we lay out a ten-ish step plan for putting your best-foot-forward in that first semester of your graduate journey.

Read More

118. Find a Better Mentor with GradPI

Daniel Leave a comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a crystal ball that could reveal your grad-school future?

You might look forward to see if that next experiment will work out, or if your research will eventually make the cover of Nature.

What you should do with the power of foresight is to take a deep look at the quality of mentorship you’ll receive over the next few years.

It’s no secret that good research advisors can be tough to find. Most are passable – you’ll learn what you need to learn and graduate on time – and a few are stellar, elevating your research beyond what you thought was possible.

But of course, lurking somewhere at every institution, are a handful of awful, terrible, no good, very bad PIs. These are the people you must avoid at all costs, lest they destroy both your confidence and your career plan.

Of course, no one has a crystal ball, and sometimes our choice of a research mentor doesn’t pan out. But there’s a website hoping to change that.

Read More

059: Simple Tricks for Time Management – The Focus Funnel (R)

Daniel Leave a comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

In some jobs, one day at the office looks a lot like the next. You could look through your calendar and optimize your meeting schedule and to-do list without much thought.

But working in a lab is different: your projects are in constant flux, experiments lead to other experiments, and you need to balance bench work with meetings, mentoring, and writing.

That busyness can lead to inefficiency as you tackle the items on your list one after another.  Worse, you’re forced to plan overlapping activities to fill the ‘downtime’ during incubations and time points.

This week, we encourage you to take a step back, look over your list of competing priorities, and ask some hard questions about what’s really important.

You might find you have more free time on your hands than you ever imagined…

Read More

117: Bridging The Gap as a Medical Science Liaison

Daniel Leave a comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

For most graduate students, the list of potential careers runs something like this:

  1. Research Faculty
  2. Teaching Faculty
  3. Industry Researcher
  4. Science Writer
  5. …. ummmm…

But the truth is that there are other, less talked-about careers that can be a perfect fit for scientists who may love learning but not working at the bench.

Read More

116: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Summer Students

Daniel Leave a comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

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.

Read More