I am a sixth year graduate student in the Virology Program at HMS. This means that I have had five and a half years to observe and reflect upon life in lab. Now that I am almost at the end of my graduate school career (a fact that still doesn’t entirely compute), I find myself looking back on my time in lab, trying to compile the lessons I learned and adjustments I have made. Which of the adjustments will hurt me and which will help me, should I find myself moving away from the world of academia? Will interactions with co-workers be different? Will I no longer be able to drink beer in the conference room at 3PM on a Wednesday? Probably not, sadly.

I have come to the (not at all novel) conclusion that the lab is very much unlike any other job or workplace. Academic labs don’t play by the same rules as normal businesses and the personnel dynamics can be peculiar and, at times, precarious. In this blog, I plan on discussing my experiences (both scientific and social) in lab over the past years and hopefully figure out whether those experiences were unique to me or shared by others.