A new post-doc position comes with its own bag of interesting and unexpected observations and complications.
Firstly, I cannot emphasize enough how ecstatic, relieved, happy and floaty I feel now that I am no longer a graduate student. I can’t say that all pressure is off, but it’s lessened by a couple orders of magnitude. You will not find me in lab 70 hours a week (again) because I don’t want a career in academia and don’t have graduation hanging over my head. I just want to enjoy the science (as much as I am physically capable of enjoying science in the confines of a lab), publish a paper, and skip down the yellow brick road to a career which will keep me as far away as possible from i) mice, ii) herpes, and iii) mice with herpes.
Secondly, I am constantly caught in the crossfire of alternate protocols – things I learned how to do one way in my graduate lab are done differently in my current lab. I fight the urge to object to every protocol modification with “well, in my old lab, we did it like this.” I don’t want to be that person, one unable to let go of past experience. The most obvious response to that person is, “well you aren’t in your old lab, now are you.” I have to relearn things I have been doing the same way for the last 7 years in order to make my work consistent with the rest of the lab’s output.
I know objectively that the modifications aren’t likely to make a difference to the final product, but I find myself fighting to maintain allegiance to my old lab. It will wear off, I know. I have to grow up, move on and adjust to my new environment, play by the new rules. I think the warm fuzzy feeling I get when referred to as a post doc will go a long way in helping that process along. I am not in the desolate Kansas* of graduate school anymore.
*no offense.
Or as I said once,
“Well you’re not in Germany now, sunshine: you’re in the army, and we do it this way.”
No joke.
Yea, it’s kind of like that :) Except I get more leeway since I came form the mother of all herpes labs. Makes it harder to give up my old ways.
resists tasteless herpes joke
Are there scientific, rather than habitual reasons to use old methods over new ones? It could be worth trying to spread subliminal messages via screensavers/words engraved onto the bottom of beer glasses (delete as appropriate).
Good luck with the postdoc! Spend some quality time getting to know the PhD students, so they can do the hard work while you
slack off down the boozerwork on perfecting your move to the alternative career.sends subliminal messages to RPG in attempt to break down his resistance to telling tasteless herpes joke
I fight the urge to object to every protocol modification
In my experience, these differences are most of the time derived from the lab microculture (or “I’ve been told to do it like this when I joined the lab”), and therefore there may be a lot of extra steps that people just haven’t bothered to change over the years. Don’t be affraid to skip those that seem superfluous to you (one at a time!) and see what happens. You may save yourself a lot of time, that you can spend down the boozer instead!
resists comment about the taste of herpes
Enjoy the science
Mike – I think there is an awful lot of habit in the protocols. Sometimes the stuff they call for makes no sense to me whatsoever. I am ok doing it another way if it makes sense – if it’s better or same as. If it’s more complicated for no reason other than lab culture, forget it. I am postdoc, hear me
roarpipet.Cristian – You know, I’ve been met with some resistance on that front. The “I was taught this way” indoctrination is really quite strong. Whenever I feel good reason to do things my own way, I do them, but I find that I have to pick my “battles.”
Viktor – Ha! Thanks for that. I love that song, even though the video makes no kind of sense.