Starting in a new group is fun, right? You get a new lab coat, new desk, new email address, and maybe even a new webpage. Our group website has a line for everyone where they can put what flavor scientist they are—microbiologist, environmental engineer, etc. I cannot, for the life of me, decide what I am in one or two words. Not like it’s a big deal, but I think it’s a sign of a much larger issue.

A few years ago, I remember hearing a former labmate of mine lament over a comment a committee member told him after a meeting. He was told not to become a jack of all trades and master of none. He needed to quit dabbling here and there in aspects of several disciplines, the committee member said, or else he would never be seen as an expert in his field (therefore, limiting his chances of finding a job in the future).

So what if a scientist doesn’t fit into a traditional category? So he’s not a geologist. Or a chemist. Or even a geochemist. Big deal.

I’d like to be able to say that’s garbage and if you do good work, it doesn’t matter. But lately I’m finding not being able to simply define my research more and more of a hassle and am beginning to see the point.

For example, how does one classify/market/publish their research when they don’t fit cleanly into a discipline or even sub-discipline? For me, deciding where to publish, where (and under which directorate) to apply for funding, and what meetings to attend are all easier said that done.

I initially attributed this difficulty to two facts regarding environmental research:

1. Nature is not in a neat little package where biology is separate from chemistry or physics—therefore it’s inherently interdisciplinary
2. We use/borrow/steal a lot from those more traditional fields just to apply them in a different context

But, on second thought, that last point may actually be a benefit to someone in a position similar to my own. Quite honestly, we are able to use those old techniques from established fields (e.g. physical chemistry, molecular biology, surface science) to publish in our own journals. No one in our field knows about these techniques and therefore they are seen as novel.

Additionally, if we’re studying natural systems, we have a lot more room for error in our experiments. Oftentimes, anything within an order of magnitude suffices! And I suppose we actually have more options than most scientists when choosing where to publish/present/seek funding. Geochemists, for example, publish all over in the chemistry literature, but also have their own specialized journals to choose from, traditional ‘geo’ and environmental journals, and even several ‘bio’ journals if there’s even a hint of biology in the research.

So maybe it’s not so bad after all. Although we may be jacks of many trades, maybe we can at least appear to be masters of some. Still, that doesn’t solve my inane problem of what to put on the group website.