Week 2 into the fall term, it becomes apparent to the first years in my department (n=6) and to those in the interdepartmental program (n=14) that there are several new labs entering Neurobiology and Behavior. Instantaneously upon disseminating this news, we are all clamoring to get some face time and possibly a rotation with some of these new labs (R2 = madness).
Yours truly had had it all figured out: fall in a renowned histology lab, winter in a renowned molecular genetics lab, spring in a budding molec/e-phys/histol lab. But then, there was an opportunity to rotate with Dr StemCells. Three exciting labs for the remainder of the year, and two terms. Not cool.
It was not easy to make a decision, and honestly my stomach is still churning somewhat (or perhaps that's the caffeine). After two weeks of soliciting the philosophies and suggestions of graduate students and PIs alike, I chose to forfeit the renowned molecular genetics lab in favor of the budding Dr StemCell's lab. Ultimately, it came down to this:
1) Dr Molecular Genetics runs a very large lab and is very inaccessible. We're talking up to 18 month gaps between private meetings, unless you are her co-PI. She is a remarkable woman, and I would do a post doc with her in the blink of an eye, but students just do not graduate from her lab in less than 7 years and I require the guarantee of semi-regular one-on-one time (things tend to move more quickly that way, in this department's labs).
2) The three labs under consideration all collaborate with one another on some level. It's not like I would be abandoning an opportunity to participate in a hot project.
3) Although it certainly puts a feather in one's academic cap to be spawned from a renowned lab, it doesn't hurt to be part of the creation of one either. Newer labs (again, in my department) tend to publish more frequently and use more shiny high-tech toys. I would speculate that this is because a) budding PIs need to lay golden eggs to stay funded, and b) budding PIs tend to still be in that rosey-eyed optimistic stage of their careers.
Naive Raga has chosen to try out two fledgling labs after a term in the current renowned one. What will be, will be.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
things that keep me up at night
1) do i have the huevos to officiate the wedding of two of my most favorite people this summer?
2) what if a "real" handicapped student needs our apartment next year and my housing complex kicks us out?
3) how in the world am i going to explain to a PI who i like and respect that i don't want to rotate through her lab next term after all?
2) what if a "real" handicapped student needs our apartment next year and my housing complex kicks us out?
3) how in the world am i going to explain to a PI who i like and respect that i don't want to rotate through her lab next term after all?
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Neurobeer: an orientation week finale
As it turns out, I do in fact have a small amount of terminal ileum inflammation, but not enough to stop me from eating salads on a near-daily basis. Or biking after boozing on Friday afternoon...
After an agonizing week of general grad and departmental orientation, I am pumped to actually start in with courses and a regular class/research schedule. The little that I've gleaned of my incoming classmates has been stellar; we are all from different backgrounds and excited to share our expertise and learn from that of our peers.
It also turns out that 3 of the 5 of us (and one other incoming in another department) want to rotate with a particular assistant professor who was just given a lab just this summer and who I just learned about last week (more on his situation after our meeting next week), so my rotation schedule has been jostled into upset and I am just shy of frantically lunching and coffeeing with PIs and grad students in order to re-prioritize. My 3 comforts are as follows:
1) schedule upset is a defining characteristic of academia, and this compulsive organizationalist naively invites the challenge as if she might actually conquer it;
2) I am confident enough in my enthusiasm for finding a rockin' project and publishing/collaborating through it that I don't feel reliant on a PI having an established and renowned publishing record;
3) I have a NSF grant, ergo, I'm a free-be, ergo, I'm not in the same kind of competition with other graduate students for space in a lab of my choice.
After four days of mind-numbing introductions, patronizing trainings (and I was prepared for this process, but having your entire breadth of background disregarded and being made to start back at zero is frustrating no matter how prepared you are), stressful reconfigurations of research rotation fates, and a Remicade infusion, there was Neurobeer.
Yes, I am part of a neurobiology program that treats its family to beer and free cuisine each month. And by cuisine, I don't mean wraps and cookies -- I mean Mexican, Indian, Asian cuisine. And by family, I don't just mean the grad students -- I mean us, recruits, post docs and PIs. All chillin' in our courtyard with a beer (or wine, or soda, as you prefer). I lubs it.
After an agonizing week of general grad and departmental orientation, I am pumped to actually start in with courses and a regular class/research schedule. The little that I've gleaned of my incoming classmates has been stellar; we are all from different backgrounds and excited to share our expertise and learn from that of our peers.
It also turns out that 3 of the 5 of us (and one other incoming in another department) want to rotate with a particular assistant professor who was just given a lab just this summer and who I just learned about last week (more on his situation after our meeting next week), so my rotation schedule has been jostled into upset and I am just shy of frantically lunching and coffeeing with PIs and grad students in order to re-prioritize. My 3 comforts are as follows:
1) schedule upset is a defining characteristic of academia, and this compulsive organizationalist naively invites the challenge as if she might actually conquer it;
2) I am confident enough in my enthusiasm for finding a rockin' project and publishing/collaborating through it that I don't feel reliant on a PI having an established and renowned publishing record;
3) I have a NSF grant, ergo, I'm a free-be, ergo, I'm not in the same kind of competition with other graduate students for space in a lab of my choice.
After four days of mind-numbing introductions, patronizing trainings (and I was prepared for this process, but having your entire breadth of background disregarded and being made to start back at zero is frustrating no matter how prepared you are), stressful reconfigurations of research rotation fates, and a Remicade infusion, there was Neurobeer.
Yes, I am part of a neurobiology program that treats its family to beer and free cuisine each month. And by cuisine, I don't mean wraps and cookies -- I mean Mexican, Indian, Asian cuisine. And by family, I don't just mean the grad students -- I mean us, recruits, post docs and PIs. All chillin' in our courtyard with a beer (or wine, or soda, as you prefer). I lubs it.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Remicade and identity theft
H.K. has finally experienced colonoscopy prep Raga. Something about not being nauseous or half conscious (as I have been in my previous three) makes a liquid diet and 4 liters of electrolyte concentrate so much more irritating. I survived only for the promise of a teriyaki chicken burger. Which was devine. And for his part, H.K. was utterly delighted when he was handed picture copies
of my lower guts. All of his suffering from the last 36 hours vanished.
As dreadful as the prep was, the results may have been worse.
At my follow-up appt the next day, it was concluded that my Crohn's -- at least the lower bowel Crohn's -- looked fantastic. Scars smaller than ever, inflammation gone, no ulcers, no abscesses. So where is all the pain coming from? IBS, says Dr. New GI.
Nuh uh. IBS? In my 13 years of Crohn's, no one has ever mentioned that some of my pain may be coming from IBS. I feel almost slighted. Remicade is doing beautiful work in my lower tummeh, and in doing so stealing my identity as a Crohn. I don't know how I feel about this.
You're thinking, "you should be cheering, wtf is the problem?", am I right? And I am. Yay. It's like this, though. When you have a creature inside you for 13 years and you're told that that creature may now either be hibernating or dead, there is a feeling that you've lost a part of yourself. Not quite like when a Trill's symbiont dies, but similar. Especially when the loss of your creature doesn't actually change anything about your life(style).
First of all, for those who have been following the journey, it was decided that despite all the side effects of Remicade that I've been accumulating over the last 2 years, we're going to keep me on it. Because, well, my inflammation is gone and my scars are no big deal atm. So we're redirecting the energy of the mission into full mobilization against the psoriasis, the dermatitis, the hives, the fatigue, the rotting teeth and the chronic infections.
That said, Dr. New GI has not ruled out any activity in my upper tract. So we're checking my sedimentation rate and I may be doing the camera pill in the near(ish) future. Rock on.
Is this it? Am I still a Crohn if I'm just battling the Remicade? I had a small identity crisis last night before realizing... if I still feel like shit, and my immune system is still functioning like shit, nothing has really changed, has it?
As dreadful as the prep was, the results may have been worse.
At my follow-up appt the next day, it was concluded that my Crohn's -- at least the lower bowel Crohn's -- looked fantastic. Scars smaller than ever, inflammation gone, no ulcers, no abscesses. So where is all the pain coming from? IBS, says Dr. New GI.
Nuh uh. IBS? In my 13 years of Crohn's, no one has ever mentioned that some of my pain may be coming from IBS. I feel almost slighted. Remicade is doing beautiful work in my lower tummeh, and in doing so stealing my identity as a Crohn. I don't know how I feel about this.
You're thinking, "you should be cheering, wtf is the problem?", am I right? And I am. Yay. It's like this, though. When you have a creature inside you for 13 years and you're told that that creature may now either be hibernating or dead, there is a feeling that you've lost a part of yourself. Not quite like when a Trill's symbiont dies, but similar. Especially when the loss of your creature doesn't actually change anything about your life(style).
First of all, for those who have been following the journey, it was decided that despite all the side effects of Remicade that I've been accumulating over the last 2 years, we're going to keep me on it. Because, well, my inflammation is gone and my scars are no big deal atm. So we're redirecting the energy of the mission into full mobilization against the psoriasis, the dermatitis, the hives, the fatigue, the rotting teeth and the chronic infections.
That said, Dr. New GI has not ruled out any activity in my upper tract. So we're checking my sedimentation rate and I may be doing the camera pill in the near(ish) future. Rock on.
Is this it? Am I still a Crohn if I'm just battling the Remicade? I had a small identity crisis last night before realizing... if I still feel like shit, and my immune system is still functioning like shit, nothing has really changed, has it?
Monday, August 29, 2011
first lab mtg: part II in the lab rotation saga
I sat in on my first lab mtg in rotation lab #1 this afternoon. The first thing I observed was a very amiable dynamic... laid back, even. There was a scalable project undertaken over the summer which was presented by two of its major players. I was pretty quiet, mostly observing how people interacted and how information was presented.
Being only vaguely familiar with the study, I suppressed my myriad questions which would have mostly been helpful to my own clarity and not contributory to the conversation. Mostly, though, I was not interested in coming off as that jackass who comes in and blindly tries to push their experience without understanding the particular design/choices of the lab. I do understand that a lab mtg is not a seminar, and that plenty of detail, being familiar among the post docs and grad students, is not reproduced.
That said, one very curious observation was how disjointed some things seemed. For instance, the summer study involved some cell counting. After the presenter discussed her counting methods and findings and seemed somewhat unsure as to how to interpret them, Dr. PI chimed in and very amiably pointed out that the presenter had set parameters for said counts that made her results jumbled and irrelevant, and she should try measuring several new parameters in the upcoming weeks.
During this part of the discussion, my brain was asking, "why weren't reliable parameters discussed before they were carried out? why weren't the specific cortical layers of interest identified separately and compared instead of being clumped into one group? why was the cell size not defined as part of counting parameters? could double-staining be done to elucidate cells of interest more clearly? what would you speculate this outcome might mean?"... etc.
This is why I shut up. Questions better saved for a one-on-one with my grad student mentor in a learning environment as opposed to a lab mtg. From what I gathered from the rest of the lab's input, this was somewhat standard. There was a, "let's try this and see if it works, and if not we will exclude the approach in future" attitude, which I love. But I also got the feeling that students were very much on their own in terms of project design, and methods were not cleared with a higher authority or guide before conduct, which is a foreign concept to me. My instinct is to approach every study as if it were publishable, and to optimize the design as much as is feasible in order to produce a result that could contribute to a manuscript. It did not seem that this was the general perspective in rotation lab #1.
Finally, there were about seven undergrads at the mtg getting a feel for whether they'd like to become part of the lab in the fall. Also very new, since there were no undergrads at the teaching hospital from which I hail (only summer students).
It's going to be a very exciting term. I cannot wait for Sept. 6th.
Being only vaguely familiar with the study, I suppressed my myriad questions which would have mostly been helpful to my own clarity and not contributory to the conversation. Mostly, though, I was not interested in coming off as that jackass who comes in and blindly tries to push their experience without understanding the particular design/choices of the lab. I do understand that a lab mtg is not a seminar, and that plenty of detail, being familiar among the post docs and grad students, is not reproduced.
That said, one very curious observation was how disjointed some things seemed. For instance, the summer study involved some cell counting. After the presenter discussed her counting methods and findings and seemed somewhat unsure as to how to interpret them, Dr. PI chimed in and very amiably pointed out that the presenter had set parameters for said counts that made her results jumbled and irrelevant, and she should try measuring several new parameters in the upcoming weeks.
During this part of the discussion, my brain was asking, "why weren't reliable parameters discussed before they were carried out? why weren't the specific cortical layers of interest identified separately and compared instead of being clumped into one group? why was the cell size not defined as part of counting parameters? could double-staining be done to elucidate cells of interest more clearly? what would you speculate this outcome might mean?"... etc.
This is why I shut up. Questions better saved for a one-on-one with my grad student mentor in a learning environment as opposed to a lab mtg. From what I gathered from the rest of the lab's input, this was somewhat standard. There was a, "let's try this and see if it works, and if not we will exclude the approach in future" attitude, which I love. But I also got the feeling that students were very much on their own in terms of project design, and methods were not cleared with a higher authority or guide before conduct, which is a foreign concept to me. My instinct is to approach every study as if it were publishable, and to optimize the design as much as is feasible in order to produce a result that could contribute to a manuscript. It did not seem that this was the general perspective in rotation lab #1.
Finally, there were about seven undergrads at the mtg getting a feel for whether they'd like to become part of the lab in the fall. Also very new, since there were no undergrads at the teaching hospital from which I hail (only summer students).
It's going to be a very exciting term. I cannot wait for Sept. 6th.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
cold feet: a lab rotation saga
Two weeks away from beginning my first rotation, I am awake nights thinking [mostly unproductively] about the decisions I’ve made since January of this year and how badly I may or may not be screwing myself over. You would think that having already acquired two prestigious fellowships would set my mind at ease... and you would be wrong. I have narrowed the cause of my anxieties to one thing: fear of change.
Having been highly invested in a certain area of research for the past four years, and particularly after publishing four first-author and two co-authored manuscripts in the last year, I am loathe to abandon what is now a great love.
I have the opportunity in my first New Home Base rotation to work on a project in an area of research very closely kin to my Great Love. However, this project is very likely the end of the line, as it is not my rotation advisor’s main vein. Therefore, during said rotation I plan to also learn (or at least shadow) other techniques used for the Main Vein so as to familiarize with what I would most likely be doing if I remained in this lab for my dissertation. The first problem here is the unknown and limited amount of time I will actually have for Main Vein learning alongside my own rotation project. If I’m going to abandon my Great Love in this new lab, I want to be thoroughly introduced to what new delights I am getting into.
I can’t help but revert to the knowledge that if I had stayed with Boss Man, I may not have gained experience in a new research environment, but I would have learned a new (and sexy) technique on a fine set of projects and continued to grow at my current momentum. I discarded that option for lesser known opportunities in a strange and uncertain new world.
There is another lab at New Home Base which is collaborating with my rotation lab on my rotation project, so it is possible that though the line of study will not be continued in one lab, I might continue it in the collaboration lab during second rotation and forward. Of course, I presently have no idea how likely this may be. In addition, the PI of Collaboration Lab, although frequently published, has not published a manuscript as a senior author since 2009, and that was the first incidence since several years before. This is concerning as a PhD student hoping to land a strong (or at least desirable) post doc position down the line.
Yet a third lab does work somewhat similar to my Great Love, but this PI does not publish in journals of the prestige that I hope for, nor would I learn any new techniques. They are widely read and strong journals, to be sure, but I have already published in several of them and had ambitions for a more powerful impact factor for my dissertation.
Ambitions high and will strong, I face these options with cold feet. Fear of diversion from my Great Love (which would not be wise should I want to come back to it as a post doc or PI), fear of entering a less prestigious lab and hoping that in it I will be able to improve the trends of the last four years, and fear of losing the momentum which I have established in my last four years. Just because I am beginning to pursue a PhD in a new place does not mean I intend to take any steps backward in the career I have thus far developed. And I have a way of meeting my intentions in at least some recognizable form. Fear of change be damned; it can be done... maybe.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
the traveling Crohn: displacement
Oh, hai. Just checking in. Not dead. Still kickin'.
After a pleasant and leisurely road trip from the PNW, stopping pretty much everywhere in the Bay Area (BA) to see the in-laws and such delightful people as Kara from Sempre and some of H.K.'s childhood friends, and a quick stop in the BA ER for some I.V. and CT scan action (because who could resist?), we did eventually make it to our southern destination last week. We dragged little bro-in-law down from the BA and unloaded in 1.3 days, and were completely unpacked and settled in after 5. Relocation machines.
Apart from the disaster that was transferring my medical ID and records from PNW Kaiser to So. Cal Kaiser (now 1 week late for Remicade and nowhere near being ready to change treatments as planned, thank you), I am floating head above water in the sea of graduate school entrance paperwork. No department can seem to agree on what I need to do and in which order... so I just kind of dowhatIwant, and lo' and behold, it's all getting done. The nice thing about So. Cal is that none of the hassle is really too much of a bother, because, well, the sun is out.
H.K. and I bike somewhere new (or new-ish) every day, which is great for my mind and all-too-out-of-shape corpus. And I fear we are in a never-ending feud as to whether I should drop my PNW roots and start wearing up-the-crack shorts (hoochy mama shorts, I believe they're called) like the rest of the New Home Base community.
Today is the first time I've sat down and really taken a breath. And by taking a breath I mean worked on my conference poster and discussed experiments [in which I no longer have a hand] with Boss Man, naturally.
Best of all? The ants know their place here. They stay outside. And. The squirrels that run rampant in the PNW? They're bunny rabbits here. Everywhere. As being displaced from the land and people you love goes, it's glorious. Bring on the science.
After a pleasant and leisurely road trip from the PNW, stopping pretty much everywhere in the Bay Area (BA) to see the in-laws and such delightful people as Kara from Sempre and some of H.K.'s childhood friends, and a quick stop in the BA ER for some I.V. and CT scan action (because who could resist?), we did eventually make it to our southern destination last week. We dragged little bro-in-law down from the BA and unloaded in 1.3 days, and were completely unpacked and settled in after 5. Relocation machines.
Good bye PNW.
BA R&R.
Hullo desert.
Today is the first time I've sat down and really taken a breath. And by taking a breath I mean worked on my conference poster and discussed experiments [in which I no longer have a hand] with Boss Man, naturally.
Best of all? The ants know their place here. They stay outside. And. The squirrels that run rampant in the PNW? They're bunny rabbits here. Everywhere. As being displaced from the land and people you love goes, it's glorious. Bring on the science.
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