Sophie Arthur is a 3rd year PhD
student at University of Southampton studying embryonic stem cell metabolism.
She is also involved in a variety of scicomm activities – she is admin for a
science bloggers database which you can join on Twitter @SciBlogHub and is also
the publicist for the Pint of Science festival in Southampton this year – all
of which you can stay updated on through her social media accounts. In today’s
guest post, she shares some tips and advice about doing a PhD in a lab environment
and how you can make it to the finish line.
If you want to see more about Sophie’s
life as a lab-based PhD student, she writes a blog called Soph talks Science
and is often showing insights into everyday lab life and attempts to break down
those stereotypes associated with being a scientist on her social media
accounts which you can follow in the links below:
A
PhD is hard enough when you are fully prepared for what lies ahead. Let alone
when you have no idea what to expect. I was one of those students. Being the
first member of my family to go to university and coming from a small village
‘out in the sticks’ in the rural county of Pembrokeshire in Wales – I had no
idea what to expect after finishing my undergraduate degree. I decided to
embark on the adventure that is doing a PhD and accepted my position with little
consideration about what it actually involved. Two months before I was due to
start in 2014, I was scouring the internet to find some insights about what
life as a PhD student in a research lab environment actually meant. But what
did I find? Nothing. Nothing very insightful at least, just several accounts of
previous PhD students saying it was hard! It was really hard! So, with the sole
advice of how difficult the next four years of my life were going to be, I
packed up and moved to Southampton to start my mission to become Dr. Arthur.
Two
and a half years down the line, I have learnt so much about the PhD experience
in a lab and wanted to fill that gap about lab-based PhD experiences so I set
up my blog ‘Soph talks science’ to document different aspects of lab life and I
thought I could share some advice for surviving a lab-based PhD on a platform
like this aimed at current and prospective PhD students so they can be much
more prepared than I was. So, here is my lab-based PhD survival guide. Some of these things will be applicable to
PhDs in other fields, but they are things that have helped me survive Grad
school.
Experiments will fail!
Probably
not a great one to start off with but I believe it is the first thing you need
to accept and come to terms with! I promise that it happens to all scientists
no matter whether they are new to the lab research scene or they are a seasoned
pro!
You
would think that a routine experiment like a Western blot or a PCR reaction
that millions of scientists use every day would be flawless and work every time
right? Well you couldn’t be more wrong! Sometimes, something will work without
a hitch a hundred times and then inexplicably just stop working! This usually
happens when you need to get that final repeat to get a significant result or
you need that last piece of the puzzle for your publication – so it is arguably
the most frustrating thing about working in the lab! I’ve had the opportunity
to teach some undergrad students during my lab time and they just can’t grasp
it when I tell them that it happens sometimes and no one can explain why. What
they don’t understand even more is that I don’t get down or caught up by it. I
just start it again. I have had my fair share of experiments just not working
for no reason and I have just learnt that it happens and there’s nothing I can
do about it so I may as well just fix it by starting again!
As
a fresh-faced PhD newbie, you will be watching other more senior PhD students
around you doing it with ease – but I assure you that they were feeling exactly
the same way as you have and they made as many mistakes as you and just have
learnt from them! These failed experiments to not make you a bad scientist, in
fact I truly believe they make you a better scientist because you learn to troubleshoot
and be more creative with your experiments. So, when you see that blank agarose
gel or hideously dirty Western blot, grieve for a few minutes and then figure
out how to fix it!
You will need help
And
don’t be afraid to ask for it either! Everyone around you wants to see you
succeed and more than likely they have encountered the problem you’re having,
so they can either help you out to fix it or they may have a handy top tip to
avoid it happening again!
So
many people go round trying to solve the problem themselves because they think
they should do it alone! Don’t do that! Talk to someone about an issue you are
having and there will be someone willing to listen and help you. What’s the
point in wasting days reading about trying to solve your problem and getting
really worked up over it when the person sat in the opposite corner to you in
the office will have the answer? Plus, asking for help is so much better than
ruining an experiment because you feel bad about disturbing someone.
Get a hobby/non-lab friends
Basically
don’t take your work home with you! And it also means that if you have plans
outside of work, you won’t spend every hour under the sun in the lab. Now don’t
get me wrong, there will probably be times where you need to be in the lab for
18 hours a day or have to come in at weekends or at 2am to take a time point
reading – but do not let it become your routine. This lab experience does
demand that you do other activities that helps your mind switch off from
science, and think about other things! For me, this has been going to the gym
which is a great stress reliever – the problem is just getting me to the gym in
the first place – or watching some films and TV series lounging at home on the
sofa.
You
must take breaks – things can get on top of you if you’re always in the lab and
you are allowed days off even if your supervisor would rather you be slaving
away in the lab all day! Your PhD stipend might not stretch far enough to do
some travelling but if you are amazing at budgeting then schedule these
intentional PhD breaks with long weekends in cities throughout Europe or
wherever is easiest for you. I have the time to do these trips but just wish I
had the money to do it. But even if you can’t jet off to a foreign land, just
taking a week off and spending it chilling at home will do you and your mental
state a world of good! I’ve spoken to so many people who have taken solo trips
and taken 2 weeks off before their final stint in the lab or before they
started writing their PhD thesis, just to clear their minds and prepare for the
next tasks ahead – and they have said that they don’t know how they would have
finished if they had not taken that crucial break from the lab.
But
in addition to getting some non-lab friends in the form of your new football
team or travel buddy, get involved in your department and make some friends
that work in the same place as you but not in the same lab! They may be able to
hook you up with an antibody you are short of at 7pm and desperate to go home,
or if you need some different cells as a positive control for your experiment –
they are your go to sources – not that I’m speaking from experience. Now – I’m
not saying that you should make these friends just to use them for your benefit
as that would be slightly sociopathic – but it’s great to be a part of a
supportive community. They are also great people to have lunch with instead of
your lab mates in case ‘John’ is really irritating you today – and they also
don’t work on the same things as you so you won’t have to talk about lab
issues!
Imposter syndrome is real!
I’ve
heard a lot of talk about ‘imposter syndrome’ during my few years in grad
school. Imposter syndrome is the belief that you don’t belong and you’re not
clever enough to be here. But at the beginning – you are going to feel stupid.
It’s normal! I’m in my third year of my PhD and the most senior PhD student in
my lab now and I still feel stupid. But I feel a lot less stupid now than when
I was a first year in the lab and everyone was talking science and
troubleshooting in our weekly lab meetings and my eyes were just glazed over
and panicking about how I would ever learn all this stuff. I used to watch the
more senior students in my lab manage about 4 different experiments a day and
all with ease whilst I used to get worked up about doing one Western blot. Now
– I could easily be doing six or seven Western blots in a day whilst culturing
my cells and something else whilst fitting it around various lab meetings and
supervisor meetings! But I have learnt that everyone feels that way! Even the
‘smart kids’! It’s just part of the PhD journey – embrace it!
Get involved in some scicomm/public
engagement
Scientists
are a notoriously anti-social demographic, but during my time in the lab I have
realised just how important it is to talk about your research with the public.
Now, I’m not saying you need to tell them about each and every gel you run or
the results from your latest PCR. Tell them in simple terms what you do – you
don’t want to scare everyone away with lots of science jargon – but more
importantly you need to make them care about your research! Tell them why your
research is important and how it will affect them!
Conveying
my PhD which is basic mechanistic biology based research and involves a lot of
metabolism and metabolic pathways that everyone hated in school, let alone
however many years after they finished learning about it, was so difficult for
me initially. I just couldn’t think of a way to tell my research story in
simple terms without all the jargon. But during my second year of my PhD, I
entered the 3 Minute Thesis competition; the challenge was to explain your
research to a lay audience using one static slide in under 3 minutes. I thought
for weeks and weeks about a simple concept and in the end I found my analogy –
my stem cell hotel resort on top of a snowy mountain complete with mini bar.
Now that probably doesn’t mean a lot to you there, but I’ve written about it in
one of my blog post from February 2016 and I think it will make sense with
everything else. But it was entering that competition that made me think a
completely different way about how I could explain my research to the public
and I haven’t stop there – I now write two blog posts a week about a variety of
science-y things and I’m involved in the Pint of Science festival so follow me
to keep up to date on those!
But
I want to finish this section by just stressing how important I think science
communication is! It is so crucial that the public knows the basics of what we
are doing behind closed doors and what we want to achieve from this! If it
comes from scientists directly, it cannot get misconstrued in the media for
example. Plus I’ve always found that it helps me think about what my research
means from a different perspective as you get asked all sorts of questions – so
never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. They might help you out
without them even knowing it!
So, there it
is! My five top tips to surviving a lab-based PhD. Now while this knowledge
might make your PhD journey a little easier, unfortunately it is not going to
make the next few years of your life much easier. You will still need to work
hard to get out of it what you want – BUT hopefully they will help you to stay
social and keep your sanity.
This time will
fly I assure you! I feel like I only started a few months ago but I am
finishing next year! The best advice I could probably give you is just to get
stuck in and make the most of your time there! Get those papers out as soon as
you can because you don’t want to be going through that stress when trying to
write up your thesis at the end too. But most of all – enjoy it! You will have
bad days but you definitely will have good days too plus you will make some
friends for life! Just make the most of it J
Disclaimer: pictures have all been made by Sophie Arthur.
Disclaimer: pictures have all been made by Sophie Arthur.
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