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Drink beer to generate a scholarship
Every graduate student in Davis known his or her way to the local brewer Sudwerk. Recently, UC Davis and Sudwerk restaurants and brewery signed a licensing deal, where Sudwerk will produce a lager under the name Aggie Lager and UC Davis will get about $25,000 per year in scholarships. The scholarship is meant for a in-state student-athlete at UC Davis for a full year.
Where can you get this Aggie Lager? – at Sudwerk restaurant of course, but also at Hallmark Inn, The Davis Graduate, 3rd and U Café, Woodstock’s pizza, and Original Steve’s.
Go drink some beer to support a fellow student’s scholarship.
Link to UC Davis newsroom article.
BMCDB Editorial August 2011: Facing Failure and Futility
BMCDB Blog Editorial
August 2011
Facing Failure and Futility
Undertaking a Doctorate of Philosophy in the biological sciences is no trivial task. As graduate students we have spent essentially our entire lives preparing for the opportunity to conduct our own research in an academic setting. As many students find out during their first year; they are woefully unprepared for the rigors of graduate work – leading to the common and understandable “imposter syndrome”. The feeling that one does not belong among such talented, smart, and motivated individuals who all (at least superficially) appear to be breezing through the challenges graduate education presents. Generally as one works hard in classes and in lab, this feeling subsides as time goes on. The trickle of success, whether it be getting a PCR reaction to work, or something as momentous as getting published restores faith in oneself. The imposter feeling fades and is replaced by the desire to not only survive graduate school, but to excel and advance one’s field. This trickle of success will ideally turn into a running river of accolades and a rewarding career in science; but what happens when the trickle of success dries up?
This is the real challenge of graduate school, not learning to deal with success, but learning to persevere through failure and futility. To quote Bruce Alberts “ success doesn’t really teach you much, failure teaches you a lot”. Research is never inherently easy, but when things are working it is much easier and more enjoyable to go into lab everyday and give it your all. However, when faced with major obstacles like an assay that just will not work, a protein that will not express, an antibody that will not recognize it’s target, a culture that will not grow, a disinterested and uninvolved PI, or even a botched Qualifying Exam – you have a choice to make; run away with your tail between your legs, or to endure and rise to the challenges presented. As with most of life, it is easier to quit than to carry on with an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, quitters do not make good scientists. To paraphrase advice from Dr. Graham C. Walker, “You never really succeed in science, you just kind of stumble forward hoping to run into something interesting. The way to overcome failure is to try, try and try try try try try try try try try again. As soon as you get something to work, make sure you can actually do it again.” Your best option for success in the world of science, is simply to just keep trying. Do not underestimate the potential of unflappable conviction.
I have witnessed and faced failure at all levels throughout my life and at times, have been haunted by the specter of futility. Regardless of the nature of your challenge, the best thing you can do is to have faith in yourself and the scientific process. Science and faith may appear to be diametrically opposed to one another, but I would argue that faith is crucial to the advancement of science. As scientists there are a dizzying array of things we often take for granted in our day to day lives; DNA is double stranded, DNA begets RNA begets protein, protein complexes interact in confluence of function, genotype dictates phenotype, etc… We have faith that these things are so because of the scientific process and community of scientists that have proven them through experimentation and deduction. As scientists it is especially important we are not blindly faithful in our beliefs. After all questioning the basic tenets of biology has led to some of the most exciting discoveries in recent times like RNAi and prions as epigenetic agents of heritability. While we must question, and continually reinvent and fine-tune our models and hypotheses, it is essential that we maintain our faith in the process of science. The kind of faith that Giants, Red Sox, and Cubs fans will understand, an allegiance to the idea that if we keep putting forth our best effort with the best guidance possible that regardless of the circumstances we will eventually succeed. To keep the faith that despite how hopeless a project appears, regardless of the number of failures you incur that if you continue to put in the work that you will obtain useful results.
Outright failure is never rewarding, except in the sense that you have hopefully learned from the experience. Graduate school for many is simply an extended exercise in failure and futility, which as long as you maintain faith that it will all work out, really just means you have learned a lot; and after all, is that not the point of graduate school? As scientists it is important to achieve balance in our lives but even more important is avoiding equilibrium, because as any biologist knows, equilibrium equals death for a living system. That being said I will quote Dorry from “Finding Nemo” and espouse the philosophical notion to “just keep on swimming”, maybe you will bump into something truly fascinating.
Hip, hip, hooray Research!
Cheers
-Gordon
How people in science see each other.
How people in science see each other (created by @biomatushiq)
Social skills for academics
BiteSize Bio is blog that focusses on anything that has to do with biology and in specific molecular biology. They have over 50 different authors, all with experience in (molecular) biology, including Jode Plank, a post-doc in the lab of Stephen Kowalczykowski here at Davis.
Recently they held a web seminar on soft skills (first 21 min or so) held by Priya Nalkur-Pai. It is always good to be reminded that being a scientist not only means being good at thinking of great questions and designing experiments to answer these questions, but also that we have to interact with other people. And interacting with other people means knowing how to do deal with other people. Not something scientists are particularly well-known for.
PHD movie needs your help
Today Jorge Cham tweeted the following:
“Want to contribute to the PHD movie? Scan a few of your favorite pages from your lab/field notebook and send to movie@phdcomics.com.”
“Also, anyone play the bassoon and have access to a decent recording studio? E-mail movie@phdcomics.com w/ subject line [BASSOON]“
Chancellor Katehi in Comstock’s magazine – Divine & Conquer
Recently, Chancellor Katehi gave an interview to Comstock’s magazine, which can now be found online about how she plans to pull UC Davis through the current though financial times.
“State funding has been so unstable and uncertain,” she says. “The sooner we get off that dependency, the better we will be.”
On plan is to raise $1 billion and 100,000 donors in a 4 year plan. The current tally is $0.7 billion and 80,000 donors since last October, according to the chancellor. Sounds like a good start.
“You don’t become a great university by cutting,” she says. “Instead, you need to come up with creative solutions. That’s what we intend on doing.”
An interesting read about how our Chancellor plans to pull UC Davis through the current tough times.
Congratulations with your PhD degree! Now what?
Being a graduate student in short means you will work long hours on a question that most people don’t know anything about nor care to know anything about. And we love doing it. But what happens after 5-6 years of trying to answer a ‘simple’ question, some publications and a dissertation?
The obvious choice is to do what your professor did: do a postdoc, get a tenure-track position at a university and become tenured faculty. Sounds simple and straightforward. There are some problems with this apprentice-like model of an academic career (a great editorial in EMBO J about this subject). What are the odds you will actually make it all the way?
National Science Foundation (NSF) released today some nice graphics of post-graduation trends for various fields, including Life Sciences. About 67% of us will probably do a post-doc according to this data. According to an article in the HHMI bulletin, only 37% of postdocs will become a tenure-track professor (no data on how many actually become tenured). This means that less than 25% of us will get a shot at becoming a tenured faculty. In other words, over 75% of us will ultimately do something else. With more and more PhDs being produced by universities across the US, this problem is only going to grow, as a recent edition of Nature pointed out.
So what other options are there besides following in the footsteps of your professor? Here at Davis there is a interdisciplinary group, called the Designated Emphasis in Biotechnology (DEB), where students get in contact with various aspects of biotechnology. If you are a student of the DEB, you also have to do a 3 month internship at a biotech company — a way of supplementing your PhD with a more diverse experience. During the academic year, every Friday they bring in a person from a biotech company to talk about the company and highlight what is available for current PhD students once they have their degree.
There are also jobs available for us outside academia and the biotech, such as becoming a science writer or a high-school/college teacher or become an editor at a journal or work for a government lab. With the skills you learn as a scientist, many doors are open: you only have to look for the doors to find them. To help with the looking, BMCDB students are organizing a new seminar series that will highlight various people who have taken on jobs in a non-academic and non-biotech (why duplicate what is already being provided) field. On every second Tuesday of the month during the Fall, Winter and Spring quarters we will have a Career Options Seminar. Soon we will update you with a list of the speakers. Exciting times (besides a slowing economy and a disfunctional congress).
Science: public perception vs reality (so true)
Public Perception of Science vs Science in Reality (click on comic to go to source)
Chancellor Katehi’s writings
Our Chancellor Linda Katehi is obviously a busy person trying to run UC Davis, being a faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, as well as a faculty for Women and Gender studies. Besides all of that, she finds time to write for the Huffington Post as a blogger, and she also has time to keep up her own blog for UC Davis called Common Sense. Impressive and a worthwhile read
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