AsianScientist (Feb. 15, 2016) – I’ve been writing this column for about one and a half years now, and if there’s one thing that’s surprised me in this time, it’s just how universal the scientist experience is.
For example, while I am a biomedical scientist by training and research, a friend who is a chemical engineer once told me that he has found himself nodding in head in agreement with some observation or another on more than one occasion.
This doesn’t always happen though—a friend who is a theoretical physicist has noted that since he doesn’t do lab work, he can’t say if his hand-eye co-ordination would keep him alive during the zombie apocalypse.
Of course, I don’t know why I should be surprised by this. The proliferation and popularity of different websites and blogs outlining what it’s like to go through a PhD and be in research, such as the ‘Piled Higher and Deeper’ (PhD) comics, proves that no matter how different we are, we all seem to go through the same experiences and feel the same pain. And it isn’t just us either—as one of non-scientist friends once observed as they read PhD comics with me, “Hey, I’ve seen you pull your hair out just like this character!”
So what can one expect from the universal scientist experience?
If you are a scientist, you will suffer
No matter what the field, science is not and never will be one of those careers where you can get up in the morning, rock up to work, do your usual thing, and then rock on home all within a set range of hours.
Things will inexplicably fail, necessitating an extra couple of hours of work or cancellation of the next few days’ plans. Machines will suddenly stop working at crucial moments. Data that doesn’t seem to make sense will be collected. Big bosses will walk in and give bizarre deadlines because they’ve forgotten how long it takes to conduct experiments or thought that they already forwarded that grant application email to you.
You will have to spend time marking student papers instead of doing your own work. Manuscripts that have been lovingly nursed will be brutally rejected by Reviewer 3. It doesn’t matter which field you’re in—these will all happen to you, and they will all cause pain.
But writing in particular really hurts
How much writing a scientist will do in their career will likely vary depending on how important publications are to the specific field (versus patents, for example). However, every scientist in any field will ultimately have to write at least three documents from the following categories:
• Progress report
• Thesis/dissertation
• Literature review
• Manuscript
• Grant proposal
• Ethics application
• Patent application
It seems a bit unfair given that scientists are rarely given assignments in creative writing—and you really do need to be creative to stop yourself from writing the exact same project introduction for all of these documents.
There are never enough grants
However much you hone your writing, it is guaranteed that you will lose out in at least one grant round. This is an unfortunate situation the world over when it comes to academic research—too many scientists for the number of grants that are available.
It’s even more depressing when you realize that track record is taken into consideration when awarding grants, so that an early career researcher might be competing against someone with 20 years’ experience for the same cash pool.
Nobody likes the presenter who goes over their allocated time
Once you do this, you’ve created a flow-on effect of holding everyone else up. And if presentations are running on schedule, it is almost guaranteed that the presenter before lunch break or the last person of the day will run over time. Don’t be the person who keeps everyone from their food, their home or their social life (for the lucky few who have one). Don’t. Be. This. Person.
Big and small successes must be celebrated
All the categories so far have been quite negative—probably because everyone remembers painful things with more clarity. But it isn’t all misery!
From mastering a new protocol to winning one of these increasingly rare grants, there are plenty of joyful things in scientific career and they must be duly respected. Maybe it’s when you deliver a flawless presentation or when your first paper as first author is accepted for publication. It can even be every subsequent time a paper is accepted!
Maybe it’s having fruitful collaboration partners, receiving a freebie from a supplier or being told that a hypothesis checks out/you can defend your thesis/there’s enough money buy a new piece of equipment. These are all things worth celebrating for every scientist. Enjoy these moments.
Cake, caffeine and/or alcohol always helps
And when you do need to celebrate, or even when you don’t and you just need someone to help you, these wonderful substances will always have your back.
This article is from a monthly column called The Sometimes Serious Scientist. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
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Source: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
