Science goals: Hold on to this feeling.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of my scientific career, and what I want to bring to it. This can be summed up, I think into my “scientific goals”. And who doesn’t love a list?

I’m starting to keep a running list--and I’ll fill it with no-brainer things like “keep up with the literature”, and “write some awesome papers”, but also maybe more intangible/sound bite type things like, STAY CURIOUS!

Here’s my first goal as I embark on my graduate school (!!!!!!!!!!) career.

Hold on to this feeling.

Y’all, I cannot contain myself. I am so immensely excited for graduate school. I’ve picked my school, which I’m still keeping a little quiet about until they send me my official letter and I officially accept, and I’ll write more about choosing the school later, but suffice it to say, it was one of the easiest decisions I have ever made, and I am so confident that it is the write place scientifically for me, and I am so ready and excited, and am reading papers for people’s who’s lab’s I’m interested in working with...etc...

So, dear lab-girl, what should you be doing right now? Holding on to this feeling.

I’m reading more papers than I ever have before, which is great. I’m getting excited about people’s science, but I’m also learning how and why we read papers. (I wrote a blog post a while back on “how” to read a scientific paper, and while yeah, It is how I read them, I think you have to read a ton to really get it.)

While I was reading papers as preparation for grad interviews, I realized that there were a variety of reasons people read papers. A flavor for every mood, if you will. Sure, some of it is reading for the science but if you’re reading out of your field, it can be more about the types of experiments, the logic and the progression of the story. Gosh, while I was reading all these papers it really became about the story. Somewhere along the line, something just clicked into place, and I thought to myself, wow, this is why we read. I mean, it’s why we read books too--it’s the story, it’s the writing, it’s the craft, it’s the plot. It’s exactly the same for scientific papers. It’s the plot, the experiments, but it’s also the craft of writing. I’ve gotten to this really weird place in my life where I’m actually enjoying reading papers. (Thank goodness this happened right before I decide to go to grad school.)

And I just want to hold on to this feeling. I want to hold on to being really exciting about attending the university I’ve chosen to attend. I want to remember being excited about going to seminars from future colleagues and faculty members. I want to remember that this amazing feeling.

I want to hold on to this feeling when my experiments don’t work, when I’m trying to learn something new and it’s hard, when I’m frustrated with something I cannot control, when I do something lazy and I have to make up for it 10-fold later, I want to remember this feeling. This excitement, this zeal. Knowing that going to grad school was the easiest decision I’ve ever had to make. That I have never been happier in my life because of this.

This was a choice I made, and I did everything to get myself to this place. I worked really hard, so don’t lose this feeling.

One of my biggest fears is that I’ll get burned out. I’ve been a technician for three years, and I’ve seen a lot of disgruntled post-docs and frustrated grad students. I don’t want to be these people.

Eric Lander (famous scientist) did Reddit’s Ask Me Anything the other day, and someone asked him this:

As an advisor to the President, what is being done or do you think will be done to increase the attractiveness of students finishing PhD programs in science?

He gave the most badass reply ever:

We need to shorten the time for getting a PhD and for a first faculty job. Young people should get out into the scientific world early, when they have lots of fresh ideas. We should encourage grants to young scientists and should encourage them to take big risks. When you're taking big risks, science is amazingly fun.

So, goal numero uno in entering grad school. Hold on to this feeling. I want to forever be excited by what I’m doing. I want to love my projects, and to be excited about what other people in my field are doing. I’m excited to work hard as a grad student. I want to keep being excited about that well into my graduate career.