Career mullings
I set off the draft of my second chapter to my university co-authors, in what (I hope) is a more or less complete form. I'm sure there will be some major revisions since one of the senior co-authors tends to throw curve balls, but for the moment I have a chance to catch my breath in this mad dash to the finish line. Thus you, dear reader, get some ruminating on the hopeful career of a scientist.
I think I did pretty well with my grad school selection. After years of trying to shove my head into the mathematics community, moving onto a field where I could pluck the low hanging fruit was the best decision I've ever allowed to be forced on me. I always thought that mathematics was cool (the fluid dynamics equations of general ocean circulation is one of the most beautiful and elegant descriptions humanity has ever posed). However one of the things that I was never able to do was pose an open mathematical question in a way that interested the gatekeepers. In contrast, I've managed to hit the biogeochemical community right as it is starting to question the underlaying framework of the field.
One thing I've had to come to terms with over the past 5 years is that the mathematics describing a lot of biological and physical phenomenon is not valued for it's complexity but for it's simplicity. The mathematics that I use in my research is maybe at the college-junior level, and it's telling us some really exciting things about how we can better think about the world. I need to remember that what I consider to be mundane are still powerful tools which can shed light on important questions.
After 5 years I actually like my dissertation topic more then when I started, that puts me in a very very small group of academics. I have a post-doc lined up with one of the most well respected quantitate biogeochemists in the field. More importantly he's been interested and supportive of my work since I randomly sat down next to him at dinner during a workshop with no clue who he was. This is after grant applications with a second leading biogeochemist fell through, who is still encouraging and supportive. In short, I have some of the best senior scientists in the field offering to mentor me on top of having one of the best early career scientists as my advisor (he just got an award from a big academic society saying so). If I can't have fun and succeed in this field I'm not trying hard enough.
So what am I going to do? Clearly "produce good research" is top on the list followed closely by "have fun doing so", but that's so broad it's almost not useful. This is probably a little more useful:
Literature: The bane of every scientist I've talked with is keeping up with the Literature. Everyone agrees it's important and no one has time for it. What questions (and answers) other researchers are asking is critical to informing your own research and figuring out how to get it published. I have several RSS feeds set up but have been neglecting them for the most part. I went through and culled 999+ abstracts yesterday that had accumulated down to just over 70 or so that are interesting/relevant to me. Hopefully I can keep up this up over the next few months, otherwise I'll re-evaluate and try to figure out a better way to stay current. I've been kicking around the idea of blogging one interesting article a week/month and may try to restart that this week.
Connections: For the most part this seems to consist of making sure I have coffee/meals with people at conferences and shooting off follow up emails afterwards. Pretty simple right? Any researchers have other thoughts on this?
Balance: One of the things I love about research is that it's so damn flexible. I've done the whole 9-5 thing (in a 'flexible' work place no less) and find it very onerous. Right now I'm sitting at my kitchen table with a pot of green tea typing about meta-career stuff. When I do go into the lab, I get 2+ hours of cycling in. If I'm having a slow week and only get in 2-3 hours of solid writing/research in over the whole day, that's ok. In fact, according to my software tracker I'm pretty productive alternating between 2-3 hour days and 5-6 hour days every couple of weeks. From what I can tell from my cohort that's pretty normal, and I love it about academic research. I also feel incredibly guilty about it at times and need to remind myself that it's not a BadThing.
So I'm going to go put on another pot of tea and read some of those articles I culled yesterday. Maybe write up a blog post and then tackle the introduction on my final dissertation chapter. Sometimes life sucks, but today isn't one of those days. So I'm going to enjoy and post this to remind myself that all in all, my life is pretty darn good.
I think I did pretty well with my grad school selection. After years of trying to shove my head into the mathematics community, moving onto a field where I could pluck the low hanging fruit was the best decision I've ever allowed to be forced on me. I always thought that mathematics was cool (the fluid dynamics equations of general ocean circulation is one of the most beautiful and elegant descriptions humanity has ever posed). However one of the things that I was never able to do was pose an open mathematical question in a way that interested the gatekeepers. In contrast, I've managed to hit the biogeochemical community right as it is starting to question the underlaying framework of the field.
One thing I've had to come to terms with over the past 5 years is that the mathematics describing a lot of biological and physical phenomenon is not valued for it's complexity but for it's simplicity. The mathematics that I use in my research is maybe at the college-junior level, and it's telling us some really exciting things about how we can better think about the world. I need to remember that what I consider to be mundane are still powerful tools which can shed light on important questions.
After 5 years I actually like my dissertation topic more then when I started, that puts me in a very very small group of academics. I have a post-doc lined up with one of the most well respected quantitate biogeochemists in the field. More importantly he's been interested and supportive of my work since I randomly sat down next to him at dinner during a workshop with no clue who he was. This is after grant applications with a second leading biogeochemist fell through, who is still encouraging and supportive. In short, I have some of the best senior scientists in the field offering to mentor me on top of having one of the best early career scientists as my advisor (he just got an award from a big academic society saying so). If I can't have fun and succeed in this field I'm not trying hard enough.
So what am I going to do? Clearly "produce good research" is top on the list followed closely by "have fun doing so", but that's so broad it's almost not useful. This is probably a little more useful:
- Keep up with the literature
- Maintain connections with other scientists
- Balance days with work and not-work
Literature: The bane of every scientist I've talked with is keeping up with the Literature. Everyone agrees it's important and no one has time for it. What questions (and answers) other researchers are asking is critical to informing your own research and figuring out how to get it published. I have several RSS feeds set up but have been neglecting them for the most part. I went through and culled 999+ abstracts yesterday that had accumulated down to just over 70 or so that are interesting/relevant to me. Hopefully I can keep up this up over the next few months, otherwise I'll re-evaluate and try to figure out a better way to stay current. I've been kicking around the idea of blogging one interesting article a week/month and may try to restart that this week.
Connections: For the most part this seems to consist of making sure I have coffee/meals with people at conferences and shooting off follow up emails afterwards. Pretty simple right? Any researchers have other thoughts on this?
Balance: One of the things I love about research is that it's so damn flexible. I've done the whole 9-5 thing (in a 'flexible' work place no less) and find it very onerous. Right now I'm sitting at my kitchen table with a pot of green tea typing about meta-career stuff. When I do go into the lab, I get 2+ hours of cycling in. If I'm having a slow week and only get in 2-3 hours of solid writing/research in over the whole day, that's ok. In fact, according to my software tracker I'm pretty productive alternating between 2-3 hour days and 5-6 hour days every couple of weeks. From what I can tell from my cohort that's pretty normal, and I love it about academic research. I also feel incredibly guilty about it at times and need to remind myself that it's not a BadThing.
So I'm going to go put on another pot of tea and read some of those articles I culled yesterday. Maybe write up a blog post and then tackle the introduction on my final dissertation chapter. Sometimes life sucks, but today isn't one of those days. So I'm going to enjoy and post this to remind myself that all in all, my life is pretty darn good.