Having a rough time adjusting to PhD work, any tips?

[IBleedGreen]

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I finished Step 1 in June and have been working on my first experiment for the past month. I feel like I'm working so much more than I ever did when I was just taking classes and studying. I think my biggest issue is that I don't feel like I'm learning/thinking as much now that I'm bogged down in running an experiment and dealing with the day-to-day tasks of running a lab (washing dishes, making solutions, placing orders, etc.).

Any thoughts on ways to stay challenged without getting burnt out?

 

[QofQuimica]

I finished Step 1 in June and have been working on my first experiment for the past month. I feel like I'm working so much more than I ever did when I was just taking classes and studying. I think my biggest issue is that I don't feel like I'm learning/thinking as much now that I'm bogged down in running an experiment and dealing with the day-to-day tasks of running a lab (washing dishes, making solutions, placing orders, etc.).

Any thoughts on ways to stay challenged without getting burnt out?

Are you still learning the techniques, or are you already up to speed? If it's the former, you're going to have to spend some time just learning how things operate in the lab, and that is going to entail a lot of tedious work. Sorry, but in case no one ever told you, research involves a lot of manual labor. 😉

In any case, you will have some downtime between experiments, and you need to be thinking about what experiments to conduct and how you can build upon what is already known. One thing that is very important for you to do (and which you didn't mention doing) is to read the literature in your field so that you will be able to do this. Every field has certain journals that are "big" for researchers in that field. I used to look through JACS, J Med Chem, JOC, etc., for example, because those are some of the "biggies" for pharmaceutical chemists. I'd also do searches using a database like Scifinder or Web of Science on various topics to get ideas about how people had done certain syntheses or to learn about the biology of the systems we were working on. You can also use PubMed and whatever other databases happen to be available through your school library. The librarians at your school can show you how to use the databases if you haven't already learned to use them. There is a lot to learn out there, so don't ever feel like you have to stop. 🙂

 

[hawkeey]

Well the rate of information flowing in is definitely going to be slower if you are expecting only to think about your experiments. I noticed the difference between when I was working a theoretical computational biology lab versus an experimental lab. The theoretical lab really makes you read about the new ideas getting published on a daily basis. Your book learning skills are not very useful in implementing the actual experiments. The question when doing experiments is what to do during your idle time? Do you read about world events and post messages to this forum or do you start searching for and reading new journal articles in your field?

The biggest change is the difference of believing and incorporating everything that you have read versus being much more critical and not believing everything that you read.

So yes, I second the previous post, go read some journal articles and critique the heck out of them. Welcome to science.

 

[zigeroo]

like the others in this thread, I would suggest hitting up the literature for as long as it takes for you to plan out the necessary experiments and truly understand the scope of your project (and i mean AS LONG AS IT TAKES... if it takes a week, a month, a year... it will save you loads of time in the long run). Theres nothing like planning out your project well beforehand so getting the data is like taking candy away from a baby (unforunately, its never this easy but you get the point.)

Granted your experimental design will change as you gain data, but it's always good if you can minimize the number of hours doing manual labor sort of experiments. You don't get rewarded for the number of hours you spend in the lab, you get rewarded for results. Unfortunately, some PIs may differ but what I feel is that if you're in lab all day not producing anything, running experiemnts all day coupled by the fact that you don't know the scope and intricacies of your project all that well, you're just wasting valuable lab money and are terribly inefficient.

I've seen so many students (even post docs!) just run experiments after experiments, not going back to the drawing board to see where everything fits in the whole big picture. Thus they waste thousands of hours, tens of thousands of dollars, are always in lab, and in the end they produce very little and end up getting burnt out. Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[zigeroo]

like the others in this thread, I would suggest hitting up the literature for as long as it takes for you to plan out the necessary experiments and truly understand the scope of your project (and i mean AS LONG AS IT TAKES... if it takes a week, a month, a year... it will save you loads of time in the long run). Theres nothing like planning out your project well beforehand so getting the data is like taking candy away from a baby (unforunately, its never this easy but you get the point.)

Granted your experimental design will change as you gain data, but it's always good if you can minimize the number of hours doing manual labor sort of experiments. You don't get rewarded for the number of hours you spend in the lab, you get rewarded for results. Unfortunately, some PIs may differ but what I feel is that if you're in lab all day not producing anything, running experiemnts all day coupled by the fact that you don't know the scope and intricacies of your project all that well, you're just wasting valuable lab money and are terribly inefficient.

I've seen so many students (even post docs!) just run experiments after experiments, not going back to the drawing board to see where everything fits in the whole big picture. Thus they waste thousands of hours, tens of thousands of dollars, are always in lab, and in the end they produce very little and end up getting burnt out.

Hope this helps. Good luck! 🙂

 

[Evil Monkey]

Relax. you just took step 1 and you deserve a little down time. plus, you shouldn't anticipate making major progress on your project during the first month in lab... even the first year in lab. it will take time for you to figure out what types of experiments are feasible, which will lead to higher productivity. what you think you're going to do and what actually gets produced by the time you're done with the PhD are typically two entirely different things. In my opinion, this is the best period in our training, so enjoy it.

 

[IBleedGreen]

Thanks everyone. I'm actually working in the same lab that I worked in for 3 years in undergrad, so I'm already caught up on the techniques and familiar with most of the literature. I agree though, I do need to set aside time to keep up with the latest journals. Undergrads are starting back soon, so hopefully I can train them to do a lot of the manual work and leave time for me to think more! 🙂