Is it normal to feel this way about research?

[narla_hotep]

Hi all, I'm a 3rd year MSTP student, and midway through my first year of grad school. I've always considered myself to like science and genuinely be interested in research, but since starting to do research full time I feel like my motivation has been flagging a bit and I'm always a step behind the curve of everything. I like the work my lab is doing, and I get excited when explaining it to laypeople, but I feel like I'm having trouble engaging with the science on a higher level somehow. I'm trying to be independent and design my own experiments in lab, but I keep making silly mistakes like contaminating samples or forgetting to include a control, and when I make a mistake I beat myself up about it and feel bad for the rest of the day.

That's probably normal for a new grad student, but what's more worrying is, I'm not sure if I'm motivated enough to do full time research. Like I talk to other grad students who eat sleep and breathe science, stay in lab till midnight and think of new project ideas in the shower, etc. Whereas I treat lab a bit too much like a 9-5 job, you know? Like I'll be somewhat into it during the day, but when it hits 6 pm I want to go home and just chill for the rest of the night. When I listen to a talk where the subject matter isn't in a few specific areas that I'm interested in, I tend to get bored and sleepy or end up on my phone. I don't think I do enough literature reading because I can get caught off guard by even basic questions about a project or experiment sometimes (though I'm trying to work on that). Also, I feel like I don't think critically enough about papers I read or have enough original ideas about new experiments and directions to take.

How much of this sounds like just adjusting to grad school, and how much of it makes it sound like I'm not as into research as I originally thought?

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[Lampstrike]

I keep making silly mistakes like contaminating samples or forgetting to include a control, and when I make a mistake I beat myself up about it and feel bad for the rest of the day.

Literally every grad student has this issue. Remember that you are still a trainee. Part of the process is learning good experimental technique and how to design proper control schemas. If you never made mistakes like this, then your dept should just award you your PhD right now.

Like I talk to other grad students who eat sleep and breathe science, stay in lab till midnight and think of new project ideas in the shower, etc. Whereas I treat lab a bit too much like a 9-5 job, you know? Like I'll be somewhat into it during the day, but when it hits 6 pm I want to go home and just chill for the rest of the night.

Having healthy boundaries isn't necessarily a bad thing. There is a reason that most postdocs treat lab more like a 9-5. For the vast majority of people, that "sleep and breathe science" style leads to rough burnout. Exceptions exist, but for most people, keeping some semblance of work-life balance helps prevent burnout and will be essential if you want a long-term career in research.

When I listen to a talk where the subject matter isn't in a few specific areas that I'm interested in, I tend to get bored and sleepy or end up on my phone. I don't think I do enough literature reading because I can get caught off guard by even basic questions about a project or experiment sometimes (though I'm trying to work on that).

You are probably getting bored because you don't see how that work fits into the bigger picture. All science within a given field tends to be pretty interconnected. You need to do more literature reading to find out what those connections between their work and your work actually are. Just go to pubmed and throw a few keywords from their talk in along with a keyword or two related to your research and I'm sure you will find some articles related to the intersection of the two.

Whenever you get stumped by a question, make it a point to go look for a review article that has the answer to that question. Along the way, you will probably find a few more articles related to your subject that contain even more info that you didn't know but are relevant to your work. Over time, this is how you can build up a knowledge base and start to inch towards becoming an expert.

I feel like I don't think critically enough about papers I read or have enough original ideas about new experiments and directions to take.

These aren't skills that come automatically. You have to make a concerted effort if you want to read critically or come up with original ideas/experiments. I have found when reading a paper, try to distill every results subsection/experiment down into a key question that the author is trying to answer. Think for yourself, what experiment you would use to answer that question and then compare your theoretical approach to the one actually taken in the paper. They are probably different, so you should compare the approaches and think about the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Are there things that may be missed or unaccounted for by the approach used in the paper that would have been accounted for by your theoretical approach? This is one way that you can start to really figure out whose work is solid and whose isn't.

The same idea holds true for designing new experiments/directions. After reading a paper, think about what questions are raised by the author's conclusion. Pick one of those questions that interests you and think up how you would go about testing that. What materials would you need? What would you measure? What controls would be necessary? What could go wrong? Do you need any fancy data analytics? Go through and answer those questions as well as you can. And then take what you come up with and run it by your PI. I am sure they will have suggestions regarding things that you may need to control for or aren't handling appropriately. It is literally their job to help you with designing and directing your project.

All of this takes concerted and dedicated effort. This doesn't just happen automatically for anyone. You have to put in the effort if you want to be able to think/read critically and design experiments yourself. Now, if you find these tasks too tedious or mentally taxing for you, then maybe we can talk about whether you really have a future in scientific research.

 

[StIGMA]

These things ebb and flow- everyone goes through something like this (multiple times). At some point things should improve.

 

[narla_hotep]

lmao now I'm in some weird dark hole that is post quals slump blending into been here 5 years

 

[SurfingDoctor]

These things ebb and flow- everyone goes through something like this (multiple times). At some point things should improve.

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