rotations not working out

[echod]

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I'm a first year MD/PhD. I've done two rotations and neither was good. I only have one more to go (officially). Any people out there in the same situation? 😕

 

[xanthines]

Are you worried the 3rd will be a dud as well? See if your school will let you do a 4th rotation. I know a couple of people that did this and they seem to be doing OK so far. Good luck!

-X

I'm a first year MD/PhD. I've done two rotations and neither was good. I only have one more to go (officially). Any people out there in the same situation? 😕

 

[r1oid]

Some really helpful tips I got when picking a rotation were

1. Meet the PI and discuss what you would be doing over the rotation and who you would be working with. (You don't want to be put on the skut work project passaging cells and mini preping for three months)

2. Definatly meet the people in the lab and see if you can sit down and talk to them, such as over lunch or coffee. Especially talk to the grad students to see what they think of the lab, PI, work environment. If you can, sit in on a lab meeting to get a feel for the people and projects that you may like.

3. Talk to other grad students in your program to see what they rotated with and what they liked or disliked about labs.

But with all that remember that they are also interviewing you. I know of people who treated their rotation with the mentality that the lab needed to impress them and in the end the PI decided no to take them because of personality and work ethic issuses they percieved.

 

[lushmd]

Above all, do your best not to make compromises when choosing a lab. It sounds simple enough, but nonetheless many people seem to do this (i.e. in my class, there is a student that, as he joined the program late, was only able to do two rotations...instead of taking the time to do an extra rotation or two, he ended up joining a large, well funded lab that he wasn't so keen on because he felt that it was his best available option...needless to say, he has hated the past three years).

 

[Neuronix]

I'm curious what made them not "good". I'd like to give my advice, but it's hard to say how relevant it would be?

Generally, I picked my lab based more on the PI and the lab environment than anything else. I like a very friendly, open place with alot of neat ideas. My PI is very aware of the time pressures of the MD/PhD, and his students have always graduated in 6-7 years total. It's definately not the kind of research I planned on doing when I started, but none of those labs worked out for a wide variety of reasons. It's coming up on a year for me in the lab, and I'm still enjoying myself, even if none of my projects have yet produced fruit (just mold!).

 

[Gfunk6]

~ 6 years ago, I was in your position as well. I chose to do my first two lab rotations in fields that were far from my undergrad work to pick up some new techniques and, perhaps, gain new perspective.

Both rotations were pretty big busts in terms of (a) data generated [virtually zero] and (b) lack of applicability of techniques [they were far too specialized].

However, my third rotation (eventually my thesis lab) took off and I generated an incredible amount of data in a few months.

That's kind of the nature of lab research, it's pretty fickle.

 

[thos]

Because I was burned and had to switch labs after about 6 months, here's my two cents. Make sure the labs you're looking at have solid funding for at least the 3-5 years you'll be in there. In picking my first lab I based it only on the fact that I liked the area and the guy seemed nice. He ended up being too nice. Unfortunately, he was funded by a clinical division that didn't value grad student education, and one day his boss said "Remember when I said we had enough $ to commit to a student? Well I was wrong, you'll have to let him go." My PI was too "nice" to argue the point AT ALL, and I moved on. I'm lucky that I only lost 6 months, and I can tell you I quickly learned to find out what kind of funding a PI has and how reliant on others they might be.

Sadly, I still had other lessons to learn. The first is that there needs to be a good balance of post-docs and techs to students (I like 1:1:1). The lab of my eventual PhD was run by a "Mom" type who loved all her "children." This PI, as you might guess, never met a student she didn't want to mentor. Because of this, the projects were spread too thin, and there ended up being some trouble with shared authorship in part because of this and in part because of another student (but I won't start on that).

The last thing I learned was never try to serve two masters. My lab was run by a PhD but she heavily collaborated with an MD. There are certainly joint labs that run well and have all boundaries established (usually husband/wife units), but this was not one. Again, authorship issues arose and I was often in a position where one thought I was favoring the other.

Despite all this, I survived, and so will you. Make sure you like the people, they can pay you, and there is MORE work than you think you can do, it can always be trimmed. And a good committee will save your behind.

 

[xanthines]

I think there's some good advice here, but I feel like your program let you down by allowing you to rotate through and subsequently join a lab that wasn't adequately funded. Mine tries to make sure I end up with well-funded people, but I still "CRISP" everyone I think I want to work with!

-X

P.S. And yes, I realize CRISP only spits out NIH grants. 😛

Because I was burned and had to switch labs after about 6 months, here's my two cents. Make sure the labs you're looking at have solid funding for at least the 3-5 years you'll be in there. In picking my first lab I based it only on the fact that I liked the area and the guy seemed nice. He ended up being too nice. Unfortunately, he was funded by a clinical division that didn't value grad student education, and one day his boss said "Remember when I said we had enough $ to commit to a student? Well I was wrong, you'll have to let him go." My PI was too "nice" to argue the point AT ALL, and I moved on. I'm lucky that I only lost 6 months, and I can tell you I quickly learned to find out what kind of funding a PI has and how reliant on others they might be.

Sadly, I still had other lessons to learn. The first is that there needs to be a good balance of post-docs and techs to students (I like 1:1:1). The lab of my eventual PhD was run by a "Mom" type who loved all her "children." This PI, as you might guess, never met a student she didn't want to mentor. Because of this, the projects were spread too thin, and there ended up being some trouble with shared authorship in part because of this and in part because of another student (but I won't start on that).

The last thing I learned was never try to serve two masters. My lab was run by a PhD but she heavily collaborated with an MD. There are certainly joint labs that run well and have all boundaries established (usually husband/wife units), but this was not one. Again, authorship issues arose and I was often in a position where one thought I was favoring the other.

Despite all this, I survived, and so will you. Make sure you like the people, they can pay you, and there is MORE work than you think you can do, it can always be trimmed. And a good committee will save your behind.

 

[thos]

Good point Xanthines. At the time (7 yrs ago) there was little oversight in our program regarding lab choice. Since then, we have a new director and added two associate directors, and a number of provisions have been put in place to avoid such problems and help streamline the process. These include "interviewing" several potential mentors before each rotation and discussing it with your MSTP mentor. The MSTP mentor is assigned day one, and also sits on your grad committee. Anecdotally, this seems to be shortening time in the program, which was the ultimate goal. Since I'm sure it's easy to figure out my program from my location, I don't want to give the wrong impression about the current state of things.