Should I switch fields for my PhD?

[hydrationshell]

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Hello everyone,

I was hoping to get some input on concerns I have been having regarding my graduate education. I am a first year MD/PhD student currently in the midst of doing a rotation in a structural biology/biophysics laboratory feeling way over my head. I have always been interested in studying how biomolecules act like molecular machines undergoing conformational changes to some effect, however I feel totally unprepared to enter this field.

My undergrad degree is in biology and was quite general in subject matter, ranging from ecology to cell biology. As a result a lot of the concepts in structural biology are hard for me to approach as I feel I lack a certain understanding of the physics and mathematics relevant to the field. The same goes for my previous research experience which centered more on biochemistry and genetics.

I feel like I absorb nothing after reading a structural biology paper. My eyes just glaze over after I am subsumed in a tsunami of jargon and mathematical models that make no sense to me (what even are normal modes and how does it inform me about molecular dynamics?!). This doesn't happen to me when reading papers from other biomedical disciplines.

So my question is, should I switch to a field where things are more intuitive for me? I really like structural biology but I feel like it has such a steep learning curve that I have no idea how I'll overcome it.

 

[StilgarMD]

There isn't really a 'should'. You have to make your own choice about what you want to do. Just realize the costs.

I did what you're describing. I went from doing Flow Optometry and Western blots to doing extracellular electrophysiology. I did this because I felt like understanding the brain using the same school of thought many biologists come from was limiting, and that the training I'd get from a more rigorously quantitative domain would grant me more insight into the problems I'm most interested in.

How'd it work out? Still not done my PhD so I can't tell you, but I think differently than I did before about how the brain might solve problems, so you could say mission accomplished?

It was and continues to be hard. But if something isn't difficult than you're probably not learning as much as you could be. Sub-optimal mentoring has made this difficult more comparable to being swept away in a hurricane rather than trying to beat a personal record on laps in a pool, but I'm learning all the same.

If you want to be a structural biologist and make this transition, all I can advise is be very very deliberate in finding a lab where you will learn, where the PI knows where you're coming from, and build up the knowledge you need. To do that, ask those who have the skills you want how they got it, what courses might be helpful, what kind of training you need ultimately, and make it the objective of the first 6 months - 1 year of your PhD to master those things. Go to Journal Clubs, ask honest questions about what you don't understand, and eventually things will begin clicking.

If you're not prepared for the steep learning curve you've described emotionally, mentally, reconsider. But if you know the PhD is filled with failures and set backs no matter what you study, then you realize you're better off working on something you really care about.

I'd also give you the caveat that the topic of your PhD does not lock you into any particular domain for your post-doc, so if the people doing structural bio at your institute aren't good mentors, and their labs aren't good spaces for learning, then pick the best mentor closest to the field, and make the final transition during your post doc. Being both in a new field and in a bad lab for grad students is very hard, and your effort will count for less.