What is it really like to be a PI?

[benlikeslizards]

Hi SDN! I hoping there are some MD/PhD PIs (Or those that work with many of them) that may help me adjust my vision of what it's really like to be a physician scientist.

So, first some context: I'm an undergraduate student interested in pursuing a career in making personalized medicine accessible to average people. It excites me and I've been able to work on research that I think brings us closer to that goal (Automated lung/muscle organoid culture at high throughput). My experience with this research and my shadowing of a few doctors who oversaw a clinical trial for a medical device have led me to this idealized vision of seeing a device from bench to bedside: getting a prototype to the level that it could be used for a clinical trial and then personally seeing it benefit the lives of people I treat.

I recognize that it's an ideal, the question is, how ideal is it? What does that process look like in real life?

Also: I'm coming to medical school with a family (Wife and child), which is crazy as it is, and I'm sure it get's busier as a PI. My family will always be a higher priority than my career and that means that I won't be at the lab 7 days a week 12 hours a day, which I heard from a friend is the norm in some university hospitals. What advice would you have for me as an aspiring Dad and PI?

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[sourpatch fetish]

Prior to becoming a PI, you'll be working hard (as a grad student, as a postdoc). Some are able to make time for family (sometimes due to the nature of their research; computational people don't have to physically be in lab and pipette, for instance).

Once you're a PI, I'd say it's easier to bend your schedule around your family's, since you don't have to be in lab to do work. Your work once a PI would be more grant writing, reading, ... which are things you can do at home once your kids go to bed.

Just my 2cents, am only an M1 MSTP student but I've worked with many PIs who make time for their families.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

I'm just a G3, but Being a PI seems to be not so bad. Once you are a PI, you are in a unique position, and it's hard for others to compete. Others who would compete with you for the pool of grant money available have mostly already been filtered out. Academia is a funnel, and the PI level is where the funnel finally widens back up. At the K-level and early career level, there are more investigators than there are funds to go around. So in the pool of applicants for new grants, there are twice as many inexperienced PIs vying for R-grants as there are R-grants to support them. Once you are in your 50s or 60s, you likely have experience very few can rival on a grant application, and the competition has fallen away to industry or some other part of academia.

However, it takes until your 50s to get to that stage. Most people consider that late career. So I'd say being a PI encompasses all of the struggle that came before it, like the post-docs and late nights. Unless you can't see yourself doing anything else, getting there doesn't seem to be an enviable lifestyle. Once you're there, it doesn't seem to be too bad, but grant writing season(s) seem particularly rough.