General tips for how to succeed in lab
Define success for yourself and what your goals are
Everyone’s PhD is different, so it is important to think about what you want to get out of your PhD, and think about goals around that (for some students entering a field they are familiar with it might be cell, science, nature papers, for others entering a foreign field it might be mastery of a skill, technique, discipline).
Goals can include one or some of the following: graduating on time, high impact papers, skills/techniques that can assist you in getting a residency/ job placement, having fun/enjoying your PhD thesis, growing as a scientist...
It is important to have a discussion with your mentor early in your PhD so they are aware of your goals, so they can help you achieve them. A good mentor will try and help you reach these goals (something to think about when picking a lab).
In my own lab we do bi-annual interpersonal development progress reports, and there is one section where we reflect on previous goals and can reassess and re-evaluate short term and long term goals till the next IDP.
Be willing to and be flexible and open to opportunities: your goals may change during your PhD. At first perhaps you wanted to get in and out, but later you might have struck an interesting hypothesis that you want to track down. Spend some time at least twice a year or yearly, and check in on your goals. Useful to talk about this with friends/ mentor.
When thinking about goals it is useful to think about lag and lead goals. A lag measure/ goal is something that will follow and a lead measure is something measurable that you can assess each day to know you’re making progress on that goal. For example, a lag goal can be finishing your dissertation, but a lead goal is spending 2-3 hours each day writing. Breaking down goals like this can be helpful for tackling large challenges.
During your time in graduate school, you will likely have to juggle several goals at once. At this point it is important to prioritize your goals/projects prior to tackling each of them. To do so, it may be useful to consider what is Important and/or Urgent. For example, if something is important (i.e. something that is required prior to moving on to the next step) AND urgent (i.e. something time sensitive), it may get more weight over something that is important but NOT urgent. (maybe a better fit for somewhere in the section below? -Sope).
Be proactive about asking for feedback from your mentor, other lab members, committee members.
Read broadly. Push yourself out of your comfort zone
Dealing with unstructured life and making it structured
Intro: The biggest obstacle when transitioning from medical school to graduate school is an almost complete drop-off in the amount of structure. Success in the graduate program is often very dependent on finding a level of structure that sets you up best for success. This depends on you (no one is going to make sure you put in the work). So put in a plan that you can hold yourself to. Structure will require you to plan your long term goals (months and years) based on how you define success for yourself during your PhD years. You’ll then have to action those plans into schedules on the order of days and weeks. Optimally, you can combine this with organizational tools to keep you on track and keep you accountable to your future self.
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For myself, I learned a lot about myself from second year and dedicated step 1 studying and applied it to PhD years -- having discrete to do lists that i should complete each day, and planning those in advance. If you do this, underestimate what you will be able to do each day, things always take longer and might be harder especially when starting out.
Planning
Planning is key to succeeding during PhD. Unlike in medical school, you are in control of your own time, and often days can go by without anything happening. First, this is okay, not everyday is going to be super productive but on off days when you are not experimenting, block time for reading, planning, and organizing data. One thing I did was make figures as soon as I had data on off days, so when it was time for a talk WIP i could just copy and paste.
Don’t wait for someone to tell you to do something.
Routine is key: having a routine every day is helpful for steady progress and as you continue to do it, it will get easier and more familiar.
Organization goes hand in hand with planning.
Long term goals and timelines (monthly/yearly).
Gantt charts can be helpful here (Excel, Monday.com).
Build this with mentors, your PI, fellow students, etc.
Think about how many years you would like to graduate in (3-4 years is most common).
This will often influence the extent to which you choose things like computational or animal work (worth noting that the choice of project is more likely to come before the choice of years).
Progress Reports - specifically for thesis committee.
By physically writing out progress reports for your committee and/or your PI, you can check your progress against your original plans - gives committee members insight into your organizational skills, thought processes (future letters of recommendation).
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Also consider use of the IDP here
Scheduling
At the start of the week, think through how well you’re aligning with your medium term goals and put together a high level to do list, especially considering multi-day experiments.
Monday.com is an extremely effective tool here as are single week planners.
Daily/weekly “To Do” lists.
Looking over your weekly plan first, think through specifics you plan to accomplish this day. Keeping track of meetings/classes through Google.
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Calendar is also vital here for setting up effective use of your time.
Hot tip: pi rule always applies. Everything takes ~3x longer than you can plan, and still takes 3x longer than you plan even if you take this rule into account.
Organization.
Lab notebook (electronic - Benchling, Evernote).
Well labeled files and folders on your computer from day 1.
Mendeley or another paper organizing software is vital, especially when you finally get to writing a manuscript
Professional Development
One of the most important things you want to leave your PhD with are the professional development skills and experiences that will set you up to do the work you want after graduating from the program.
Over the course of your graduate school experience, you will have the opportunity to gain various professional development skills including reviewing grants/manuscripts, building skills at conferences or through coursework and honing skills to promote yourself and your work. Below is some advice on how to take advantage of such opportunities.
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Many students are presented with the opportunity to review grants, manuscripts, or textbook chapters in collaboration with your PI or someone senior in your lab (i.e. senior graduate student and/or post-doc). This is a great way to stay abreast of the burgeoning literature in your field. The skills you build helping a PI or post doc through the reviewing process are skills you will need to be an effective PI if that is a career goal for you. If this is an opportunity that is not presented to you outright and it is something that you are interested in, do not be shy about asking your advisor or a post-doc in your lab about having exposure to this experience. Few PIs will turn down the opportunity to get help with this kind of work.
Skill Building
While the main focus of your graduate work should be on your dissertation, you may also have several opportunities to explore other areas that you are interested in through workshops or coursework.
For example, if you have an interest in genomics or bioinformatics there are workshop opportunities through Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (https://meetings.cshl.edu/courses.html) and coursework through Cooper Union offered to Sinai students.
Conferences also often have practical workshops and special trainee sessions.
Not only do you want to ensure you are taking all relevant coursework to the fields you wish to work in (or are already working in) but it is important to be on the lookout for subjects and topics that may be relevant to future work you want to do. Taking courses in bioinformatics for example may be helpful even if you do not do bioinformatics yourself. You are very likely to collaborate with individuals in this field, and having a primer in the work goes a long way towards being an effective collaborator.
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Other skills can open up entirely new analyses (new instruments, new advances, new techniques).
Self-promotion.
Building your brand retreat talk notes.
Keep in touch with mentors so they are updated on what you’re doing (important to consider it as a component of self-promotion).
Rec letters implications (F awards etc).
This is one of the most difficult things for many graduate students, so don’t let yourself feel like the odd one out if it doesn’t come naturally.
Making connections
Graduate school will be an incredibly unique period where you get the opportunity to explore your field of interest and make connections with individuals that are similarly excited about your area of research. During this time, it is important that you keep an extensive network for both support as well as to build your scientific community. From a personal standpoint, building a support network will help you through a time that for many can have some of their highest highs and lowest lows. From a professional standpoint, the connections you make now may open up opportunities for collaboration and even potentially offer new career options.
Whether coming from afar or nearby, you will already have your support system of friends and family, but will quickly find that your Sinai peers become a supportive group as you navigate BMS, medical school, and graduate school rotations. This format is excellent because you build a go od connection with your classmates prior to diving into your graduate years. Once fully into your graduate years, make sure you’re intentional about connecting with your classmates throughout whether through occasional picnics, potlocks, or rock climbing. The MD/PhD classmates you enter with will be with you for the better part of a decade and can be one of the tightest group of friends you might form. Don’t forget about family and significant others. It can be easy to get caught up in the all encompassing nature of graduate school, but a life outside of school is vital.
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Within lab, dept, school
Ask questions whenever you can since it’s a good way for people to get to know you. If shy, first start with lab meetings, then departmental meetings, and invited speaker seminars
Especially early on during your time in the lab, ask post docs and other graduate students what they’re working on. Ask questions during lab meetings and WIPs. Attend as many talks as you can and talk with members of your lab and department over lunch. Too often the biggest breakthroughs made during the PhD years are born of a simple conversation over lunch or a comment/question in passing.
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Outside of your institution there will be several opportunities to engage with scientists at regional, national, and/or international conferences. When attending conferences, make sure you attend social events to connect with other scientists. In addition to physical conferences, there are also opportunities to connect with other scientists via social media.
- For example, Twitter has become a useful platform to engage with scientists and their work as well as promote your own research. While, it’s normal to at first be a passive twitter user as you survey how people use the platform, make sure you go beyond that by engaging when you can via retweeting and/or commenting on others’ tweets. Additionally, tweetorial threads about papers have become a new long form of an abstract for papers published in pre-print journals (e.g. bioRxiv or medRxiv) or peer-reviewed journals. This is a great way to highlight your work or begin discussions about the work of others.
Conferences: socialize with as many as you can, especially at poster sessions and during/after talks. Say yes to as many opportunities as you can throughout the conference to meet others. Take down the names/emails of those who ask questions at your poster or give especially inspiring talks and reach out.
- Twitter: don’t be a passive twitter user. Engage when you can via retweets and/or comments. Tweetorial threads about your papers are useful
- Workshops
- MSTP Retreat
Meetings/talks/presentations:
Intro
Meetings and presentations are extremely important for 1) learning to communicate your work to a variety of audiences, 2) establishing your reputation, and 3) getting people as interested in your science as you are. So learning how to give good talks is an important skill that will follow you well past your PhD years. But don't worry, this is a learning process that you will develop and hone throughout your graduate school career. It’s also important to keep in mind that everyone gives talks differently. You will find your own voice and style as you mature. It’s okay to do things differently, but as you see different talks, think a bit about how the presenter gave their talk, and what about it you liked / didn’t like or found effective / ineffective.
Thesis Committee Meetings
I’ve found thesis committee meetings to be extremely helpful but often frustrating. Your committee can be your advocate but also a bone spur, so it is important to know your committee and choose your members wisely. Please see above sections on the dynamics of the thesis committee but I will focus on the talk specifically here. For your committee meetings it is useful to have the talk structured into 1) professional development, 2) background significance (because they will always forget), 3) aims and updates, 4) summary, 5) timeline and next steps (this last part is crucial if you are thinking about getting ready to defend and want everyone to be on the same page of your progress in the PhD). Often committee meetings will run over time and people will want to leave, so you might not finish. In that case it is useful to put certain agenda items at the beginning of your talk.
- Dept WIPs. Dept WIPs are a great place to trial new slides, present new data. These are safe spaces where you can fail and get helpful feedback, so you nail it at the national conferences. Don’t be worried about negative comments or criticism, in fact you should try and pull as much of the questions from the audience and address them in your slides or do experiments to answer those questions, so when you give your big talk at a conference or thesis committee you have an answer. Lab Meetings Conference Presentations Conference posters Any resources on general ppt advice? How to speak in public? This could be a nice place to put resources or example presentations. Maybe a Google Drive folder with recorded talks at conferences, ppts, posters, etc.
Dealing with failure
This is far and away both the most difficult part of the PhD and easily the most common. Keep in mind that for most students, pure coursework and academia has played a majority role in their experiences thus far. The incentive system in academia is often more straightforward, with inputs being reasonably well correlated with outputs (although, we all know this is not always the case). But in research, putting in lots of hours with perfect time efficiency, planning, and foresight, still does not guarantee the success of your experiences. And beyond simple bad luck, we will all make mistakes, many of them.
Dealing with failure is a multi step process. The first steps you can take though can be before any mistakes have been made. Building relationships with peers, mentors, your PI, and others can help put you in a position to handle failure as effectively as possible. Building up a support system (and helping serve as a support system for others) is vital to resiliency. The second step is understanding truly what has happened and then working out what the way forward is. Sometimes a failure can be a success in disguise, only requiring a rewording of your intended research goals to be an even more interesting research questions. Sometimes failure is a clarifying moment making it clear that the current direction is no longer the right way forward. Sometimes failure indicates an area of growth for you as an individual, whether building up better skills in your technique, planning etc. Sometimes a failure is simple bad luck when a flow cytometer breaks down mid run and you lose your entire sample. Each scenario requires recognition of what has happened and what it actually means.
Most importantly, if you’re dealing with failure, reach out. Whether it is to friends within your year, other students in the program, program directors, other mentors, or friends and family outside the program. Find people you can talk to about what’s happening and people you can talk to about things that have literally nothing to do with science.
If and when you fail, always try to fail forward. What I mean by that is even if you fail (defined by you did not get outcome you expected), set up your experiment or task in a way that you will have learned something from it so in the future you are still a bit ahead. This basically comes down to taking copious notes, setting up appropriate controls, this will ensure that whenever you fail, there is still a teaching moment. Secondary to this, there are some experiments/ tasks that will be leaps of faith. These can be high risk high reward, but try not to do too many of these especially when it is high stakes (e.g. your main finding of PhD depends on it). Or if you do, diversify risk and have other projects going that can sustain you even if the riskier project fails.
Wrapping up
Congrats! You’re nearing the end of your graduate school experience. This can be a very hectic, but rewarding time. As you start to make plans for defending your thesis, below is some advice on how to make this process as painless as possible: Thinking about defending/re-entry into third year: Attend all the re-entry to the clinic meetings! These start in Fall of your third year of graduate school with one meeting that gives you an overview of the anticipated re-entry timelines. Your PI also is supposed to attend this meeting so everyone is on the same page. Scheduling a meeting with your PI immediately after this would be a great idea so that you can make sure you’re both on the same page about defense plans. This is esecially recommended if your PI has not graduated an MD/PhD student before. During your fourth year of graduate school, you will also have to attend this meeting again (with your PI) and is a great marker for when you should try to meet with your committee to ask for permission to graduate. Though there is some flexibility when you re-enter into the third year of medical school, the timeline assumes entry in July at the end of your 4th year of graduate school.
- Committee meeting to ask for permission to graduate: although it likely varies from department to department, it’s a good idea to consider asking your committee for permission to graduate ≥6 (??) months prior to your anticipated defense date so for re-entry into third year.
Mark Bailey’s advice on changing your schedule (waking up early)
Writing a little every day for months ahead of time.
Start to think about re-learning all the med school mumbo jumbo you forget after taking step 1. As you get 2-3 months out from re-entering medical school think about watching some videos (pathoma, boards and beyond), doing some anki, or re-reading some old notes. This will slowly get you back into the med school mindset.
Organize your stuff: as you prepare to leave, it’s a good time to organize your data, write down where you got certain reagents from, make sure you have an up to data inventory of samples, so your lab will bother you less later.
If possible try to have your final papers done and submitted before you leave, and perhaps generate some back up samples that might be hard for other lab members to make ready to go in case of revisions. So you don’t have to try and do them in the middle of night while you’re on surgery rotation.
Plan and schedule in time for a vacation - you deserve it!