The Lion King of Research

The Circle of Life

There’s more to see than can ever be seen, More to do than can ever be done.

Never was a truer word said about research.

September rolls in, and along with shorter days and colder climates come the fresh faces of new PhD students. The start of a new academic term has me looking forward and looking back in an uncharacteristically poignant fashion, please indulge me and I promise many Disney references.

The Tissue Repair Wellcome Trust programme that I’m on was pioneered (as they like to remind us) by two cohorts that came before us, who followed the same structure of two rotations and a 3.5 year project, so have just submitted their theses. Meanwhile, a new cohort of students have just joined the programme two years below and it feels like we’re all on the endless round of the circle of… academia.

After an incredibly nostalgic trip to see the new Lion King movie I would now like to present my unrequested advice for new students using a slightly laboured analogy of all the songs I loved so much.

I Just Can’t Wait to be King

Gonna be the main event, like no king was before

The enthusiasm! The excitement! Every student’s project will change the world! Actually this is great stuff and will drive you and carry you initially so ride that high. It’s a huge accomplishment to get yourself to this point, and it’s easy to forget when you’re in academia and the watering hole is flooded with doctorates, that only 2% of the population have PhDs. Congrats and yes definitely have lofty goals for your project. But know that the wildebeest will at some point storm the canyon and those plans will change. You can still be king (queen)!

The best and the worst thing about a PhD is that you’re in charge of your own time. However, don’t get the idea that there is no-one saying do this, no-one saying be there, no-one saying stop that, no-one saying see here (now see here!). You’ll have obligations and demands from your supervisor, from your lab, from your project and side projects – prioritising and managing these is how you’ll progress.

Be Prepared

Yes our teeth and ambition are bared, be prepared.

Some practical advice. Have a numbering system for your experiments, or some way of keeping record of them. I know that my powers of retention, are as wet as a warthog’s backside so it’s crucial. Track them, note them down, record when you did them and what you did them for. If you have an experiment that continues over several weeks and has multiple steps give it a number and follow through in your lab book all the steps. For example, I will isolate cells, grow them up with several media changes, fix the cells with PFA, stain them with fluorescent antibodies, image them and analyse them. This takes time but I’ll call it all EXP012 and then when I leaf back through my lab book I can follow what I’ve done. This is useful for you throughout your PhD, is useful for future you when you’re coming back to write your thesis and for any future students trying to work out what you did. Meticulous planning, tenacity spanning, decades of denial.

An addendum to this. Do it in a way that feels sustainable. It’s like when I Marie Kondo’d my clothes and folded all my jumpers neatly in the drawer and felt so smug and proud, but inevitably the system broke down when I started just shoving the odd jumper in after a long day. Similarly, I initially and boldly decided to individually number every single microscope slide I prepared and record them all in an excel spreadsheet. This didn’t exactly work for me and I ended up spending more time updating this compendium than it was saving me, so I modified the system. Don’t die on the hill of your own organisation either, be flexible to be kind to yourself.

Hakuna Matata

It means no worries, for the rest of your days

Science does not work. A lot. This is something that isn’t clear in papers or in research talks or in your undergraduate degree. Even rotation projects and Masters are often set up to succeed with clear defined goals (not always, I know!!). So when you get to the PhD and you’re pushing the frontiers of your area of research things will, inevitably, fail. It’s often not your fault, or it’s just a simple mistake, but it can be hard to take.

Try not to let it get to you and adopt the Timon and Pumba philosophy… Not to the extent that you completely don’t care or that you eat grubs/C. elegans but when something doesn’t work, say Hakuna Matata, work out what went wrong and try again! Time will move on as if in a montage over a tree trunk, you will grow and learn and quite possibly put on as much weight as Simba does in this gif but it’s all good.

Can you feel the Love Tonight?

You needn’t look too far…

This song was a tricky one to integrate into this blog frankly but what I’m going to put out there is see the support from those around you. There’s nothing like the love of a lab meeting to get you through the start of your PhD. Present that shitty data, ask for help, find others going through the same thing. Rafiki had the answers for Simba, and for you, Rafiki will come in the form of your post-docs, your supervisor, other students… You’ll need both of the following reactions to get you through.

The Plan of Attack

I recently got a terrifying email from my supervisor. She is super nice and supportive so it’s not the sort of email you might immediately assume a third year student is getting. It was a gentle suggestion to think about how I want to plan the next 9 months.

My first thought was NINE MONTHS WHAT no way I have far longer than that. But nope, if I want to be kind to myself and have a good 3 month write-up period I do actually have only 9 months of experiments left.

My second thought was not something I’ll put in text here as my Mum reads this and it’s linked to the College webpage.

After the initial panic, I went into strategy mode. If a PhD teaches you anything, it’s problem-solving (and a shoddy work-life balance). We set a date to talk about it and I prepared a rough plan. I’ve no idea how I should go about this but something else you learn in a PhD is that there isn’t necessarily one right way to do something, it’s what works best for you to get the end result.

I actually started out with a thesis chapter plan. With Figure plans and everything, the whole thing was a bit intimidating when it was finished, especially when I realised half of the figures were based on data I haven’t even generated yet. Then I made a Gantt chart in Excel as a project schedule from this chapter plan, that lays out which experiments I need to do to make these figures a reality and what dates they need to be completed by. I hate both of these documents with a deep unbridled passion but I think they are so incredibly important that I have saved them both on my desktop.

The whole process made me think about the importance of deadlines and setting them for yourself. It seems such an obvious thing to say, set yourself deadlines as you go along, but when the three years of the project gapes ahead of you it can feel both overwhelming and reassuring. Thinking that you have all that time to fill with work might initially seem a lot but it’s always been somewhat of a comfort for me. I’ve got time, I would think, I’ll set that up later. But later is now.

I used to hate Gantt charts as they’re so hard to stick to over long periods. When Mr. Gantt invented them in the early 20^th century I bet he never anticipated them being formulated on a complex computer program, nor how much fear they would instil in the hearts of every PhD student who has ever attempted one.

This one I’ve tried to break it down, with shorter term goals embedded within the broader ones. Then you get that sense of achievement, dopamine, whatever, when you can tick something off. The problem with science is that it doesn’t always work so you have to be ready to accept that no matter how hard you try you might not hit that deadline. And it doesn’t make you a bad scientist or a lazy person, you have to give yourself a break, go into strategy mode, make a plan and, finally re-jig your Gantt chart.

I actually made an “ideal” one and a “realistic” one with a few less things labelled TOP PRIORITY after I showed it to another PhD student and her only response was, “Well, it’s ambitious”. I like to be ambitious sure but I have to account for being human and having a life I suppose.

However, I reckon there is just about time for the occasional unproductive day but no more can I risk an unproductive week. Final year looms and I launch into it to face the oncoming experiments, glad that I have a good supervisor, some great lab support, and (surprisingly) a Gantt chart.

Precision

Recently, I’ve been supervising a couple of students and teaching them all I know. So like, four things. Back in the day when I was the rotation student, my friendly* post-doc supervisor told me that the way to learn something is first I would watch her do it, then she would do it alongside me, then I would do it alone. I did it the same way, giving them the protocols to follow along with and make notes of any specifics.

In this process it occurred to me quite how much I’ve deviated from (optimised?! Lets go with optimised) the protocols I printed out and was selling as gospel. And it also made me realise what things I am incredibly precise with and some things are a little more… woolly. It’s the difference between baking, where precision is key, and cooking, where you can be a bit freer.

Where I am as precise as a baker

• The very first time I do a new protocol
• Scientific language and phrasing (so important to be clear)
• Teeny tiny volumes (0.1uL vs 0.2 uL is DOUBLE guys just easy with the P2)
• Time of day to do any animal behavioural experiments
• Making up reagents, buffers with lots of ingredients
• PCR and bought-in ELISA kits
• Anything with commercial cell lines or stem cells
• The counting and the statistics

 

Where I am relaxed as a cook

• How much media I put on my primary cells
• How long I culture some cells (‘til they’re confluent!)
• Time taken to block my slides (I mean, supposedly 1 hour but usually til after lunch)
• How much buffer to slosh my western blot in
• Big volumes (100mls, 100mls, who cares)

 

After a couple of years in the PhD I’ve realised a lot more what things are really crucial to be specific with, but of course this really differs with the exact technique you’re learning. Once you know something well enough you can tell where you can relax a little.

To new PhD students starting out, I suggest erring on the side of caution initially. Ask every question now, don’t assume anything is too stupid to check. Stick to the protocol and advice but don’t be afraid to work out where things can be improved. Often the answer to “Why do you do it this way?” is just “That’s the way we’ve always done it!” but that’s a bit rubbish. If it doesn’t make sense to you, see if you can make it better. Maybe we are putting emphasis on the wrong part and a fresh set of eyes can help.

What are the things you are precise about and the things you are more relaxed about in the lab?

*occasionally scary

How NOT to put together a talk

The past few months for me have been plagued by presentations. I’ve spent more time than I care to think about moving images around on PowerPoint and talking aloud to myself (or my dog). Two of the more important ones were when I presented in the institute and at a big international conference and they both went really well – I got nominated for a prize for one and actually won a prize for the other!

He wished the presentations had been about bones

However, the road to those prizes was rocky to say the least and I’d like to give a lot of credit to my lab and my supervisor for helping in the preparations. I thought I’d write a post to share my recent experience and maybe some tips I picked up along the way.

Here’s the step-by-step process* about how I went about preparing mine recently.

*While there are some actual nuggets of advice in here I highly recommend not following this trajectory entirely.

So you’ve been invited to give a talk at a conference. Congratulations! You will likely be feeling equal parts thrilled and terrified. Now, to make the talk: you’ll need a sweet slide pack and a good script, as well as an in-depth background knowledge ready to answer any erroneous questions. No pressure.

 

 

 

1. Panic.
2. Collect as much information as you can about the talk itself. How long does it have to be? Does this include questions? Do you also need to provide a poster? Who will be your audience – specialists or not?
3. Rifle through your previous presentations and frantically cobble together a series of slides that show your most recent data. Give this talk to some people in the lab, any willing volunteers. Have them tear it limb from limb.
4. Ignore the presentation entirely for a couple of days.
5. Go back to the drawing board, scrap every slide and remake all your diagrams.
6. Delete a lot of data, which feels counter-intuitive. You need to tell them less than you think, just the most interesting things.
7. Procrastinate by spending 1-2 hours adjusting a single slide by moving one image back and forth a couple of centimetres and trying to align all the labels.
8. Show it to your supervisor or some people in the lab but realise you’ve lost all confidence and give a bumbling incoherent load of nonsense.
9. Go home, have a drink.
10. Face your fears, sit down at your computer, open the presentation again and actually think about how you’re trying to tell your story. Look at the feedback you’ve collected from your several failed talks. (You don’t have to implement every single piece of advice though.)
11. Lay the talk out so it’s circular, starts with a question and ends with you answering that question.
12. Write out what you think you want to say, then practice saying it aloud, as often the way you write something isn’t how you’d say it. Overexplaining and repeating yourself can feel strange but generally it’s a good thing.
13. Run it through by yourself with a timer, realise you are way over the time. Consider speaking extremely quickly, then realise that makes no sense.
14. Re-hash your script.
15. Write out or verbally practice answers to questions you might expect to get asked so that you can pull them out of your back pocket. Back-up slides to support this can also be really helpful and look like you’re super prepared (which by this point you are).
16. Do ANOTHER practice talk. Realise it might actually go okay.
17. The day of the talk, TRY NOT TO PANIC. Have your first sentence totally practised and learnt by heart as once you get going, you’re golden.
18. Before you start, come up to the lectern and, while they introduce you, literally take one long breath. Pausing before you start feels like you are silent for hours but no one notices and it helps you start calmly.
19. Enjoy sharing all your hard work with people!
20. Relax.

The Second Year Slump

“The data, the pipetting, those are all just things you do. This is your PhD.”

People did tell me that second year was going to be a challenge and I’m not saying I didn’t believe them or thought I would be special and different, but I guess I didn’t really think what they meant. I was expecting the dearth of data and the pressure to produce some but not how that would actually make me feel. Spoiler: not good.

My first year of the project I felt super focused – even though when I look at what I generated data-wise it’s, er, not exactly groundbreaking. But so full of hope! And there was actually something clear at the end. Second year has seemed to slip through my fingers without a real moment of clarity and as I enter my final year that panic set in. What had I even achieved? What was I going to achieve in the next, final year?

Foolishly, one of my responses to this problem was to avoid tackling it head on and do all the other little bits and bobs that need to be done but aren’t progressing my project in a big way. And so I was bumbling along for a bit, telling myself all was well because I was in the lab! In a lab coat! Making graphs! But really I wasn’t answering the right questions, and the longer I was doing it the more embarrassed I felt that I hadn’t made any meaningful contribution to my work.

I didn’t acknowledge it, at first because I didn’t realise what I was doing and later because I was ashamed I wasn’t working hard enough, or smart enough or whatever. And so it went on longer. Who knew that bottling your issues and storing them in the drinks cabinet of your mind wasn’t a good idea??

If this sounds like you, hurrah, you’re the reason I wrote this and put it on the internet.

Because I’m not unique. When I finally told my friend, a post-doc who’s basically supported me from the beginning, that I was struggling she was gloriously unsurprised and said the quote at the top of this blog post. Basically, it’s how you deal with the shit that makes you good and advances you as a scientist, not the data you churn out. Anyone can learn to accurately move clear liquids from tube to tube but not everyone has the resilience to handle successive failures and push forward.

And everyone in science, in academia probably, has this feeling. It comes, and it comes again. Once you know it, you can recognise it faster, deal with it better and lose less time. I wasn’t progressing my project much because I was possibly nervous I’d find nothing, and that would make me a bad scientist. But actually it turns out it might make me a better scientist because I’ve now got a new tool at my disposal.

Once you’ve said you’re having a bit of a rough time, it’s easier to say it again. I guess once the drinks cabinet is unlocked you’re better at making the cocktails. Okay that analogy is weak. Another conversation with another post-doc friend revealed more understanding and more support. Knowing you’re not daft for feeling overwhelmed is the first step and I was much better able to strategise and prioritise once I’d had these conversations.

So here I am, saying it again but in a format that is probably far too open, hoping that one person in my position reads it and maybe unlocks their drinks cabinet a bit sooner.

Also, all hail good post-docs.

The most Beautiful woman in Science

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

The Hollywood actress Hedy Lamaar was called ‘the most beautiful woman in films’, and was a beloved pin-up during the second world war. She starred in the silver screen throughout the 30s and 40s.

The scientist and inventor Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler patented a concept for “spread spectrum” technology that could use frequency hopping to undetectably guide radio-controlled missiles for the US Navy, preventing the enemy from jamming or interfering with the signal.

It’s the same person though.

She also depicted arguably the first female orgasm on screen which is pretty interesting too but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

Fascinatingly, she developed her patent idea with composer and piano player George Antheil, which meant that the mechanism is similar to the roll of perforated paper used to operate a piano, and even has 88 frequencies – the same number of keys on a standard piano. Their technology was never used for it’s intended purpose in the second world war, basically because frequency hopping was a bit ahead of it’s time and it would be decades before the technology would catch up with it.

Officially turned away by the US Navy, they later used the idea during the Cuban Missile Crisis and many other military applications. Spread spectrum technology also forms the basic concept for wi-fi technology – and where would we be without that these days? Google it and find out…

Lamaar asked to join the National Inventors Council on the back of her original patent but was told her efforts would be better placed selling kisses ($50K each!) and posing for pin-up shots to encourage soldiers fighting on the front line. Can you imagine a world where, instead of being dismissed, Hedy and George were given funding for their research? We might have accelerated the technological boom by a couple of decades. Was she dismissed entirely because she was a (very beautiful) woman or because her invention was lacking something? It’s hard to say, but isn’t that always the argument of unconscious bias.

Her scientific side was certainly hidden away by her husband(s), her agents and Hollywood. It wasn’t until 1997 that the pair were given the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award and the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors. Apparently, Hedy said “It’s about time.”

Hedy wasn’t an actress, she wasn’t a scientist, she wasn’t a six-time wife. She was all of those things and, probably, more. She was good at some things and bad at other things. I am grateful to see women succeeding in science now who are multi-faceted individuals with different aspects celebrated, but we’re still a way away from a bias-free world.

This International Women’s day, celebrate what you’re good at, and celebrate what other women you know are good at too. Tell them! We are better when we lift each other up.

International Men’s day is on November 19^th and I promise to write a cool profile of a male scientist, for equality.

Resolve to Evolve

January is a time for cutting back after the decadence of December. No alcohol, no dairy, no spending. No fun.

I’m not doing any of these, but I have made some resolutions for in and out of the lab. Instead of just listing what I want to do this year, which wouldn’t make for particularly thrilling reading, I thought I’d say what I think makes a New Year Resolution that you can stick to.

Okay so the calendar is a human construct and New Year’s is therefore arbitrary but it’s still useful to draw a line for yourself.

Choose something positive, don’t punish yourself.

I’ve always thought the idea of cutting something out as your resolution to be a bit of a rubbish idea, as January is such a dull joyless month in comparison to the previous one and deprivation makes you feel even more low. Resolutions suit me better if they are more “I will try a new thing (because it will make me happy)” rather than “I will stop this other thing (because I’m terrible for doing it)”.

Make yourself accountable

 

This’ll liven up this blog post

 

Our first lab meeting this year, we all presented our goals for 2019. It was great to hear everyone’s ideas and it was useful to order my thoughts. Plus, sharing my plans will put pressure on me to do them. It’s like if you book with a personal trainer rather than just telling yourself you’ll go to the gym – it makes you a bit more accountable. I’m not saying my lab members will call me up and shame me for not sticking to my schedule (at least I hope not), but you spend so much time planning things alone in your PhD it wouldn’t be hard for something to get put to one side and never picked up again.

Track your progress

As a big fan of to-do lists, I totally subscribe to the idea of having big plans, but breaking them down into smaller jobs that you can do and you can record what you’ve done. Get that dopamine hit when you tick something off! If you hate lists do a photo series or something? Maybe you want to do a cartwheel this year (I don’t know your life), so video yourself every week trying one.

Have a reason for doing them

There are some things on the horizon to plan for and so I’m setting myself more specific goals to tackle them. This year I officially enter the third year of the project in April. Which is terrifying. It also means second-year review and an assessed seminar upcoming, and there is also a great Small Vessel Disease meeting in Paris in July that I’m going to and hopefully giving a proper research talk. For all of these I want to have something interesting to share, so I want to have some solid data to discuss and maybe even a ‘finding’ that makes people excited. This means thinking carefully about how to manage the next couple of months to get the best data.

 

 

Choose something specific and achievable

Making a goal like ‘Be more organised’ is infinitely harder than making your goal ‘Organise my folders/microscope slides/sock drawer’, or even better ‘Write down all my appointments in my new diary’. Basically, how will you know when you have become Organised Person™? And, oh man, make it realistic. I don’t mean make it easy, but If you are not a morning person, don’t make your goal ‘do a 10K run before breakfast’. You will not stick to it and you will feel crap about yourself.

Accept occasional failures

Science teaches you this but it’s so useful to have in the rest of your life. Sometimes you try something and it doesn’t work or you make a mistake – but you don’t give up, you work out what went wrong, you pick yourself up and try again. Maybe you slip up on your resolution but that doesn’t mean you’re rubbish or that you should stop trying!

 

So, feel free to ask me how some of my lab resolutions are going. And if you find I’ve had a drink, a bit of cheese or bought something wholly unnecessary, I’m probably okay with that but I’ll promise to stick to my PhD-based goals!

Oh come all ye students

Oh come all ye students,

Postdocs and professors

Oh come ye oh come ye to seminar rooms

Come and see data

Raw, unpublished data.

Oh here’s my introduction

And here is what had gone wrong

Now here’s the main conclusion

Thanks for your time.

*up an octave*

Ask, crowds of scientists,

Ask your burning questions.

Oh come ye, oh come ye, to the microphone

Come and behold me

Try and field questions.

“What are the stats you’re testing?”

“I think you need to add n”

“A comment, not a question”

“Now one from the back.”

#happyfemalePI… a space for success

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to make it in academia, and how I sometimes perceive myself as not necessarily cut out for it. I don’t mean doing a PhD, which I’m (pretty!) sure I can complete, but I mean continuing on the post-doc cycle, sourcing grants and making it through the horrible, horrible statistics to become one of the few female PIs in the biz.

Comparing yourself to the other PhD students at the same stage is a risky thing to do because all projects vary but I couldn’t help but think who out of my cohort would make a ‘good’ PI. The ones that sprang to mind are the ones that can reel off papers from memory, the ones that come in all hours of the night to churn out that data. That seems like the best way to succeed in academia, and that’s not me. So I guess I didn’t consider myself up to the job. Maybe I’m just more suited to something else. (Is this part of a whole other set of feminist and imposter syndrome issues? Perhaps, but let’s unpack that at a later date guys, I’m not ready right now.)

Then I considered the PIs I feel are not just good, but great. And it’s not the ones who got a string of Nature papers or the ones who work 20-hour days. It’s the ones who care about how their students are feeling, who really support their post-docs through their fellowship applications, who have time for a hobby or a cup of tea. These are the PIs who create an environment for students to succeed, where support is part of the package and they go beyond pushing out high-impact science. I’m lucky enough to know and be supported by some of these PIs and know that this will be a big part of my PhD career. These are an inspiration, but also seem like an achievable aspiration for me personally.

There is the image of a PI as someone who has no life, who has dedicated their whole self to their research. This is not something I’m willing to do. And it’s why I’m really glad to see a conversation on twitter called #happyfemalePI, where researchers are discussing how they live their lives alongside being PIs. Reading that one of my favourite PIs spends weekends hanging out with her husband and binging Netflix honestly gave me more hope and joy than I can say. And I know she provides a great environment for her students to work in.

I know that they will all have stressful times and pressures and late-night working. I’m on board with that being a part of the job – it’s just good to know that that’s not all there is to it.

What makes a good space for success? Well, it truly is whatever works for you. Some students have great confidence in their abilities and want freedom to explore their project as they see fit, while others benefit from more regular guidance. Inevitably students are moulded by their PIs and I am glad to have role models providing a template that I could potentially see myself following. If I reset my perception of my own abilities it might influence my ambitions – I’m not here to announce I’m fixed on becoming a PI, but perhaps if I reconsider the job description it could be something on the horizon after all.

Check back at the end of the PhD where you’ll see me write how I’m definitely leaving academia forever…

Planet Lab (The lesser known sequel to Planet Earth)

*David Attenborough voice:*

Hello, and welcome to this very special episode of Planet Lab where we will observe the scientist in their natural environment. Join us as we explore their varied habitats and delve into the strange and sometimes surprising habits of the PhD student.

Camera pans across a lab bench strewn with illegibly labelled eppendorfs, bits of parafilm, open pipette tip boxes and tube of antibody slowly thawing in a polystyrene box.

We come first to the small habitat, the bench space, where our PhD student is frantically pipetting indistinguishable liquids into a small plastic plate. Adept at using tools, they have developed these uniquely useless skills inapplicable outside this environment. See how their repetitive motions are almost machinelike, with little thought to them. It seems they have entirely forgotten the purpose of these actions and are now blindly following the paper in front of them.

Cut to next scene. The overwhelming whirr of the fume hood fills the windowless room, the camera follows a lab-coated figure as they collect numerous bottles, tubes and plates, initially spraying each individual item painstakingly with a translucent spray bottle, then seemingly getting bored and spritzing everything including themselves liberally until all is slightly damp.

With the smell of ethanol fresh in their nostrils, our PhD student enacts a curious ritual with these orange-topped flasks. Their movement from one large container to another and the replacement of coloured liquid is at once intriguing and incredibly dull.

The living cells within offer no nutrition, no entertainment and, often, no data. A strange pet to have chosen, we do not fully understand what the PhD student gains from this relationship, but it is clear that it is extremely important, as they visit every 2-3 days to provide nutrition to these tiny creatures, even at the expense of their own personal time.

Screen cuts to black… or so it seems. A small white light illuminates a drained face with wide eyes, fixed on to a computer that slowly comes into focus. The dotted marks on the screen, however, do not come into focus. The imaging is not going well.

Here we join our student in one of the darkest of their habitats. The blackness of the microscope may be to protect the immunofluorescent slides, but it also serves to lull the PhD student into a stupor akin to intoxication. All time is lost here in the darkness, the slow flicker of the laser instead acting as the second hand of a clock counting down the minutes until the student must vacate to make room for the next user. They adjust and then re-adjust settings, muttering “real or artefact?” under their breath, though it is unclear who they expect to answer.

Wide shot of a room filled with lines of chairs, people seated and facing a large projected screen. In front stands a more-smartly-dressed-than-normal figure, small beads of sweat forming on their forehead.

Much like the lone gazelle on the savannah, the PhD student stands alone while the circling predators look on. Instead of the desire to pull flesh from bone however, the predators’ minds are filled with the desire to pull sub-par statistics from Graphpad graphs. Our student is talking loudly despite their dry mouth and is using a laser pointer to gesture despite their shaking hand. As they reach their conclusion slide they visibly brace as hands are raised. One predator – or PI as they are known in this habitat – makes more of a comment than a question but no-one seems to mind.

……

Join us next time on Planet Lab where we will revisit our student in a new habitat, the ‘desk’ where we will discover how much they have to snack in order to cope with analysis sessions.