Lost and Confused about my research and in general...

[yoyo17]

This semester I've been much more productive (at least doing some experiments than none) and cut my hours at 1 job while unfortunately suffering an increased TA load. Still I'm doing more and feeling better.

 

But the problem is that I feel stupid and lost especially compared to others in my lab. I'm in a cancer/molecular biology lab so I'm hoping to receive responses from people in a similar field. I often ask, "How do you know how to do it this way? Or add that much reagent? Or seed that many? Why do you have to do it this way and not that way? How do you know? HOW DO YOU KNOW?!"

 

I'm not quite sure I have a lot of confidence in my project either. My PI has asked many people in my lab to do a certain project but everyone's ignored him. So now I'm stuck working on it, in part to be on his good side after wasting a semester, in part to practice my skill, learn some techniques but I really want to publish to apply for a fellowship and I'm not sure this project will take me there. Maybe, maybe not I don't know. I'm afraid the reason everyone ignored it and did something else is because they know it's a waste of time but no one really wants to tell me that. I don't have a clue why they ignored it, I don't have the knowledge to think why it might not be a good idea. So of course I'm doing it as the newest youngest student in the lab.

 

What also gives me anxiety is my general lack of understanding of science and the theory in our lab's experiments. Are there any tips from biomedical/cancer/health related students about how to understand more about my lab and learn all the science? So often I feel like the emails and communication is in another language and I'm feeling it shouldn't be that way.

- Are some things I should've done much earlier like read ALL not some of the papers published in lab?

- Read more papers regarding topics in my field? Like a lot more?

- How to learn the science and mol biology? What are good references for learning? I heard youtube is great but nothing I learn on the web fits perfect to what I'm doing in lab.

- What are ways to remember everything being taught to me in lab? I'm typing up the protocols so anyone can understand them and I'll know what to do later and write as much down.

- Am I expected to teach everything myself how to do things? I feel like I ask too many questions for a phd student

 

I'm currently reading "At the Bench: A laboratory navigator" by Kathy Barker but wondering if there's anything wise words of wisdom to be successful in scientific research.

[rising_star]

I'm not in your field but yes tor reading all of the labs published papers. You should also read articles about the specific techniques you want to use, focusing on the methods section to see how they did what they did. 

[Eigen]

Barker's book is good when it comes to lab dynamics, in general, but not great at preparing you for the science, really. 

 

I switched from a very traditional synthetic field in chemistry to applied molecular biology, and have had to teach myself everything from Cell Biology on in terms of lab techniques, etc- it's definitely possible. 

 

First, absolutely read all of the papers published by your group. And the supplementary information. And take copious notes. 

 

Then, you'll want to split your readings into several areas:

 

General background- review articles, proceedings, books from the library. These will help you get the fundamentals down, and help you to not feel like everything is in a foreign language. For books, my approach was to go to the library, head to the molecular biology section, and focus on books that seemed interesting or tangential to my work, then read, rinse, repeat. 

 

Protocols- Nature Methods is a great place for this, but you'll also be able to find a number of library books with detailed protocols- looking for titles with "practical approach", or "techniques" or "protocols". If your lab has a copy, there's a great 3 volume set on cell biology protocols by Cold Spring Harbor Press, but it's not practically available for the individual. 

 

Current Research- you need to get a feel for where your lab's work sits in the scheme of the field- what approaches are you using, what niche does the lab fit into, and where does your project fit into that. Learn what journals people in your field publish in, set up ASAP alerts for those journals, and get into the habit of checking once or twice a week, and reading any new articles that come to mind. 

 

There are some good videos for techniques on youtube, but there are equally as many really, really bad ones. If you want cell culture protocols, Gibco has a number of great video tutorials for common techniques. 

 

Cell culture is.... Sadly, largely superstition. Labs have established methods that they use, for which there may or may not be a reason- or there may have been a reason, but it really isn't valid anymore, or no one remembers what it was. It was one of my biggest frustrations when I set up a cell culture lab of my own- trying to figure out what, of the 30 different protocols I had for the same technique, was the most valid and would work best for our lab. 

 

There's a lot of great current literature out there, but your lab may or may not use the best practices you'll find therein. Take FBS use, for example. The vast, vast majority of labs still heat inactivate FBS prior to use. Even through a lot of the current literature recommends against it. Heat inactivation was necessary prior to sub-micron filtration- you needed some way to inactivate toxins, etc. in serum. Now, the vast majority are removed by filtration, and heat inactivation serves primarily to denature the serum proteins you're using to supplement your cells. There was a white paper from Invitrogen examining cell line growth of a huge number of different lines in heat inactivated vs normal FBS, and they found that a number of cell lines grew significantly worse in inactivated serum, and none grew worse in regular serum. And this is from a company that makes a lot of money selling inactivated serum. 

 

So when it comes to some of your initial questions, you may find you aren't getting good answers from people in your lab, and it may be that they don't have good answers to give you!

[mop]

.

 

 

Cell culture is.... Sadly, largely superstition. Labs have established methods that they use, for which there may or may not be a reason- or there may have been a reason, but it really isn't valid anymore, or no one remembers what it was. It was one of my biggest frustrations when I set up a cell culture lab of my own- trying to figure out what, of the 30 different protocols I had for the same technique, was the most valid and would work best for our lab. 

 

So when it comes to some of your initial questions, you may find you aren't getting good answers from people in your lab, and it may be that they don't have good answers to give you!

I'm in a molecular biology lab and this is very true for my lab as well. Some things are done in certain ways just because it was the first way it worked and everyone in the lab is too afraid of the technique not working to make changes to the protocol.  No one wants to troubleshoot a new protocol

 

When you read papers and don't understand the background science look up the cited work and read those as well, working backwards until you have a good foundation. More importantly, talk to other people about papers. If you don't understand a figure i.e. why they need some control, why take samples at 4hour intervals vs every 1hour or whatever the question is can be much faster to ask someone else than to struggle on your own for hours. Talking about papers you understand completely is also good, it will help you remember it for the long term. It doesn't have to be with your labmates either, if there are labs that do similar work around you can talk to them too.

 

It took me about a year to get comfortable with the background science of my lab, but I found talking to a senior grad student about papers sped up my understanding of the field.

 

[yoyo17]

So read, read, read seems to be the most important thing I should do to understand what I'm doing and learn my field more and make less mistakes.

 

Would you say reading is the most important thing to do during grad school and life? How important would you rate reading?

 

It seems a lot more of this is self-taught then I thought. Lab members have limited time to discuss things and don't always seem approachable. Would you say most of your education is self taught then by using Google?

 

There's so many things for which I'm not sure what the proper way of doing is. There's no crash course on what to do and expect in lab. Does it take a long time to learn all the ropes of research such as the background science, how to do experimental design, important considerations when doing certain experiments, publishing, grant reviews, submitting grants, insides on doing literature searches, primer design, etc? Or should I expect to learn all these things in due time and don't rush and read? There's so many things to know and it boggles my mind how others just "know" everything. And there's no one right answer to every question.

 

And if you read something and don't understand it, look it up and learn the background on it?

Edited February 27, 2015 by yoyo17

[Eigen]

I would say most first year graduate students should spend 2-4 hours per day (at least) reading background, doing literature searches, and figuring out the field. 

 

A large part of getting a PhD is showing that you can teach yourself new techniques, and that you can figure out how to do things that neither you or anyone else previously knew how to do. 

 

Having a PhD says that you can learn things. It's why you (generally) can't get two PhDs in different areas- it would be pointless. You are expected to have the skills necessary to teach yourself new areas should you want to transition your research. 

 

If you read something and don't understand, keep working until you do. Look up words you don't know, techniques you don't know. Learn how to take copious notes as you read papers and books, build yourself a library of self-written protocols and instructions. 

 

There's almost never a single right answer to a question- but you should now the different answers, how they differ, who supports one answer over another, or why there's evidence for one answer over another. And then you should be able to pick the one you think is most valid, and argue why you think it's the most valid. 

[yoyo17]

Thanks for the responses everybody, it was all very insightful and things are clearer now. I have a lot of work cut out for me it seems. I suppose as one keeps reading the concepts, terms, and understanding start to get stuck in your head.

 

On a related note, are there any words of wisdom older students or even those who graduated have for younger students? Are there habits you have now you wished you had earlier or vice versa? Is there anything you wish you knew before that you know now?

 

Thanks again for the tremendous in helping guide me what are some of the expectations. Grad school should be a lot more hard work than I'm putting into it and I guess the hours really are supposed to be long and tough.

[Amayan]

Our fields are very different, I'm afraid, but I can say one thing: Take advantage of your university library.  Scientific journals tend to be expensive, whether you pay by article or by issue.  The amount of material you have free access to as a student is incredible, and you will miss it when it's gone.  I know I certainly do!

[kotov]

I wish I had done more in terms of familiarizing myself with the existing literature on my field/subfield. I guess this works a bit differently in the social sciences than the natural sciences, but the same principle applies. Absolutely take advantage of whatever resources your library has (i.e., interlibrary loan, JSTOR, etc.) to get a hold of anything you can read, even if you don't have a well-defined direction in which you want to take your thesis work yet. In fact, reading the other works in the field you're interested in is a good way to familiarize yourself with what work's already been done and what still needs to be done, so it can help you find a direction for your research in addition to giving you the background info you need to do your research.