Moving Forward: Update on Work in the Lab
Nov 3, 2009 careers, commentary, site news
The blog has fell silent for a number of months, mainly because my work and other endeavors has consumed all of my time. The work in the lab has taken on new dimensions, with our staff significantly expanded at the beginning of the semester. This has translated into a lot more time spent training and managing, rather than directly generating data. But I also spend a significant amount of time pushing some of my own projects forward.
On the professional development front I have been working on expanding my skill sets in statistics and programming, which mostly involves taking some courses (university, online, and books) and just putting in a lot of time getting my hands dirty with R. My work in the lab has started to shift to this area and I’ve spent many hours getting comfortable with a whole new set of tools.
One nice part with Dr. S is that even though I lack a PhD., I’m not treated any differently than those that have more degrees. So as one of the people in the lab with the most hands-on experience with a number of important protocols and experiments, it is often necessary to make recommendations and help with troubleshooting, as well as offer advice based on past experience. It’s been a nice challenge in shifting to a job that includes a lot of project management instead of primarily generating data.
Also, when I get a chance I keep up on a number of blogs in the science area, which mostly includes a lot of young PI’s, postdocs, and graduate students. It’s always interesting to hear how your experiences in science in compare with people at other universities and companies.
Getting a Research Associate Position
Aug 25, 2008 careers, news links
I was able to secure an offer for continued employment as a Research Associate at Washington State University. I will be working in the lab of Dr. Skinner, who many know that I had also been working with during my undergraduate years. He has several NIH grants and recently secured new funding from the Department of Defense for a project that I will be closely involved in.
The job hunting was exciting early on, but quickly moved into the frustrating stage and finally the depressing stage. The fact is there are a lot of unemployed M.S. and PhD scientists around here, and they are all in need of income, which means that they had been forced to settle for research technician jobs that are normally taken by B.S. graduates like myself. My 5+ years of research experience had a favorable impact on getting into final candidate lists, but I was only able to secure two offers from a list of 8 or 9 jobs. The rest were largely taken by those with advanced degrees. I was fortunate to have an hourly position to keep the bills paid during the process, which I know from experience could have been far more than depressing.
In the lab, my “unnamed” project, which I have been working on since 2005, should be coming to the point of publication soon. For the longtime readers this is something they have probably heard before, and I should have learned my lesson long ago and just not make any predictions about it. Nonetheless, all the added data accrued during this time has been extremely productive, and should make for an interesting paper when it finally gets to that point.
As for my writing here, as you can see it hasn’t been consistent. Our family was able to take a couple trips over the summer, including one a week ago to the Newport, Oregon area, which is a spot my family regularly went to growing up. It was good to share that experience with my wife and stepson.
Hopefully now that the summer is coming to a close (classes start today here at WSU) the blog updates will be more consistent and often.
Tags: careers, research associate
