Advice for new postdocs

When I started in this new lab, there were techniques I had to get under my belt that took me a while. It was a steep learning curve and I remember feeling at one point like “maybe I just won’t get this, maybe I can’t do these experiments”. I thought I had maybe hit a limit because the progress I was making felt a lot slower than what I was used to in grad school. But then I just thought “you know, everything I’m doing now is something I’ve never done before”. I think you have to give yourself a break sometimes. You have to just remember that you’re still learning, and you’re still a student, even when you feel like “I shouldn’t be a student anymore, I should be proficient and an expert”. I think we’re always going to have to reinvent ourselves in a way, staying in academia, so you have to cut yourself some slack and remember that you’re taking on something new. Know your limits, ask for help, and feel okay to feel like a trainee.

~Puja Parekh

For someone wanting to go into academia, at the postdoc phase, I would say stay determined, stay curious, and stay motivated. There’s a lot of things that go through our minds, as postdocs, particularly when we have interest in making that transition. I can speak for instance for me, I had mentors and colleagues who told me that I was ready before I felt that I was ready. I think having that network of people, that network of mentors, is critical, because they can see things in you that you can’t see or aren’t able to see yet. There’s a great advantage in having a network of mentors, and I would even qualify it a little bit further and say an “activated” network of mentors. They have to be activated in the sense that they have to know what it is that you want to do, or what your aspirations are. I think many times we look too much to just our PI, or one mentor, to be that one person for us. But one person can never provide everything that you need so that’s why you need a network—a village. So stay determined, stay driven, and keep your network of mentors activated.

~Jude Phillip

Don't be so hard on yourself. You're on a roller coaster – you're gonna have good days and you're gonna have bad days – and when things aren't moving, to just accept that. There will be busier times, or harder times ahead, but give yourself a little bit of grace when it comes to learning new things. Be patient because the learning takes longer than you want and you're going to make mistakes. I beat myself up for so long when I first came here, because I'd never done so many of the techniques my lab uses. At first I thought, well, I'm a postdoc and it’s expected that I know how to do these things, and I should be doing them super efficiently. But every technique is still a new technique. It's better to learn it, well, then fumble your way through it. But also, you're learning new things, it's okay to be overwhelmed and tired, because it's a lot of new things all at once. Especially if you're adjusting to a new culture or a new environment as well. It's like going into a new kitchen, you don't know where things are and you have to be okay with asking for help. So, I think that would be the biggest thing: don’t be hard at yourself and ask for help.

~Marie Parsons

It’s very important to be patient and take one step at a time and to ask for help when something doesn’t make sense. People are always willing to help.

~Salvador Alonso Martinez

Don't be afraid of getting out of your comfort zone. Changing is good and can really pay off. Getting out of your comfort zone can give you a unique perspective because you have different ways of looking at things by applying the breadth of what you’ve learned. The transition from PhD to postdoc can be overwhelming because you get to a new lab and you just want to show what you can do, but at the same time the lab environment can be really different and you have to adapt. It helps to remember that in your PhD you learned how to think and how to learn new things.

Also, try and get the most of each day outside of lab. It’s a given that you have to come into to the lab a lot. But you also have to give yourself a break when you can. Prioritize – focus on the essential tasks and what you really need to get done each day and then try to remind yourself not to start additional tasks that will keep you there for much longer. We all work hard every day so things will work out and everything will get done in the long run. Life is a multitude of things. Science is a big part, but you have to enjoy other things as well.

~Silvia Pires

Know what your collaborators are working on, know what other techniques you could use outside of your lab, or what’s accessible to you, and make use of all the facilities. Not a lot of postdocs know that we have so many incredible cores that we can take advantage of for projects. I got to know them slowly through my boss and other colleagues, but it would have been nice if I would have known in the early stages of when I was planning my project that we have the mass spec core, the confocal core, and many others.

Also, try not to do science with blinders on. Don’t just look in one direction when you get your data, try to look at it from all different angles. I think that’s very important. Many new postdocs when they come in have one hypothesis and do all their work trying to pursue that one direction. Then, if it doesn’t work out, they get stuck and have trouble approaching it from another perspective. So, I would encourage new postdocs to try to see things from a different perspective and try to reimagine things and get creative with their projects.

~Ankit Gilani