(soft music)
- One of the tragedies in graduate school and in post-docs
is choosing a project that's not right,
and then committing to it within a few weeks of starting,
and then it takes years to get out of it.
Taking the time to think about the project
before committing to it might seem like a waste of time,
but actually, every week that you spend
thinking about a project
can save months of anguish later.
In my lab, I usually define a period of
searching for a project.
The goal is to get at least two projects,
so you can compare them,
not to commit to any project,
when you can try out things.
But there's a difference, there's kind of
an internal decision to commit
or not to commit to a project,
so it keeps things light
when you try to experiment to see if things work.
Definitely do talk to everyone in the group
because a lot of good projects actually combined
existing abilities in the group.
And to give it time to resist
the temptation to have a certainty to have
a project.
I think it is an error to take the first project
that comes to mind.
That choice is quite critical.
- The way that we developed scientific questions
in my lab is very deliberate.
I decided on this when I started my lab
to make it easier for me
as the PI to sort of know where
in the process we were.
But it has also has turned out to be really useful
for trainees because they don't feel glopped
into the deep end of the pool, as it were.
So they know there is a structure by which we will land
at an idea that we are both really happy with.
- What it involves is once you join the lab
you basically take two to three months
to go and read and engage with the literature.
We have regular meetings with our PI in that time
where we bring back ideas.
Bring back basically experimental directions
and refine those ideas over an interim process.
- In the first month you're job as a trainee
is to read a lot and talk to a lot
of people including me
and deliver at the end of that month three
broad areas of which you are interested.
- At the beginning of that process
you are very, very broad.
So you are basically constrained
by the field that the lab works in.
So in my case something like G regulation
which is an incredibly broad field.
- And, different people take that first month differently.
Some people they just want to read,
some people want to start
some little experiments to get familiar with the system
and they think better with their hands.
- Some people get the question while they are engaged
in scientific work that could be at the bench
repeating or doing some, something
that has to do with the body mechanics rhythmically
that's where the mind totally generates the question.
Other people it is offline when are home
when you are in the shower.
For me it was in the car one time just starting
to drive, etc.
- So I'm really flexible on how you spend
that time but at the end of that month
you need to deliver three things
that you are excited about.
We talk about those three things
and we decide on one.
Then in the second month the goal is
to break that area down into specific experiments
as many as you can think of for analyses
or modeling approaches that will address that problem.
And again, this is also very collaborative,
you will talk to people, learn about possible experiments,
or is there experiment lab isn't doing yet
that we could be doing.
Again at the end of that month
we are going to take that big pile
of possible ideas, the trainee and I,
and we are going to filter it down
into two to four aims that are really like
the core pillars of your project.
Then in the last month you are going to write it up
because the act of having to write it
is a way of clarifying your thinking
and forcing your thinking to become really specific
and also to grasp which pieces of the literature
support or contradict your argument.
- And so, in this kind of interment process
which starts very, very broad
you end up in a very targeted space
that you can then write something like a proposal
or like a qualifying exam on.
Hopefully, that thing becomes the major
for the rest of your thesis.
- What I think one of the most important
aspects of it is that it has deadlines and tasks
that are sort of hierarchal, right.
First all you have to is deliver areas
into the atom for pieces of biology
and then we will pick one
and drill down to get really specific questions.
Knowing that there is sort of hierarchy of what
your thought process will look like
and that the people in the lab and I will help
you with that relieves some of the anxiety
of just thinking that somehow, magically
you are suppose to sit in a room alone,
read a bunch of papers, and come up
with this insightful project.
I have never been able to come up with project ideas
like that.
- Nothing is ever done in isolation
and I certainly did not go sit
in a library by myself and come up
with a fully formed thesis project.
As with anything in science, in life,
things are always improved by talking
to other people and refining your ideas
and so, I would read a bit and think a bit
and come up with a few questions I found interesting
and I would go and talk to Angela about them
and she would encourage me on some of them
and we would scrap others because they were infeasible.
I talked to my lab mates, I talked to other people
in the department and that enabled me to come up
with a project that I was really interested in.
The question I wanted the answer
but which wold also be vetted
by people that had more experience in the field.