Reality Check Lab Meeting

Each member of my lab presents in lab meeting only once every 5 months so that one meeting's importance becomes amplified much more than it should be. I went into mine a week ago thinking I was just awesome. I had been optimizing set up for a screen and had what I thought was a very strong positive control and very low background noise, basically a perfect setup for the next legs of the experiment. Perhaps I had thought too highly of myself, because my PI's suggestions that the parameters still needed to be even better and further optimized came out sounding like "This data sucks. Do better." His critical attitude and shrewd comments are precisely why I like working with him, but sometimes encouragement is hard to come by. Thankfully, one of the postdocs came up to me afterward to tell that he thought my data was very high quality and reassured me that the PI was impressed but would not be the type to say so outright. I was tearing up because I was so glad that at least someone had encouraging words and seemed to understand that I needed them then!

Balance

I've been so lazy during the holidays!! I had so many plans for how much I want to study and learn for my thesis project and quals coming up in January. But I spent most of it hanging out with relatives and watching movies.

When I do read, I get so involved -- I love my project, I love my topic. But it's exhausting. So when I'm not reading and thinking, I feel too lazy to get started, so days go by where I make no progress followed by continuous days of study and planning. I definitely cannot go on this way or I will definitely wear out before I get through my thesis..

It's been a while since I've blogged, but I just noticed that my site actually has followers... and is actually linked to other MD/PhD blogs.. Makes me feel like I should write something to maintain my popularity :)

The past year has been stale in terms of science but a lot has changed in just the past few months. I finished 2nd year medical school in May; then I jumped into 2 months clinical rotations in medicine at MGH; then immediately dropped straight into graduate school. I am loving the graduate school lifestyle. I am still working crazy hours, but the freedom of choosing my breaks during the day and deciding which evenings I take off makes such a huge difference. I can't imagine how I stood the 6am-7pm strict daily hours just a few weeks ago on medicine.

I've been having a lot of fun plotting up different potential thesis topics, but unfortunately I am now spread more thin than I had planned. Every time I meet with my PI, I just want to discuss new ideas and plan out different projects -- but he has now given me an ultimatum that I need to decide what I will work on by this week. Everyone else thinks it's crazy since I've only been working in lab for 4 weeks. But he's right -- if I don't focus now, no way I can reach a 3 year goal. I guess there are some things you give up as MD/PhD too..

Family

Our spring break just started, and many of my classmates have gone home to see their families. I was almost dismissive of this idea, as I felt that I wanted to visit friends, see places, do newer more interesting things while I had the chance. Last night, I was thinking about where I'd like to go during the week, and realized how little chance I have to be at home anymore. I've never been a very good daughter, only calling home every few months, getting annoyed at my mom for disturbing my work even though she only calls once every few weeks and only for a few minutes, planning to do everything except go home. This summer,  I will have almost no extra time to visit family, but it had been reasonable to me.

But last night, I decided that I need to see my family. So I switched the airplane ticket from May to a ticket 2 days from now. It's going to be a surprise. I changed my dad's airline email account so he wouldn't get the confirmation email. I'll just take a passenger shuttle home. I think it's a good plan, and the thought of this surprise is making me happy.

Researching Researchers

I have been wanting to visit Singapore's famous Biopolis for a while now to experience the multibillion dollar investment in biotechnology and its rumored international mixing pot of acclaimed faculty members. Finally this summer I am going to go talk to researchers there to study the nature of the global networks that connect researchers there to the rest of the world. I am excited about this opportunity to be involved in an entirely new project outside my expertise, to visit new places and meet new people, and think about science from a different perspective.

In talking to faculty members about my projects, I have so far received two dramatically different responses. One is exuberantly optimistic about the type of stories I'll be able to hear from people and how reasonable it would be to write a publishable article at the end. The other sits rather high in the ivory tower of academia and wonders why anyone thinks they can even attempt such a project without a background in the field. I have had a few good leads on people to talk to.. so I will barge ahead and see what happens..

Since I am working in a stem cell lab right now, my mentor suggested that I do some research on the members of my own lab. All together, I could put together an interesting comparative case on the high profile stem cell labs in the most prominent biomedical centers in the world.

Snow

Yesterday was my first Boston blizzard. We got a foot of snow, and now everything looks like a picture perfect winter. I went to play outside and became ridiculously covered in snow from snowballs, making snow angels, and rolling around in snow. And when I got thirsty.. just ate some snow. hehe. The excitement of snow is helping to offset the onset of finals period. Oh yay for holiday season.

Primary Care Interview

As I was studying in the education center today, a woman comes over and introduces herself as a journalist. I agree to be interviewed for her article, and we start the tape. The first question is, have you had influences that encourage you to pursue primary care. hahah... my response? "Let me share a bit of my background, I am actually an HST MD/PhD student... (read: very very likely not ever primary care)." But she was still interested in hearing from me, and in fact, we had a very interesting conversation. I made two points about primary care that I honestly had never thought about before the moment I said them.

1. The payoff for going into primary care right now is not worth the investment. This is true economically, socially (the glam of the profession), or intellectually. But as the numbers decline, and this profession comes into high demand, then the relative value of this field will increase and again attract more students to it.

2. In terms of how to attract more people to the field. Just as how in HST/MSTP, we are on a set path and are passionate about academic research, if there were such a program for primary care, we would have equally passionate people dedicated to going into that field. If such a program existed at Harvard, these students would be backed by the prestige and opportunities available.

Right now, I'm thinking that Harvard doesn't deem the shortage in primary care as significant enough to initiate such a program. The journalist also said that of all the people she's interviewed here, no one has suggested such a possibility (which I believe also speaks to the general mindset).