Moving is part of a modern scientific career. Nor is it uncommon to have a partner of a different nationality, to live and work abroad for years at a time, and to use a second language (often English) as a working language.
Fellow travellers
Science and the arts are often portrayed as polar opposites, but the truth is that they’re far closer than many of their practitioners even realise. Continue reading
Apprentice yourself, part 2 (a professor’s perspective)
We have a guest posting this week from Prof. Tim Skern of the Max F. Perutz Laboratories in Vienna, Austria. As well as providing a counterpart to TIR‘s earlier post on how to choose a PhD position, Tim also offers a number of recommendations for how to handle yourself in PhD interviews.
The drawbacks of learning on the job
In benchwork, learning from your mistakes is an important, essential, and helpful part of the tuition process. There are so many variables to control in the average molecular biology experiment that those with anything less than the greenest of green fingers will probably need several iterations to get publication-quality data. Ironically though, it’s often best when things don’t go right the first time.
The perils of an arranged marriage
Science is big on collaboration. With such a variety of knowledge and expertise it’s crucial to get advice from, and work alongside, people who are specialists in a particular area. But while that sounds great on paper, it’s surprisingly hard to achieve in practice. Collaborations are actually relationships in a real sense, and like real relationships, they’re very difficult to get right. In fact, many scientific collaborations bear more resemblance to an arranged marriage than a love match.
A small milestone, pt. 3, 4 (thanks for reading!)
TIR began in 2016. We’ve had milestone posts to mark our 1,000th and 2,000th visitors, and at the end of May we welcomed our 4,000th visitor.
Then this happened, and we can now greet our 5,000th, 6,000th, 7,000th, 8,000th, 9,000th, and indeed our 10,000th visitors. So it’s not one but two doublings we’re marking today, and we’re well on our way to our next exponential target of 16,000.
The cell biologist’s guide to fine dining
A lighthearted post this week. What would the publishing landscape be like, if journals were restaurants instead of publications? TIR offers its own, definitely not Michelin-starred, guide…
Why Mentors Fail
One of the most thought-provoking economics reads of the last few years, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s “Why Nations Fail“, basically picks up where Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” left off. But what’s the link to mentoring?
Setting sail (a short guide to choosing a postdoc in academia)
In the latest of our “How to…” guides, we’ll be looking at how to choose a postdoc position in academia.
The fast-paced life of a snail
One of the best aspects of the scientific life is the opportunity it offers to see the world. Continue reading
Total Internal Reflection 