I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger...

Last week was my department's recruitment for new students for graduate school. The upcoming two weekends are recruitment for other programs at my graduate school.  As I saw these young, eager students last weekend, I couldn't help but reflect on my experience as a recruit three years ago when I was in their exact same shoes. I was so young and naive back then, thinking that research was such a glamorous and noble profession. I came in all round eyed and bushy tailed, thinking that I was going to cure cancer and actually contribute something to the scientific field. Now, I am a jaded third year graduate student that has learned some valuable life lessons in science.

As most people know, I took two years off after graduating from undergrad with a degree in biochemistry. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to medical school or if I wanted to go to graduate school. I took an Immunology class in college as an elective and found my passion in science. I found it absolutely fascinating how the body has the ability to fight off diseases and can recognize specific things. I interned at the Mayo Clinic the summer between junior and senior years. I was fortunate to work in the same laboratory after graduation. The experience there was very valuable, I expanded my toolbox of learning different techniques that have made me into a very good graduate student.


What I didn't learn from this experience was just how bad the atmosphere of research is. I was young and naive and thought it would be really easy to become a principal investigator at a large research institution (Yes, at one point I thought I would want to do this). Right now, funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH, where most of the public funding comes from for my field of study) is at an all-time low, and you pretty much have to be one of the top researchers in the field to get the funding now (even though they usually have a ton of money). A lot of new investigators are not getting support, labs are having to downsize and sometimes shut down because of lack of funding. It is not a good situation.


Our department has been actively trying to recruit new faculty members since I started graduate school. Seeing where these candidates did his/her research in both graduate school and post-docs has made me realize that I am in no position really to become a PI. I have also seen that being a PI really takes you away from the benchwork. My boss still does quite a lot of bench science, but has been busy writing and reviewing grants for the last year. I know now that I do not want to do that; I don't want to deal with the politics of research, the bureaucracy, the ass kissing it takes to get far, and dealing with a profession that is still an old boy's club (but I still am not sure what I want to do when I graduate; I am leaning towards patent right now).

This last year has been a maelstrom of shittiness when it comes to science. In the beginning of 2011, I was working hard trying to get preliminary data for a grant that my boss was going to submit in March. Things stopped working the way that they should have been working. As a result, we didn't end up submitting the grant (it was a competitive renewal of a grant that needed to get funding). After that fiasco, I took off time from the lab to write my comprehensive exam (which I freaking rocked, of course my thesis has completely changed in the last year). After I came back from my comps exam, I worked my ass off for two months again, trying to get preliminary data to get the grant submitted again. This experience nearly killed me and made me really question whether this is what I wanted in my life (I had about 48 hours off in that time period where I flew back briefly for my friends Brooke and Rama's wedding in Minneapolis). I was working 10-13 hours a day, full days on weekends. I would come home from work and be so physically exhausted that I was barely eating dinner and crashing on the couch. July 30th came and we finally submitted the grant! I was so relieved and flew home for a long weekend to Minnesota to see my best friend, Teri, before she moved to Japan for three years. While in Minnesota, I seriously contemplated whether I wanted to come back to Colorado and work on my PhD. In the end, I decided to come back to Colorado. I had another mild nervous breakdown two weeks later when two papers were published in Science that pretty much refuted the first aim of our grant. After much deliberation, my boss decided to withdraw our grant. I am not going to lie, it sucked, it sucked a lot. In the end, I know that it was the best possible thing that we could since it would not have been scored (and grants only get 2 submissions now, instead of 3). 

This experience has definitely made me stronger. I now know my boundaries for working hard and I have told my boss that I can never work like that again for that long of a time. We are still working on the grant, and hope to have it submitted by April 15th. We have hit a few more hurdles with the research, but I am not letting it bring me down anymore. Instead, I am making this a learning lesson and trying to troubleshoot as much as possible. I am working on a side project with my awesome post-doc Julita, which will result in a second authorship for me. The experiments for this part of my thesis have been going surprisingly well (knock on wood). I am going to stick it out for the long run, so I can get the satisfaction of being called Dr. Dege sometime in my life ;).


As I saw those recruits last weekend, I wondered: do they know how bad funding is right now? do they know how hard it is to get a faculty position? do you know how many long days and weekends you are going to have to work and get no recognition? I just hope that these potential students still retain this optimism and enthusiasm.


I think about the old song "Ooh La La" by Ronnie Wood, made famous by The Faces.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.
Ooh la la
Ooh la la, la la.

If I knew the things I knew now, would I still choose the difficult graduate school path or taken the easy route to medical school? I am not one to have regrets about the past. I believe that everything I have done in my life has changed and shaped me into the person that I am today. I've made some great friends out here, I love living in Colorado, I have learned some valuable technical skills, and more importantly, I have learned a lot about myself. So yes, this has been a great experience with me. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.