A traveller’s guide for grad students, Phdkim net

Papers are peer-reviewed, funding proposals go through the committee. Impact factor (value of IF would be a great post for later!), JCR ranking, citation numbers, h-index… It feels like everything in our community is continuously measured, compared and assessed.
But what about grad school laboratory? If you just start looking for which lab to join. How much info do (or did) you have about laboratories or the potential PIs?

When we apply for University, grad school or even postdoc, the schools or Pis want and they can have information about us. And try to choose the best candidates available. But as a beginner researcher when you apply for the lab, all we get is the webpage of the laboratory or google scholar profile (if they have). Oh, how about you just contact current lab student and ask them how it is? Yeah, it cannot work… Either their thesis, next paper authorship or even recommendation letter could be in jeopardy. So yeap insider information is a no-no.

How unbalance is that? how much really important information we are missing, or not even realise that we could ask?

With that idea in mind, some youngsters in Korea created a website so-called 김박사넷, phdkim.net. ‘Kim’ is a really common surname in Korea. And part of their contents is similar to that of Tripadvisor if you exchange ‘trip’ to ‘laboratory’. So you get the idea. The website tries to adjust this unbalanced distribution of information.

With anonymous input from the students’ side, information of each laboratory is provided in public. Like the below image.

Measured categories are

  1. the ambience in the lab: like the relationship with colleagues, or whether the meeting is aggressive or soft
  2. the personal character of PI
  3. lecture skill
  4. mentoring or writing skill of scientific journal paper
  5. and practical financial support from the lab.

Not only this but also you can leave a short comment to describe your experience with the lab. Like a google review. There are way more to this website now because they are growing. Scholarship info, admission info, how to write a CV and anonymous online forum where you can discuss sensitive issues, etc. Unfortunately, it is only for Koreans now. Only in Korean language and about Korean labs.

It sounds so beautiful so far right? Well, we all know nothing can be perfect in real life. Already in most scientific communities, the authority of Professor over students is super strong. As so-called, academic parents. And Korea is not an exception. So there were some legal actions from some professors. Rumours about some lab comments were censored by professors. And lots of students are afraid to participate and contribute to the website at the beginning of this project.

Also, inputs from students could be tainted and biased also. It is an apparent temptation for people using anonymity to express their personal anger. We already see twisted side effects in the platforms like google reviews, Tripadvisor, Airbnb… And how many different labs or professors you could experience as one person. The reviews will be always personal and subjective.

So I cannot say it is the perfect solution to the issue that we have in the community but it is something new and meaningful start. Yes, I think it might be already happening that some lab’s reputation is unfairly criticized, or some professors fighting back with their authoritarian power. But I hope this new idea grows and evolves in a good direction.

You might be more familiar with the site (or app) ‘Blind’ that provides an anonymous forum for people in industries. Information like salaries, promotion, interview and internal policy rumours which normally only shared by insiders (especially higher in the chain) is getting revealed on to the surface. I am seeing a pattern here. Cannot say this new trend is going to be a bliss or a curse yet.

Have you ever heard of a similar concept like this in other countries or communities (let’s say not even in science)? Appreciate it if you could share us with a comment.

How I had first fallen for Physics

I clearly remembered the day; it was mid monsoon in 2000, and I was in my early thirteen. The whole day was raining, being lazy I decided to bunk the school on that day, giving a lame excuse to my mom of the possibility of catching a cold 😉. In Spring that year, my family relocated from a village nowhere in India to a suburb close to Calcutta (now it’s called Kolkata). So, I had to change my school, and as a shy dumbass, I hadn’t made many friends by that time, whom I could hang out with, neither I had access to the internet. My pass time then was reading—mostly novels or comics. However, that particular day I ended up checking my new physics textbook. To make things even more dramatic, for some god damn reason, mom lit an incense stick and kept it in my room. Now I think of the situation, it must have been a Devil’s conspiracy. Casually I started flipping the first few pages. The next thing I remembered, I already skimmed through about twenty to thirty-odd pages. I was so hooked like I was reading a thriller, and yet, everything that I read made complete sense. This had never happened with any other school text that I came across. Yep, that was the start of my love affair with Physics. Neither a teacher nor the story of a heroic physicist, but just a mere juxtaposition of drizzle outside and fragrance of incense burning indoor ignited the flame that is still on. A fair share of the credit must go to the authors, but unfortunately, I can’t recall their names. Perhaps this is how Science should work; it is our work and not our names that should be meaningful and impactful.

Do share how it had all started for you 🙂.

A Gratitude Journal, for when you are feeling down

As researchers, we are always dreaming or under pressure to publish in high impact journals to secure our career or even to prove our life is meaningful. So here Let me introduce an open-access, self-reviewed, ultra-high impact (for your life) journal aka ‘Gratitude Journal’ for your mental health.

‘Gratitude Journal’, literally you write down the things you feel thankful for. Even the tiny things or small positive events happen in your daily life. This action of thinking and writing down can boost positivity in your mind. It is a simple concept but a somewhat powerful tool. When you are down (either due to covid or insecurity of your career etc.) I highly recommend you to do this.

2020 April 10, I was in the middle of the 1st national covid-lockdown in France. My laboratory decided to shut down itself completely. As an experiment-based postdoc, total lockdown with an indefinite open-up schedule was unbearable. On top of that, I already had decided that 2020 should be my last year as a postdoc (it was 5th year). I didn’t have big fancy papers published and my first paper from the French lab was getting rejection after rejection. I realized that my postdoc in France was a high-risk high-return gamble and this stock price was going down. I was thinking about the ‘sunk cost’. What should I do? What can I do?

For the first time in my life, I felt something is not okay with my mind. I was anxious, not eating well, no motivation to do physical exercises. Even I did not feel like going out for a short walk and get some sunlight. Maybe one can describe this as early symptoms of depression. Of course, I knew I was not the only one suffering! But knowing that I was not alone did not help. I was struggling.

I could not even start watching ‘watch later list’ on Netflix. Although I was not in a situation to do proper scientific works, I felt guilty about watching something for fun. I was checking covid news constantly, reading covid related medical articles, only clicking short youtube clips which is related to covid news. And as for short term mood-tranquilliser, I constantly browsing some Korean internet humour community (like 9GAG). I was not well.

By chance, I stumbled upon ‘Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell’ youtube channel. And the clips about ‘gratitude journal’ caught my attention.

Ok, the introduction was too long. Below was my gratitude journal on that day. It can be seen as a bit narcissistic or too naively optimistic. But that is the point! This journal is for me exclusively, just mere writing process itself helped me.

  1. I am still safe in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak in France. So far, 120,000 people have been infected and 12,000 people have died. 1000 death per day, the intensive care unit is already over the maximum capacity counting over 7000. (April 2020)
  2. A Korean grocery shop started delivery service and my first order arrived today. Surprisingly when I am stressed I am craving for Korean taste.
  3. I am not alone, I am staying with my girlfriend. I would have been way more depressed if I had been alone.
  4. I did a final interview for a permanent research position just before lockdown. Even if I don’t get the job, I would say it was a small miracle that I got to the final round without publishing a big paper recently.
  5. In a way, it is more comfortable not to work in the lab. With my paper not being published and I constantly think about quitting postdoc, let’s say it was not as smooth as before at work with my team.
  6. France has plenty of food supply. I don’t have to worry about stocking.
  7. It’s great that Covid numbers in Korea much lower. At least I don’t have to worry about my mother too much.
  8. I have good friends in Korea. (I name each of them)
  9. I have a quite healthy body.
  10. Today the sunlight is really warm and good. It feels good to just sit by the window. Coming over to my girlfriend’s house with a balcony was a good choice.
  11. I am still getting paid, thank god that my job is a fundamental researcher.
  12. I got a good brain. This allows me to study, work, and experience the world outside of my own community.
  13. Although I am from an extremely poor background, my parents were not an obstacle. Rather, I received surprisingly great support from them.
  14. I don’t have particularly any complexes about my look or height.
  15. I don’t have particularly any complex about my education. Because I got a degree from a famous university in Korea. I know it sounds weird.. but this is quite a Korean cultural thing.
  16. It has been already 3 years and a month since I started living out of Korea. At least for the drinking culture, I am quite free. I guess my liver is much healthier than that of average Korean guys of my age.
  17. It’s funny to say, but it’s nice to be born in South Korea, not North Korea.
  18. I did my compulsory military service as a research agent. I still think that the decision to be a research agent was one of the best decisions I have made so far. If I did normal armed forces for 2 years, tight lifestyle could alter my mental (and physical) health or could twist my personality to some extent. I feel lucky that I did not have to do dangerous training or harsh duties. Especially after I realised that a private insurance company now sells insurance for men doing compulsory military service in case of physical harm. Because our government has been doing a really great(?) job to take care of our young men when they got injured during the military service. Sad! What a shame!
  19. When I was in high school, I decided that I should be good at English. At that moment I didn’t know what kind of exact benefit I would get in the future. It was a great choice. I benefit a lot from being fluent in English (significant enough for non-native speaker).

If this simple tactic sounds convincing for you. You might also want to check out a blog article from Scientific American. A professor talking about how she dealt with all the stress and anxiety came from competitive career development. Even though she talks about the difficulties in life as a faculty professor, I could still find some elements to relate to my situation (postdoc). Anyway the title of the article is ‘The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life‘. You can find a similar concept in her article ‘I created a “feelgood” email folder’.

Oh yeah, thanks to my self-published journal, finally I got some motivation to take a walk that evening.