Tasks

During graduate school my work fell into one of a few categories, experiment design, data analysis, data collection, writing, reading articles. That’s about everything. The ratio depended on what stage I was at; lots of reading during prelim times, lots of design & writing during the dissertation. Probably the most writing I’d ever done.

Since then it hasn’t really let up. I came into a pretty good postdoc situation. I have RAs doing a lot of work for me, that frees up focus on design, data analysis, and writing. Lots and lots of writing. Looking at my task list for this week it reads:
1. Writing: for that grant you’re applying for
2. Writing: to finally publish your dissertation work¹
3. Writing: more edits on that short paper you advisor swore we’d get out 6 months ago
4. Writing: that other paper
5. Writing: that other other paper
6. Writing: kinda hoping the reviews on that paper we sent out don’t come back yet because that would mean more writing.

Soon that will be joined with the various writing needed for job applications. My writing has never been amazing but has steadily improved. Now the crucial skill is working on getting from “here is my submitted manuscript” to “here is my accepted manuscript”. Things like handling crazy reviewer requests and hornery co-authors.

This is what happens when you step away from the bench into a semi-supervisory but not quite a PI role. More top-down stuff, less grunt work. I knew this would happen My graduate school profs always noted that things change after graduate school². I suppose I could talk about this not being what I got into science for, because it isn’t, but neither was the grunt work. I guess I’m at least happy that I’m learning new skills.

1. Even if you are so sick of it you might vomit on your computer
2. So enjoy the easy part while you can, was the gist of it.