Take a look at this article below from a monthly column called The Sometimes Serious Scientist. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
Alice Ly, postdoctoral researcher at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany writes, "Been there, done that.
But for those of you who haven’t, here’s a glimpse of the future…"
I was visited by a
friend over the Christmas break. And not just any old friend either–a
friend I met while we both completed a year-long research project as the
final stage of our undergraduate degrees. As we reminisced on the
intervening years, it occurred to us that this was the first step on our
way to careers as research scientists.
We reflected on how we evolved from shiny happy little students into
grad students and then research scientists, held together by varying
percentages of optimism, masochism, sleep deprivation, chocolate, coffee
and alcohol. For every scientist, there are of course differences in
the journey (and levels of optimism, masochism, sleep deprivation,
etc.), but I think we can all agree on several universal stages. And the
most universal time is of course that period we’ve all gone through–the
PhD…
Stage 1–Look out World–here I come!
This stage could start from any age and be spurred by any number of
events. For example, you may have been obsessed by computers as a child
and loved museum displays, or maybe it was the first time you dissected
an heart or worm in high school (hey, it happens!).
All we can really say is that upon finishing your Honors or Masters
projects, it was strong enough to make you decide that you were
definitely going to continue on to a PhD. It was strong enough for you
to write the application to the professor to join their lab. And it was
strong enough that you were definitely going to devote your life to
living in a happy intellectual world, surrounded by people who cared
about figuring things out.
Aims: LEARN ALL THE THINGS!!!! REVOLUTIONIZE EVERYTHING!!!
Motivation level: Spending vacation time doing research projects? SIGN
ME UP!!!
Read more...
Related link
Asian Scientist Magazine takes on the challenging task of defining the 7 steps to publishing a scientific paper.
7 Steps To Publishing A Scientific Paper | Asian Scientist
Source: Asian Scientist Magazine