23 November 2009
By Armando Carlone
Working in a completely different field with respect to my PhD and joining a large and high-impacting group; I wanted to make the most of my postdoc.
However, jumping into such a large group with hardly any clue about their chemistry turned out to be quite scary. Dealing with many new people while becoming familiar with the new lab and department added to the challenge of getting into this unfamiliar chemistry.
No matter what you do, the best way to accelerate the learning process is to join a project which is already underway. Unfortunately this hindered my motivation for the research as the project had already been planned. All we had to do was to solve the problems and overcome the obstacles that could be encountered along the way.
One day I took a break from work to go and have a beer with one of my fellow postdocs. He and I joined the group together and he also felt this lack of motivation. We both exclaimed at once: “we have to come up with our own project!”. After one hour and two pints, we had drafted a brilliant new project on a napkin.
I came back to work full of motivation, I finished the work I had started before the break while structuring a plan for the new project. Back home, a delicious dinner and a good bottle of wine were the reward to celebrate.
Lesson for the future: face your problems; don’t let them take over you.
Nick Dickens23 November 2009 at 02:12 PM
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This sounds like a very sensible recommendation to me, although I have heard some less inspired projects being created in the pub...hopefully this isn't one of them. Good luck with it.
George Whale23 November 2009 at 02:34 PM
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Armando, I think this an excellent solution to the loss of motivation that can afflict researchers involved in projects that have already been fully conceptualized and designed. Generally, I would like to see more opportunities for contract researchers, individually or in consortia, to pursue their own research ideas, apply for funding independently, and decide for themselves which institution(s) they would like to work in/with. In practice, this would mean diverting a small proportion of the money that now goes through the institutions to make it directly available to researchers. (I believe that something like this already happens at European level.) I believe that under such a scenario, good new ideas would be less likely to be lost simply because the originating researchers lacked influence. Moreover, the originators would remain in control of the design, execution and publication of the research: constituting a modest but significant shift of power in favour of contract research staff.
Sarah Davies25 November 2009 at 03:51 PM
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Thanks Armando - I particularly like that your re-motivation involved a day full of drinking (pub at lunchtime, bottle of wine that night)! Do let us know how things go with your project plans - it would be interesting to hear how you find the ups and downs of proposal submission.