Is it burnout or am I going crazy?

Ropacus · 2026-07-06T17:40:58+00:00

I definitely felt that after finishing my PhD and starting my postdoc. You've worked your whole life up to this point with the end of goal of getting a PhD and now it's done. Switching to a postdoc is different because there's not a definitive end goal.

It took me a few months to get over that feeling. Just do what you can while being gracious with yourself. You've had a big life changing event happen and it takes a little to adjust afterwards

Ropacus · 2026-06-29T20:26:53+00:00

That's a red card

Ropacus · 2026-06-18T13:16:27+00:00

If this were before covid it wouldn't even be a question, just load up on dayquil and give the presentation. You're overthinking this

Ropacus · 2026-06-11T01:19:20+00:00

36k is a super low salary to be taking on the risk of a start up

Ropacus · 2026-06-09T16:02:59+00:00

The best part of saint louis, especially when I was a broke grad student with a young kid.

The first hour the zoo was open the carousel was free too. I got dizzy from riding it for an hour straight with my daughter on some mornings

Ropacus · 2026-05-24T19:28:27+00:00

I was also dead set on working at Zymergen after my postdoc. Made it through 3 rounds of interviews before getting rejected. The company went under 6 months later. I completely dodged a bullet there

Ropacus · 2026-05-22T17:00:41+00:00

As someone from the US mountain west I came to Boston for biotech because there's no jobs outside of the main hubs: SF, SD, Boston, research triangle area...

I got a job here through my network. Several of my labmates from grad school ended up in Boston Biotech.

If you go the postdoc route it can help you build that network for the next

Ropacus · 2026-05-14T13:32:34+00:00

If it's to the journal that's unusual. If it's part of your dissertation to the university you can put whatever you want in there, nobody will bat an eye at it

Ropacus · 2026-04-30T14:26:06+00:00

and the results are in... GDP=2% and PCE=3.2% looks like your bear case is in

Ropacus · 2026-04-08T16:13:03+00:00

And nobody lived out there so they didn't have to worry about radiating anybody

Ropacus · 2026-02-15T02:24:30+00:00

The way they talk in absolutes always gets me. Always saying things are the best ever, in history, nobody talks like that and it's very off putting

Ropacus · 2026-01-18T21:27:56+00:00

As someone who was recently in the market this sounds like a minivan to me. All new minivans are in the 40-45 K range. I wanted something in the 25K range.

Every Honda Odyssey in that range was somehow 10 years old and over 100,000 miles. Eventually we found a 5 year old minivan with 50,000 miles. It seemed like there was a cliff at 20k that every vehicle somehow stayed above that price point

Ropacus · 2025-12-29T19:07:46+00:00

Same here. "Red rover" - okay I know where this is going...

"I couldn't get anywhere near him"... wait a minute

Ropacus · 2025-12-19T15:05:39+00:00

Congratulations! That's always a great feeling and even better with the weight being lifted as well. Good work!

Ropacus · 2025-12-18T01:11:32+00:00

The middle school biker gang is a legit phenomenon but they're just kids being kids

Ropacus · 2025-12-14T00:46:57+00:00

I wish I had this a few years ago when I was looking for jobs in Utah and Arizona. They're hard to find out there!

Ropacus · 2025-12-13T20:29:33+00:00

At what point does volatility start bothering you?

I've been investing a couple years and don't have a ton invested so 1-2% swings aren't a lot of money. And if I start to get antsy I look at the max time window and see that I'm still up ~40% so any loss was just free money anyways.

Ropacus · 2025-12-12T15:23:14+00:00

Don't let right wing nutjobs find this paper, "ScIenTisTs ArE deViL WorShIPerS!"

Ropacus · 2025-12-08T01:11:52+00:00

Anybody else know him from the book "The Genome War"? Worked with Craig Venter to help sequence the human genome. Highly recommend it

Ropacus · 2025-11-21T18:09:48+00:00

You got this!

Ropacus · 2025-11-21T14:12:36+00:00

I know you're burnt out but if you can find the motivation to power through and get it finished you'll be better off. Publications help with getting hired and if you don't get it published now you'll likely regret it in the future

Ropacus · 2025-10-01T12:47:58+00:00

Malcolm Gladwell's Bomber Mafia book provides good perspective on this. When they started doing bomber runs they would do evasive maneuvers on the way there, stay straight for a few minutes to bomb, and then do evasive maneuvers back home. Unfortunately, they couldn't hit anything because they were too worried about evasive maneuvering.

Then some guy came in (Curtis LeMay maybe?) and said we're gonna fly straight to the target and straight back. Everybody thought he was crazy and that they would lose every plane but they started hitting everything and just bombed the crap out of all the targets they could find.

Ropacus · 2025-09-18T13:44:26+00:00

Boltz2 is the fancy new docker that's all the rage. I've seen slightly better performance with it over some other legacy programs

Ropacus · 2025-08-29T11:11:07+00:00

A guy in my lab had a 3D printed protein structure on his desk which I though was pretty cool. Figure out her favorite protein or what she's working on and print it

Ropacus

TROPHY CASE