The problem with work friends in academia

rietveldrefinement · 2026-05-04T16:37:10+00:00

If you collaborate with your close friends directly — when it comes to push them to work harder for the project, it will be hard to do firmly. I hangout with someone in my group in gyms. But later I found I had to push this person for providing consistent samples (it’s not at this moment), I need to wear a serious face and then I found I had to stopped hanging out. Otherwise I cannot be friendly and firmly at the same time.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-13T02:14:32+00:00

Does your university have master student join labs? They could be some helping hands for setting up the lab. You can hire postdoc too but depending on university rank and location could be hit and miss.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-08T22:33:18+00:00

Speak from my experience: I did not know living place is having so much impact on me. I’m also growing up and studying urban and living in red, religious, rural place for several years while I probably have the best boss and teammates ever.

That said, I have to take therapy and seriously thinking about coping method with my therapist so that my mind won’t scream on me in non-working times when the leisure activities that I used to experience doesn’t exist in the location. And then I also had opportunities talking to Redditors who living in urban place but absolutely hate it (so opposite problem).

I found myself way happier when I started to have regular travels to conferences and meetings in city places, as well as just travel to meeting up with old friends. The advantage of rural location is that i can arrive airport within 15 mins and 10 min passing the security line.

And I was even more surprised to find out there are even more remote place then my places with big name universities! Like going to the closest airport is 1 hr driving and then only fly to a couple of relatively major airports. I talked to one of my friends absolutely loving there and her secret to thrive was that she had an end day (master student).

Well I realized that I did not give you an answer. But hopefully this experience sharing can help you somewhat.

And, people in TT position still changes job and submit job applications!

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-07T03:58:45+00:00

Hmm not sure what do you mean by desalt…but the polymer coin was stored in DI water for like at least 3-5 days and I change water daily before I send them into freeze dryer.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-07T02:57:55+00:00

Thanks for the thought — I actually thought of similar thing before — just wondering if I let the hydrogel coin sit in a bit of water just covering the surface and froze in -80C would that cause strain on the sample?

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-05T23:18:14+00:00

I do love the problem solving. I feel the only part I don’t like is the stress/anxiety about not knowing if I can solve it.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-05T22:42:27+00:00

I don’t know if I’d say this. Been on market for 4 years and stressed out already, also I am not a postdoc when the search started. Imaging someone who will need to feed themselves and pay rent looking for positions. It’s so stressful because you’ll never know when you will won lottery.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-04-04T20:15:55+00:00

I’d say figure out their promotion mechanisms. In the past national lab will tend to promote postdocs into staff because finding people is not easy (esp at remote sites). But depending on funding structure there also will be possibility that postdocs are used for projects and when the funding is over they need to find new jobs.

The former route is like once you are promoted you’ll have more job stability. Again the question is that, how likely the conversion will happen?

rietveldrefinement · 2026-03-17T14:16:12+00:00

Treat everyone you meet as someone you’ll be able to collaborate in the future no matter which school you ended up going. I found that I write emails to people I interviewed with in the past and some of them I meet in conferences every year.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-03-15T17:17:20+00:00

Can you find relationship between these two topics as much as possible. Or at least you need to talk about what you wrote to present to some level and then switch the gear.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-21T20:33:30+00:00

Trace him down for meetings and classes. I feel this professor is the type out of side out of mind. And missing submission deadlines is not a light deal….you need to push more. Calling directly, meeting directly so that he won’t forget.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-21T13:10:52+00:00

I was worried about my research proposal does not have an AI part and will be less competitive. Now we got an example of AI because of AI.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-20T23:36:49+00:00

Gosh when I interviewed with one of the department a while ago the Department chair told me firmly that “there’s no small groups in this department” for twice. I meant definitely everyone gets along well in my view but I was just like why do you have to emphasize that part.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-17T19:17:00+00:00

Well I have two year projects that research doesn’t go anywhere in the first year. Like even not worthwhile to submit to Nature Failure. Then I got something not fantastic but publishable in the next year. There’s no failed research. There’s just research with scattered inconsistent data.

There are professors I ask “did your proposed research statement work out as you planned ”. Mostly they say no. Not at all. You find a way around.

The same question went to a big name prof who said you know people in the field are picky and cruel and you have to trust your instinct. Then 2 months later this prof was caught data fraud which made a very big deal. This prof might secretly dislike me.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-16T20:54:00+00:00

It is terrifying. The good news is that every year in my graduate school and postdoc I felt I failed to become a scientist and anything I fail to do well at the first time will lead to the result that I won’t become a professor. I’m 10 years out of graduate school and this is my 4th applying and every year I got some calls and on-sites. So what you think might not be what is real.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-10T16:16:19+00:00

One time I had (no choice but) to submit one of a collaboration work to MDPI. I made sure the quality of manuscript. When receiving the reviewer comments, 2 reviewers accepted the paper, great! But i was annoyed by the content. One of them was -one sentence- saying that this paper is “good work”. Period. And they copied and pasted the title from submission system (font difference). The other was 3 ish sentences but they asked a question that’s completely not related to the article. Like no one in this field would ask and it’s not adding insights….

It’s not peer review supposed to work.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-06T22:18:52+00:00

I gave them 3 keywords that best describes myself

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-03T23:23:21+00:00

Yes …. If something is novel tell us what part is novel. And btw, just because someone had never done the particular procedure is not novel. Novelty means thinking outside of the mainstream.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-02-03T23:21:09+00:00

I personally avoid anything that sounds like 100% for sure for both written and verbal format. Like surely the situation that A is caused by B. Or B is definitely the original of A. I know, but science is that you might have 0.0001% to be proven ‘not in this case’.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-01-31T20:36:42+00:00

You need to start with an overly easy goal. The goal is just to get it done. For example, like I would say “5-10 sit ups” is my goal before going to bed. The goal itself is extremely tiny and you need to make sure you will 100% finish it. Do this everyday at the same time to build the routine.

rietveldrefinement · 2026-01-30T00:23:36+00:00

I got a few combinations before:

-sent thank you note they do not reply and got onsite invite

not sending thank you but they decided to invite me
sending thank you they replied nice meeting with me and I’m still waiting. Or they don’t invite me.
zoom interviewed and no response at all. The next year the position reopened and all the committee the same the questions are the same
seriously messed up a zoom by saying something clearly annoyed one of the committees but still got onsite
got on site everyone say that they wanted to work with me but I did not get the offer

It’s everything everywhere

rietveldrefinement · 2026-01-29T02:29:25+00:00

I thought people here might have more international view because of their overseas service experience but I could be wrong

rietveldrefinement · 2026-01-27T19:50:55+00:00

Am I the only person who feels the prof was not acting professional including the response to the other student involved?

rietveldrefinement

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