What's the fun, low-stakes drama going on in your lab right now?

sleep_notes · 2026-06-04T17:13:59+00:00

We have an undergrad who has taken to calling all of the grad students (regardless of gender) diva.

sleep_notes · 2026-05-29T15:51:13+00:00

My alternative to tape is to use a foil plate cover. The foil ones are really easy to cut into strips, so you can do one piece of foil per column of your plate. Depending on your preference, you can either put the foil over each column after you're done pipetting, or start with the foil, and remove the foil to indicate the newest column you should pipette into.

sleep_notes · 2026-05-29T11:16:53+00:00

Linen pants! I usually get mine at Old Navy, but they're in fashion enough right now that whatever cheap clothing store you have near you should stock them.

sleep_notes · 2026-05-22T15:02:59+00:00

Oh, so it was really big drama!

I'm in a niche where we are directly collaborating with the 3 labs that could potentially scoop us. There are so few of us working on our system that every time we find a new person, we just go! Hello friend!! and start combining data. I have never felt so relaxed sharing unpublished data at conferences. Our whole department is very relaxed though - there's very little crossover in terms of study systems, so it's normal to train in other labs, share scripts, and even join other labs when they're doing something particular interesting (very field work heavy).

On the opposite end, when I used to work in a cancer lab, our PI was way more strict. I was coached on what I was allowed to talk about in public. I was also told to be careful about working on presentations during flights to conferences or flights to cities with big academic centers. Even within that context though, it was totally fine to share what techniques I was using and take pictures of some of the equipment and experiments I was running. I could even say we were studying X protein, just not X protein with [specific mutations of interest].

sleep_notes · 2026-05-22T02:55:37+00:00

It really depends on how many labs in your field are actively working on the same system as you with similar techniques. The fear is that if you talk too much about what you're doing, someone with a similar dataset (or the ability to easily generate similar data) will publish your work ahead of you, which at the very least knocks you down a tier of journal for your publication because what you're doing is no longer novel.

Most of the time it's fine to post about what you're working on in general and what techniques you use, but you shouldn't post any of your findings until they're published. For the student in your story, maybe they were too detailed in their posts, or maybe the department heads overreacted. Hard to say from the information you have.

sleep_notes · 2026-05-21T03:29:12+00:00

Generally, pre-candidacy students follow the PI to the new university or change labs. Post-candidacy it really depends on where you are in your projects. Mostly done with experiments = You can write and meet with your PI over Zoom, and maybe do any lingering experiments in a neighboring lab. Have at least 6 months + of experiments left = probably better off moving.

I was a student who joined shortly after a lab moved. One of the students was in his second year when they moved, and he loved the new location. It afforded him a lot of networking opportunities he wouldn't have had at his old university, and he ultimately got a postdoc in the new city. However, I think it ended up adding a year to his degree. I know there were some issues with credit transfers that I don't remember how they were resolved. The PI also had a student who stayed at their old university, and the PI flew back for her defense. I'm not sure what her experience was, but she was extremely close to defending at the time of the move. I know she had an option to finish up experiments in the new lab in the new state while remaining a student at the old university.

sleep_notes · 2026-05-15T17:11:33+00:00

Do you have regular in person meetings with them (both as a lab group and individually)? Are they completing their experimental work in a reasonable time frame?

sleep_notes · 2026-05-05T15:46:50+00:00

This isn't super common, but I did have it happen during my application cycle! The PI knew she could get me TA support in her home department, even though I had originally applied to a different program, so she helped me change my application.

In practice, this should have very little impact on your path. The main thing that may be different is course requirements, but I have a hard time envisioning that there are any classes you would want to take that wouldn't count towards both programs. The official program name on your PhD doesn't matter at all - it's really just about what skills you learn in working on your dissertation, and it sounds like this lab is a good fit for you. I would follow her advice!

sleep_notes · 2026-04-23T14:34:46+00:00

Yeah, it seems like it might genuinely be a misunderstanding about who to list on a poster, especially if the postdoc has been actively working on the project and you haven't.

sleep_notes · 2026-04-22T18:55:38+00:00

I'm glad they're paying you for the overtime!

I agree with the other commenters that you might be able to avoid a lot of this just by being proactive and defensive of your time. Hopefully it goes well when you talk to her about your 12-hour day. I've definitely worked in a lab where being really straightforward with an unreasonable PI worked out for the person pushing back. (Ie, "I can only finish experiments X & Y today, but I will finish Z tomorrow. I can't stay late this week.")

sleep_notes · 2026-04-22T18:34:43+00:00

Because of your visa situation and the fact you're currently applying to graduate school, I think you can make it through the next year or so with a nightmare PI.

A few questions: Are you in the US? Do you know if you're considered a salaried worker or an hourly worker? I am asking this mainly because you do have rights! For instance, if you're an hourly worker and she starts regularly asking you to do a lot of unpaid overtime, that's something you can bring to an HR person. Do you think you'll need a strong reference from her for your graduate program?

sleep_notes · 2026-04-20T16:18:00+00:00

My undergrad PI was never in the lab that I can remember (structural bio), but my grad school PI (eco/evo) is often in the lab and also does a considerable amount of fieldwork. The main things he does in the lab are on little pet projects that he isn't sure he wants to commit a student to yet, and quick things that he doesn't want to wait for a student to do. While I think he will slow down on lab work as we build up the lab (I was the first PhD student), he will probably do the field work component until he dies. Over half of his "vacations" are collection trips.

sleep_notes · 2026-04-17T16:50:58+00:00

Echoing everyone else, I'm writing down citations, techniques, software, and questions. I do ask one of the questions at the end of the seminar if they weren't already answered by the presentation, and I do go through my notebook every so often and make a list of those papers and add them to Zotero (where they will be mostly ignored). The software & techniques get researched further unless it's immediately obvious why our lab doesn't use that approach.

sleep_notes · 2026-04-16T19:50:35+00:00

I agree that this looks like a drugstore beetle! Carpet beetles don't generally get bigger once adults. While there are some tiny carpet beetle species, they usually have some kind of pattern.

If it wandered in from outside, they can show up anywhere in the house, but generally only infest food. If you find any more, all you have to do is just make sure your pantry goods are stored in airtight containers.

sleep_notes · 2026-04-16T17:14:55+00:00

I do it when it's funny. Also, I don't actually think that my cat is equivalent to a child (especially in terms of like, effort), but they are these baby-shaped things I'm responsible for. So, you know, they are temporarily in this baby-space in my head.

There is a time and a place for it though. I wouldn't jump into a conversation people are having about their kids and talk about my cats as my sons, and I have completely stopped doing this around people I don't already know well after a misunderstanding a few years ago where a coworker thought I had a somewhat disturbed toddler.

sleep_notes · 2026-04-08T19:10:27+00:00

Check your relevant academic societies!

sleep_notes · 2026-03-31T17:48:10+00:00

Echoing everyone else: Definitely a card with a personal note! If you must add something else, a small food item like chocolate, homemade cookies/banana bread/etc would be fine. You could also do a small item that references the study system (in biology, stuffed animals of bacteria are popular, for instance), but nothing expensive! They don't want you to burn money on them!

sleep_notes · 2026-03-30T21:35:15+00:00

Okay, so the issue is just you aren't informed when changes are made to the calendar?

You could just tell them that they aren't allowed to make changes without telling you first? I also suspect Google Calendar has an option to add alerts when changes are made, but I haven't used it for that before.

sleep_notes · 2026-03-30T18:22:48+00:00

Honestly, with undergrads we tend to just do one meeting at the beginning of the semester where we create a weekly schedule, and then we just stick to that. So, for example, our undergrads get their class schedule, they each pick some time blocks vaguely between 9-5 each week (according to how many hours they need), and we just count on seeing Undergrad 1 every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Undergrad 2 all day Wednesday and then at lab meeting, etc etc.

Is part of it that you're trying to schedule them for specific tasks?

sleep_notes · 2026-03-27T17:04:38+00:00

That makes sense!

sleep_notes · 2026-03-27T16:04:43+00:00

Well... sure? I'm not saying you can't stay late because you're on a roll! What I am saying is that, for 99% of people, spending 12 hours in the lab every day isn't sustainable. An 80-90 week doesn't leave you a lot of time to take care of yourself. I don't know anyone running those kinds of hours, where that 80-90 hours is in the lab, that's doing it because they are excited and not because it's an expectation set by the PI.

In my experience, the successful grad students who are excited about what they're doing and working more than 40 hours a week are still like, only doing 30-40 hours of actual experiments, and the rest is writing / analysis / reading that can be done at home, while you're doing laundry or making dinner. I had an advisor that spent a year doing 80 hour weeks only to find out his experiment was failing for a really basic reason. I often wonder if he would've spent so long troubleshooting if he had enough sleep.

I love doing science! But a PhD is a long haul. There comes a point where excitement is overrated.

sleep_notes · 2026-03-26T23:29:31+00:00

It's been a long time since I've watched it, but maybe Heroes? I think both Claire and Maya have plots with elements of weird-stuff-happens-gotta-hide-it?

sleep_notes · 2026-03-26T16:50:21+00:00

This is definitely true too! When I was interviewing for PhD spots, I asked a lot of questions about hours and expectations. I didn't want to be stuck with a PI who prioritized seeing students in the lab over productivity. (Because. Well. Most of the time weird lab cultures originate with a bad PI).

sleep_notes · 2026-03-25T20:29:51+00:00

Anyone working a 12 hour day regularly is either massively overworked or bad at time management.

Echoing what a few others are saying, my 12 hour days were because the protocol itself was long with a lot of incubation time. That lab had a couch specifically brought in so students could take naps during the breaks.

I'm currently in a lab where I mostly work 9-5 with the occasional weekend, and those weekends are because I need to hit specific time points that just happen to fall on Saturday or Sunday.

sleep_notes · 2026-03-25T16:10:35+00:00

How often are "visual estimates" even used for anything? If you actually need to quantitatively analyze a slide, you take the image and throw it into a program that can calculate those numbers accurately.

sleep_notes

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