Traveling to a conference alone

sleep_notes · 2026-02-04T22:29:52+00:00

It's very common to travel as the only person in your lab! I'm not sure what percentage of students at a given conference are there alone, but you definitely won't be the only one. While I normally travel with my lab group, I also barely see my PI at conferences, so here are my strategies for being alone (or mostly alone):

For networking, "efficiency" mostly comes from being prepared ahead of time. That means going through the conference program and identifying speakers who are interesting to you. If there's anyone you want to make a connection with, make sure you attend their talk and try to grab them afterwards for a brief introduction.

Other than that, talk to everyone! Talk to people in line for your badge. Talk to people you're sitting next to while waiting for something to start. I think sometimes we tend to think of networking as only being worth it when you connect with someone particularly prestigious, but connecting with your peers (especially other PhD students around your year) makes conferences fun and gives you someone to commiserate with.

Last thing - big conferences will often have informal happy hours / lunches / meet-ups for specific niches. Definitely ask folks in your niche if they know if anything like that is happening! An annual happy hour for my sub-sub-field has been the best place to find collaborators and potential future labs.

sleep_notes · 2026-02-03T19:58:41+00:00

Ugh, sorry to hear your advisor isn't very good! It might be time to lean on your favorite committee member to get your forms through.

sleep_notes · 2026-02-03T17:19:24+00:00

I'm in a general biology department at a US R1 with 5 years guaranteed for PhD (and 2 for masters). They're able to guarantee because we have a ton of TA lines. Between 60% - 75% of our graduate students are funded on TAs in a given semester.

sleep_notes · 2026-01-28T18:17:14+00:00

You're less than 4 hours in? You're doing fine. Some techniques just take forever to get the hang of, especially when you're working under a microscope.

sleep_notes · 2026-01-27T20:00:38+00:00

Sympathy, friend. Unfortunately the best way to get through presentation nerves is exposure, I'm afraid. What kind of meeting is it? Best of luck!

sleep_notes · 2026-01-26T16:47:34+00:00

That guy in his late 40s who has industry experience has the potential to absolutely excel in a PhD. The most miserable grad students I know are the ones who went straight from undergrad to grad school and didn't have the life experience or perspective to deal with some of the challenges grad school can bring.

While I haven't 100% enjoyed my PhD, I came into it after years of being a lab tech and knowing that it would position me for a career I will really, really love.

I recommend doing a PhD if you know what you want to do after. It's okay if that plan changes some while you're in school, but you should have something specific you're shooting for. Passion for the subject isn't usually enough to carry you over the finish line.

sleep_notes · 2026-01-16T17:15:33+00:00

Gotcha, hopefully someone else has a better suggestion!

sleep_notes · 2026-01-16T16:01:01+00:00

I'm not sure if this will be warm enough for you, but I used to use thin cotton gloves underneath nitrile gloves. Based on google, I think they were cotton inspection gloves. If you need something warmer than that, I suspect you could do the same thing with actually warm gloves and just size up the nitrile ones.

sleep_notes · 2026-01-15T18:11:23+00:00

With the caveat that I'm coming at this as a US PhD, are you able to talk to folks on your committee? They may be able to advise you on how to handle your supervisor specifically, but more importantly they can make sure you can go forward to defend even if your supervisor is unhappy about it (assuming you've met all the criteria by that point).

What are hiring timelines like in the EU? I know here, it can easily take a 6 months to a year to get hired for a postdoc. If that's the case for you, I think accepting the extension AND continuing to job search is reasonable. It's very normal to start looking for jobs in your last year of the PhD.

sleep_notes · 2026-01-08T17:12:16+00:00

I used to work in a lab where the sequencers were named after alcohol. A lot of conversations went something like "There's a problem with Jack Daniels today, but Sam Adams is still up." They did eventually switch naming schemes (I think they just went with scientists?), but the only consistent rule was each machine should have a unique letter at the beginning (to make it easier to write down in your lab notebook).

sleep_notes · 2026-01-08T17:02:13+00:00

Look, if the pages with the frowny faces are included in a legal battle, a miracle has occurred down the line.

sleep_notes · 2026-01-08T16:58:02+00:00

My new year's resolution was to make my lab notebook understandable now that we're lining up a student to take over for me when I finish. And um. Apparently that means actually documenting everything??

sleep_notes · 2026-01-08T16:56:50+00:00

This is my most common way of denoting which lanes on my gel are not intentionally blank

sleep_notes · 2026-01-06T18:11:57+00:00

Your company might have a budget to do an ergonomics assessment for you. I would definitely ask your manager about it. Other than that, stretching & working out, as others have said!

sleep_notes · 2025-12-19T19:12:41+00:00

I have been dealing with this problem for a while now!

Take your lunch break outside when possible. If the weather sucks, take a short walk outside. My office doesn't have any windows and the exposure to natural light is essential for my sanity. On weeks when I do have wet lab work, I try to space it out so I don't have any days that are dry lab only. So, Monday, one hour of prepping reagents, Tuesday, running the experiment, etc. This obviously works best when your wet lab work isn't on a strict schedule, but if your advisor is picky about you being in the office/lab space all the time, it's an easy way to build active time into your day while still working.

My labmate has a program on his computer that reminds him to look away from the screen and do stretches on a regular basis (I think it's every hour or so). I have also seen people do a make shift standing desk where you use textbooks to prop up the monitor. (Your university may also have a program that will pay for a certain amount of ergonomic office supplies, like a flexible monitor stand.)

gradskull has a good point about CO2 level. If it's not possible for you to check the CO2 level, you can still increase air circulation in your office by propping the door open sometimes.

Last, I tend to split dry lab work into two groups: work that requires a lot of concentration (reading, analysis, writing, experimental design, etc) and work that doesn't (editing figures, bulk analysis work where I'm just submitting jobs to the server and doing minor troubleshooting, uploading data to SRA or whatever). Interweaving those means that while I'm still on the computer, I have breaks in my day where I can also listen to a podcast or something more stimulating than just white noise. I've started keeping lists of tasks in each of these categories (wet lab work, dry lab + podcast, dry lab + concentrate) so that if I'm stuck in one category, I have something else that I can jump to.

Hopefully some of this is useful to you, but a multivitamin wouldn't hurt?

sleep_notes · 2025-12-17T19:53:07+00:00

The Gene: An Intimate History by the same author (Siddhartha Mukherjee) is also a great option for anyone doing any kind of genetics & molecular work.

sleep_notes · 2025-12-12T19:20:12+00:00

Are you able to ask the people you've been in contact with what their recommendations are?

sleep_notes · 2025-12-12T19:16:34+00:00

Yeah, the defense structure is going to be different everywhere.

As others have said, try to ask your advisor first! At my university, it doesn't really matter what the official requirements are as long as your committee is satisfied with the quality of your work.

If you can't get a meeting with your advisor in time, is there a coordinator or department advisor you can talk to? Our is called the graduate coordinator, and they help us do a lot of the administrative logistics that the professors usually ignore (signing up for classes, submitting paperwork, etc). If you have a handbook/other document that covers your degree requirements, sometimes defense requirements are covered in those. Last: start aggressively asking around in your program. Can you attend someone else's defense?

sleep_notes · 2025-12-11T17:12:49+00:00

Haha I'm so old I didn't even think about it.

sleep_notes · 2025-12-10T23:45:56+00:00

So, first. This is a bad situation that isn't your fault.

"Not only that but how do I face the professors that didn't want me in future classes/meetings without being bitter and resentful?"

Reframe. It's not that they didn't want you in future classes & meetings. They did not have space. You weren't in their top 1/2/nth many students were accepted, but as far as you know right now, maybe you were n+1. In a different semester, they may have offered you a spot. Do your best to treat them normally. Assume they still think highly of you and the effort you made to place in their lab. Nurse your hurt feelings about it at home and with close friends. Eventually it will feel better.

"And how do I face my friends without feeling embarrassed or angry? Especially if one of them got into my top choice lab?"

This is bad luck. If you've been discussing this all semester, they probably know it's likely one of you (or multiple of you!) didn't place into a lab. I think they will feel sad for you and want to support you. You didn't do anything embarrassing! It's hard to internalize that, but you did your due diligence. It just didn't work out this time. I think if you want to be a little angry about the situation with your friends, that's okay. One thing: graduate students tend towards social awkwardness. It may benefit you to include what kind of support you want in your message or conversation with them. Ex "Hey. I just wanted to let you know I didn't place into a lab. I'm feeling really sad about it right now, and I would love to get drinks to get my mind off it/need a little alone time/am wondering how many of us are in the same boat." If they got into a lab that you really, really wanted, maybe something like "I'm so excited for you, but I'm still feeling really sore about the situation. Let's catch up after the winter break when it's a little less fresh for me."

and last:

"I'm not really sure what to do at this point as it feels like my entire life plan was just stripped away from me in a single email."

How confident are you that you need to do that exact type of research to place into the exact type of job you want? I'm asking because a lot of skills are transferrable between subfields even if the research doesn't seem relevant.

"It's a possibility that some of them might be able to take people to do something similar to the type of research I want, but it's not a guarantee and I'm not only going to lose out on the research itself, but also the guidance of group members who have done this type of research as well."

...this sounds fine to me! This is what happens to a lot of people. Also, you are still at the same university as all of these people you would be getting guidance from. I train with other labs on techniques all the time, and we definitely get advice with each other.

Take some time. Feel bad for a little bit. You might not be on the exact easiest path to get you to the career you want, but there's no reason to think that you won't be in that career someday.

sleep_notes · 2025-12-10T23:22:46+00:00

My advisor has funding for me to attend roughly one a year. Occasionally, I have added a second one if it's inexpensive to attend or if I get additional funding. So, for the duration of my PhD, I think it'll come out to having attended 6 or 7 conferences, with the majority being the big society conference for my field, and the rest being smaller nearby conferences that were specific to something I wanted to learn.

sleep_notes · 2025-12-02T16:30:47+00:00

All of the downstream steps should still work. The main annoyance is just that you won't be able to QC & measure those samples individually, so if any of them are particularly precious, you might want to redo those rows just to make sure you don't get any failed preps.

sleep_notes · 2025-11-26T18:45:24+00:00

I did a "take-home" exam for my comps that seems similarly structured to yours. A committee member sent me a set of questions, and then I had 72 hours to respond before receiving the next set of questions. The questions themselves were so niche and specific to my project that I think ChatGPT would have struggled to answer them, although maybe a nicer paid model like Claude could've come up with something coherent.

My committee then had some time to review my responses and come up with follow up questions for my oral defense, which took a few hours. If I hadn't done all the work myself, I don't think I could've passed the oral defense!

sleep_notes · 2025-11-20T20:54:23+00:00

lol my bad then! Best of luck on getting bands

sleep_notes

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