I must admit I shed a bit of a happy tear when this arrived unsolicited in my inbox, it’s been a bit of a week. My next thought was that there is no way I could share it, as it would be the epitome of self promotion, and that’s never considered to be a good look. Then I sat and thought, what would I advise a friend to do if they were in the same situation and I decided something. I decided to be proud of what I’d achieved. To be proud of the hours spent to achieve the output earned, and to be proud to have someone so invested they would take the time to write an unsolicited review for this blog. I know that is what I would advise and hope that all of you would do, and so this is my moment I decided to model the advice I would give. We all have the right to own our achievements and not make ourselves small to avoid the commentary of others.
Dr Walker is a paid up member of the Dream Team since 2013, token immunologist and occasional defector from the Immunology Mafia. Registered Clinical Scientist in Immunology with a background in genetics (PhD), microbiology and immunology (MSc), biological sciences (mBiolSci), education (PgCert) and indecisiveness (everything else). Now a Senior Lecturer in Immunology at University of Lincoln. She has previously written many great guest blogs for The Girlymicrobiologist, including one on turning criticism into a catalyst for change.
Full disclosure: I wasn’t invited to write this review, I insisted. I also haven’t been paid for it; quite the opposite, in fact. I went out and bought two copies of Professor Elaine Cloutman-Green’s book with my own money: one for me and one for my PhD students to share (or squabble over). And yes, I did get her to sign them. What can I say? I’m a lifelong fangirl.
Professor Cloutman-Green’s It Shouldn’t Happen to a PhD Student is a rare gem in academic literature a compassionate, wise, and profoundly practical guide that feels like a conversation with the mentor every research student wishes they had. Written with warmth, humour, and candour, the book demystifies the PhD journey from start to finish, transforming what can often be an isolating experience into one filled with clarity, community, and hope.
Elaine, known affectionately as my favourite Professor or the GirlyMicrobiologist, draws upon two decades of experience as both scientist and supervisor to craft a guide that balances rigour with humanity. Structured in three accessible sections; getting onto a PhD programme, surviving and thriving during it, and using it as a springboard for the future. The book serves as both a roadmap and a reassuring companion. Each chapter blends actionable advice with reflections that acknowledge the emotional highs and lows of research life, creating a tone that is both authoritative and deeply empathetic.
From the very first chapter, “Knowing Your Why,” Elaine invites readers to pause and reflect on their motivations, an exercise that sets the tone for the entire book. Rather than treating doctoral study as a mechanical career step, she frames it as a personal journey of purpose and growth. As she writes, “A PhD should be a step towards delivering on your aspirations, not just a title to put in front of your name.” It’s a line that perfectly encapsulates her philosophy that research is not about prestige, but about purpose.
What truly elevates this book above other graduate-school guides is its inclusivity and warmth. Elaine writes as a mentor who has seen it all: the sleepless nights, the imposter syndrome, the joy of a successful experiment, and the power of perseverance. Her anecdotes and checklists are peppered with practical wisdom not the vague “work harder” platitudes found elsewhere, but concrete steps to manage deadlines, develop professional skills, and build meaningful academic networks. The inclusion of “Top Tips” sections at the end of each stage provides digestible summaries that make the book easy to dip in and out of throughout the PhD journey.
And it’s not just students who need this book. Supervisors – myself included – will find plenty here that resonates. Elaine reminds us, gently but firmly, that supervisors are people too: flawed, human, and still learning alongside our students. Her reflections on empathy, communication, and shared growth are as valuable for those guiding PhDs as for those undertaking them. Every research group could benefit from having this guide on their shelf, it’s as much a manual for mentorship as it is for PhD survival.
Of course I must acknowledge my own bias, Elaine was my mentor during my own PhD, and many of the insights in this book feel like familiar echoes of the advice that got me through my hardest days. She taught me so much about science but more importantly that research, like life, is all about surrounding yourself with people who lift you up when you falter. It Shouldn’t Happen to a PhD Student captures that same generous spirit, showing that the best kind of academic success is shared success: when mentors and students grow together, celebrate each other’s wins, and keep curiosity at the heart of everything they do. Everyone deserves a mentor like Elaine someone who reminds you that with compassion, courage, and community, the PhD journey can be one of the most transformative experiences of your life. Oh, and she provides the most excellent of snacks, the occasional much needed gin and tonic, and a rousing rendition of ‘Drop it like it’s hot!’… but that’s a story for another time.
This week marks the 5th anniversary of regular posting on Girlymicrobiologist.com. I can’t believe that time has flown by so quickly. I also can’t believe that something that started out with such small expectations has grown to play such an important part in my life, and in my sense of identity. This was all really cemented for me in something that also happened this week, the publication of my first ever book.
Now, it’s been no secret that I have been putting some time aside to try and write something for the last few months. You have all been very patient with me whilst I posted a little less frequently, and I cannot help but give a massive thank you shout out to Dr Claire Walker who has curated some wonderful guest blogs in order to keep the content flowing. It’s a world of different having an idea and starting to write it, to holding the real thing in your hand, and so my brain is still catching up to the reality. I plan to write a bit more of a step by step guide to what the experience has taught me about self publishing, and why I thought self publishing was the right choice for this particular book, but for today I wanted to focus on moving something from a vague wish to a reality you can hold in your hand.
So how did I get here?
Back in 2022 I wrote a post about the fact that I was playing with the idea of writing a book, although I wasn’t quite sure about the direction that book would take, and listing a number of steps:
Further formulate the concept i.e. what kind of book? I actually have 2 ideas. One is turning this blog into a book format. The second is that I also have an outline structure for a Pathology murder mystery. I’m excited by both, but right now I think option 1 is more achievable with my current resources
Review what I already have. If I go for a non fiction book I need to undertake a gap analysis of what I have, what can be modified and what new content is needed. For the fiction version I need to start getting my concepts down so that I know how viable they are
What good resources are available to me? This is an ambition of plenty of people and there is a wealth of information out there. I need to explore, quality assess and curate what there is so I don’t waste time and energy making unforced errors. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, modify it so it works for me, but let’s not start from square one.
Undertake some appreciative enquiry. Success is often about asking the right questions and making the right connections in order to increase your odds. I have some friends in this field but not in the area I’m thinking of working in. I need to be brave and put myself out there to gain insight into the ‘Known Unknowns’
Use the knowledge and information gained to put together a project plan. Establish some small steps that can make the project as a whole less overwhelming
Establish my success criteria. What does success look like? For right now it’s the process of creating that will feel like a success with a stretch goal of sharing what is produced, but that might change based on what I discover
Research your audience. If I decided to include sharing what is produced as part of my success criteria who would like to see such a book? If I were to share the content what would that look like and what would be needed?
You’ll notice that those early steps involved a lot of information gathering, and reflection before formulating a plan. Writing that blog post encouraged me to do just that, but more than that it meant that I had made a declaration to all of you and started talking about what the next steps would look like, so I could be held to account by others as well as myself.
One of the things that my research led me to understand with greater clarity, is that to get from where I was to publishing a book required both the formulation of a plan, but also the development and practicing of skills. To a certain extent, the project plan was the easy bit, as long as my research was effective. The skill development piece was harder. It seemed to me, that the best way to go about this was to support others by being involved with their work in order to learn and develop more.
This led to me being involved with everything from textbooks, to a book on the impact of waste on our society. Every encounter taught me something. Every encounter helped me to refine what I was interested in and how I was interested in working. It also supported me in developing an author page so that I had a place where I could sign post others to the work.
Fairly early on I realised that I didn’t have the time or bandwidth to develop my pathology murder mysteries right now, although I am still drafting plot on the side. The writing style is just too different for me to be able to dip in and out of , and I need to put in many hours of practice to get that style to a point where it would be acceptable.
That left me with content linked to this blog. Many of you will know that I started drafting, and am still working on a book called White Coat Syndrome (or similar). This is still in the works but a wise friend suggested that I keep working on getting it traditionally published, so I need to give it some focussed time. That left me with looking at the content I already have for trying out what the self publishing process could look like. Over 90% of non-fiction books are self published these days, and of the ones that are traditionally published still, most are linked to people in the public eye or with social media followers in the millions. It will be a surprise to no one that I do not fall into either of those categories, and so exploring the process of self publishing felt like the right move, not just for this book but to understand more moving forward.
So why this topic? In a moment of frustration about life, the universe, and everything, I was having a late evening rant and Mr Girlymicro and he said ‘Why don’t you write a book on how to do a PhD? You talk about it all the time. You spend lots of time supporting others through it, and you have already written thousands of words on your blog linked to it’. I just looked at him, went to bed, and woke up with a 40 chapter book outline. It just felt right. Something in my brain just clicked, and so the writing in the end was the easy part. After all, Mr Girlymicro is pretty much always right, and yet again he proved it.
Once the topic and method of publishing was chosen, then all that was left was pulling it together. It was so important for me that this book came from a place of authenticity, a place where I don’t pretend that things are easy, perfect or even equitable. In fact, it was that sense of inequity as I was writing that became a real motivator for finishing the book. As I reflected and wrote I became increasingly aware of how inequitable access to PhD programmes have become. How the way access routes are set up to be even more challenging if you have health or caring needs, but also if you don’t have access to someone who has done one to advise you on how to apply and what factors might be significant to talk about.
The next factor was to to decide on a time scale. Now, this part might be a little piece of madness but I know how busy IPC gets once we hit winter, and so allowing a 4 month time frame in order to get the book out before winter pressures and to align the release with the start of the academic year seemed like a good idea. I’m not saying that it was a good idea…just that it felt like one at the time. I think tasks take up the time that is allowed to them, however. I think if I’d allowed a year it would have spread to take that much time. It is sometimes better to set a tight timescale and stick to it, rather than allowing a window which could extend the project for longer than is really needed.
I also gradually became aware that providing some practical exercises would add value in a way that I could not include in a book format, and so decided early on that several of the chapters would have these hosted on the Girlymicro website so they would be free to access and download. Providing a holistic, interactive approach was key to my thinking, as was making sure that at its heart the book is about community and supporting each other, the same as this blog. I didn’t want to pretend to be someone else, or write in a way that was more academic, as I think there are enough of those styles of books out there. I wanted this book to support everyone to bring their whole selves to their PhD and their topic, and so it was important to me to write in a way that I also did the same.
Now the book is ready. Now that it is a real thing that I can hold in my hand. There are two main tasks taking up my thinking. The first is trying to work out how to get it to people that it might help, something that I would be grateful for any advice that you can give to me. The second is about how I can help others by sharing the knowledge I’ve picked up myself as part of going through the writing and self publishing process, to make it easier for others to get their voice out there. There are benefits to both ways of publishing, but there is something empowering about being able to feel like you can speak directly to your readers by maintaining more control over the content, rather than it being seen through a commercial lens. I’m not in this for the money after all.
There is still one thing that I talked about on my list of steps, way back when, and haven’t yet addressed, and that was success criteria and decided how to benchmark what success looks like. As I’ve said, I’m not doing this to make money, I’m doing this in the hope that it might assist others, and so for me it has never been about a commercial approach. I still need some way of judging progress however. On doing some reading I discovered that many books never sell more than 20 copies, and most others don’t sell more than 250 copies in their first year. My aspirations are pretty small therefore, as this is something I’m just beginning. I would consider the book a success if I sold more than 20 copies. I would be over the moon if I sold anywhere between 50 and 100 copies in the first year. The topic is fairly niche after all. Mostly I just want to mark the event and use it as my own benchmark for improving during future projects. We all have to start somewhere.
If however, you’d like to add to those 20 I’ve included the link for purchasing below:
Thinking about what’s next
Like everything is life, my first thought when I finish something is to think…what’s next? I have learnt so much and my plan is to take a little time to reflect on that learning and to enjoy focussing on blog writing for a while. That said, I am now going to return some of my focus to the book pitch for the Girlymicro general book, and I do have to admit I have the title of my next book in mind if I decide to try another self publishing exercise. Mostly I would like a few weekends off as it’s been a while since I could embrace the sofa and fully rot for a weekend. So while I cogitate, I intend to treat myself with some truly awful reality TV, and spending quality time with mummy and Mr Girlymicro.
Taking a moment to enjoy, celebrate, and mark the occasion
Before I slob off to the sofa though…you all know that I am a strong believer in celebrating and marking the moments that impact our lives, and this book is no different. To mark the moment I’m a having a small, low key book launch on Friday 17th October and there are just a couple of free tickets still available if you’d like to join.
Whether you can make it or not, I’d love to hear what you think as I’m all about improvement and learning. If you do get the book it would also be amazing if you could leave a review on Amazon with your honest thoughts. Apparently reviews really help increase visibility, whether good or bad, and so it would be wonderful to think that this book is finding its way to those who would need it.
I want to sign off with a thank you. I would never have gone through the process of thinking about writing a book if it wasn’t for all your support. I wouldn’t have had the content or undertaken the self reflection needed to know what to write if you hadn’t kept reading this blog. Finally, I wouldn’t have had the motivation to get through writing it and working out so very many templates and decisions if I didn’t know you would support me in the effort. So thank you. I appreciate every read, every interaction, and every conversation we have.
For my birthday in 2014, I celebrated by submitted by PhD thesis for printing. I ripped off the band aid and committed.
For this birthday, 11 years later, I’m taking another leap of faith, and once more rolling the dice on myself. This time it’s still PhD related, but rather different. This time it’s to let you all know that I have written a book, which will hopefully go live on Amazon on Friday the 17th October.
It feels like birthday launches could become a tradition.
I’ve been talking about a super secret project for a while now, and the wonderful Dr Claire Walker has been taking on some heavy lifting in terms of arranging some guest blogs, so that I could write a book on my weekends rather than writing a blog. But what is the book, and why did it come about?
The Book
The book is entitled ‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a PhD Student: How to thrive, not just survive, during your PhD’. It has 40 chapters that take you all the way through from deciding you want to do to PhD, and thinking about where and what type, to submitting your thesis, and what kind of skills you may need to develop during your PhD to maximise your career success after it is done.
Professor Elaine Cloutman-Green, otherwise known as “The Girlymicrobiologist”, is a clinical academic with over 2 decades of experience leading research projects and supporting students at all levels, including PhDs. She also runs the popular Girlymicrobiologist blog, which aims to de-mystify science and support those wanting to engage with academic careers from A-level all the way through to career enrichment.
In this book, Girlymicro talks about the reality of what it is like to study for a PhD, what gateways you may need to pass through, and how to manage key relationships in order to achieve success.
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on the Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Whether you’re planning your PhD, a healthcare professional looking to develop, or simply curious to know about how the world of academia works, The Girlymicrobiologist offers a refreshing blend of knowledge and relatable experiences. Get ready to laugh, learn, and be inspired to find a way into, what she describes as the best job on the planet.
This is the book I wish that someone had given me when I started on my PhD. I was pretty clueless and spent a lot of time finding my way, and making heaps of mistakes. It seemed only fair to write all of my learning down so that I can share it, not just with my own students but more widely, so that everyone is free to make their own new mistakes, not just repeat ones I’ve already made.
The Why
I’ve been talking about writing a book for ages, and I still have the original Girlymicro book I’d planned going on in the background. I was prompted to do this book now though, after spending an afternoon at an awards event and realising that I could tell you every person who was going to win in every category before the dinner even started. It made me think a lot about access and privilege. That night I came home and I was really glum, and I couldn’t quite process why I was feeling that way.
I slept on it and spent some time speaking to Mr Girlymicro the next day to process my thoughts. I talked about how much access to healthcare professions and even academic training schemes are now based on who you know, to describe the best way to get through gateways like applications and interviews. How, even once you are in them, to feel like you understand how things work and the undisclosed boxes that need ticking, you need to have someone who will let you in and tell you the unwritten rules, and frankly not all supervisors see that as their role. This means that I really feel like we are missing out on some amazing talent. People who would make wonderful PhD students, or academics, because they can’t get across the threshold or see themselves in the role.
Not everyone has strong connections with a university. Still fewer people know someone who has a PhD. The way the system currently feels is that if you can access information you really have such an advantage over those that don’t. I therefore see a lot of my medical colleagues getting access to PhD funding, and yet fewer and fewer of my nursing and scientific colleagues. I increasingly encounter more and more undergraduates who are reaching out because they need help to know why they aren’t being successful, because they don’t know what is expected of them. It has always been hard to get onto PhD programmes, and it should be. What it shouldn’t be is hard because you don’t have access to the right people to give you the knowledge you need to level the playing field.
I realised that was why I was feeling upset and unsettled. I don’t like unfairness. I don’t like inequity. I don’t like realising that I’m part of the problem. Mr Girlymicro commented, as I was off loading, that I had plenty of blog posts that talk about how to apply for and do a PhD, and so why didn’t I take the way I was feeling and turn it into something positive. A book. So, this book concept was born. A book where I set out to play my role in fixing the disparities as I see them.
The Vision
That conversation happened right at the end of May. I gave myself 3 months to take some content form this blog, as well as creating new content, to come up with a book of ~80,000 words that captures the advice I give to my PhD students, and those approaching me floating the concept of applying for a PhD.
Why 3 months? Well, if I allowed myself a year, I would take a year, and remember that other book? I still want that to happen at some point. The other thing was that I wanted it finished as close to the start of the academic year as possible, so that it could start benefiting people right away. We all also know that I have no patience, and so using my birthday as a cut off always felt right.
The book was finished at the end of August, and I’m in final edits before upload at the end of the month. I want it to be the kind of resource that people can dip in and out of, whether they are doing a PhD or not. Chapters, such as developing goals, or on public speaking, should stand alone to benefit even those who are not in academic study. The activities that can be accessed alongside the book, to help things like developing your elevator pitch, should only grow in number over time, and hopefully will be a good general resource for anyone that finds them, not just for those who are studying for a PhD.
My main hope however, is that people who are on a PhD will find it not only helpful, but something that will help them feel a little less alone in the process. There were times, as I was doing my PhD outside of a standard academic department, that I felt really lonely, and sometimes even very lost. Not everyone has a super supportive supervisor, not everyone finds those peers that keep you going. I was lucky that I had great colleagues who picked me, not everyone has that. I hope that this book can act a little like the friend you need, who you can turn to for advice, and to know that others have been there before and found a way to succeed.
What to Expect
I don’t know what to expect to be honest. I’ve never written a book entirely alone before, with thanks to Dr Helen Rickard and Dr Sam Watkin who have contributed text. I know why I needed to write this book, and as I say in the first chapter, knowing your why is the most important thing. I don’t expect it to be perfect, nothing is, but as I say to my students, the main thing is that it is done.
The book should go live on Amazon (depending on their turn around time) on Friday 17th October. It should be purchasable in 3 forms:
Ebook for £2.99 or included in your ebook subscription if you have one and free to download
Paperback for £9.99
Hardback for £15.99
None of this is about making money for me, but Amazon have minimum costs, especially if you want it to be available widely, so there we go.
To mark the occasion, although it is terrifying me at the moment, I’m holding a small book launch event at UCL on the same night. If you fancy, come and join me. After all, we should all do a little something that scares us, and I’m hoping if I feed you wine you will forgive any deficiencies knowing the reasons why this book came into being in the first place.
If you like, I’m kinda hoping you might also tell your friends…
I got an alert of my phone last week that I set up this blog on WordPress 10 years ago! That was a bit of a shock I can tell you. That said, as I posted about in 2020, although I set up the blog and made my first post as I finished my PhD in 2015, I didn’t start posting regularly of another 5 years. I started it as I was looking for my next passion project but I didn’t really know what I wanted to say for quite a while. Despite the gap between starting and regular posting however, 10 years still feels like a gateway and something worth marking. I thought therefore that I would write something that reflects how I, my practice, and in someways the world, feels like it has changed in the last 10 years to mark the event. On the back of that, it also seemed fun to embed a few of the blog posts that have been put together since Girlymicrobiologist began in order to show how this blog too has changed and grown.
Apologies, this turned into a bit of a long one.
Microbes have changed
In 2015 I had finished my PhD in January, as well as a PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher and Professional Education. I had just taken my final clinical exams (Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists) in September and found out I’d passed them in November. After a decade of focus linked to completing what felt like an unachievable list of academic steps I was done. The question therefore was………what’s next? So, in December 2015 I started my first ever blog post, although I had been sitting on the web page for 6 months not knowing how to begin. This is how that Girlymicro blog began:
So, this is my first ever blog post. Bear with me as I don’t really know what I’m doing.
I’m what is know as a Clinical Scientist and I work in Infection Control.
Most people don’t know what a Clinical Scientist is so I thought I should briefly explain.
Most scientists that work within hospitals are involved with imaging (X-rays, CTs etc) or processing patient samples. We all work to support diagnosing patients. Did you know that scientists are involved with >80% of all diagnoses within the NHS? Their work is crucial to improving patient care, but the scientists are often unsung heroes as they often never meet the patients they help.
I do not work in the lab all the time like many scientists. I’m a clinical scientist, so half my time is spent working in a patient facing role within infection control and the other half involves bringing science to infection control to make it more efficient/evidence based. I work within a hospital with a team comprised of nurses, doctors and scientists. I have a PhD in infection control. I am also working towards my final clinical qualification (Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists) which is the same as my medical colleagues. My job is to help the translation of the science into a form that healthcare professionals can work with. Sometimes this means working with language so we are all on the same page. Other times this means working with the latest science and technology and developing new tests that will help.
I’m passionate about my job, but I’m also aware that many people don’t know that it exists and I’m hoping that this blog will help to change that. I plan to share a bit about what my day to day life is like as well as the science which I hope will inspire others to become healthcare scientists. After all, I have the greatest job in the world. And that is worth shouting about.
During the 10 years between setting up the website, with a world of good intentions, and writing today, many things have changed. Not least of all are the organisms people care about and the way transmission is understood. My PhD thesis was on the role of the environment in transmission of healthcare acquired infection. In many ways, getting papers published out of it was a struggle as very few journals were interested in the built environment and Infection Prevention and Control (IPC). Now organisations such as the Healthcare Infection Society run entire events linked to it, and I run something called the Environmental IPC Network, as the topics impacts so many of us. On a national level I’m now involved in writing guidelines to help support environmental IPC, all of which was a pipe dream when my thesis was being written. It felt like a very lonely area to be working in, but over the last 10 years it feels like the built environment is finally being recognised as an important component to how we keep patients safe in the world of IPC. I’ve now even had my own PhD students continue the work.
The other thing that has changed are the organisms that are perceived as being important. Even more though, there are organisms that were not even thought about in 2015, or didn’t exist, that can or are impacting so many lives, for instance Candida auris is a new kid on the block, and Mpox was called something completely different. Few people cared about Gram negative bacteria when I started my PhD, let alone Adeno. This was true even to a certain extent when I finished. I’ve worked on Adenovirus for over 2 decades, so it feels especially vindicating to see it make it onto the UKHSA priority pathogen list for research. All of this is to say, you don’t need to follow the crowd, if you find a problem that you believe is important enough, stick at it. Gather the evidence and put it out there. Eventually you’ll find others that join you in seeing the significance of your direction of travel.
Speaking of organisms, in 2015 we testing for the odd Coronavirus, and of course the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak had happened, and the Middle Eastern Coronavirus (MERS) outbreak was ongoing. Many of us had been concerned with the potential of Coronaviruses to cause a pandemic, but most of the planning was still linked to Influenza based risks, as that was what had been seen historically. Awareness sadly does not necessarily link to preparedness, and as lived experience shows, the SARS CoV2 pandemic was both fast and devastating. We were unprepared, but I don’t know that we ever could have been.
Outbreaks with a worldwide distribution are not unusual and the table below shows just how many have happened or have been ongoing from 2015 onward. It also shows that not all outbreaks with world wide spread are considered to be pandemics, and not all pandemics have death tolls in the millions. In fact a pandemic is defined as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”. With this classical definition including nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity. So, preparing for a pandemic is not as simple as it can initial appear.
NB for ease I grabbed this list from Wikipedia, please don’t judge me for it
The table also shows quite how hard life can be in the world of IPC as the organisms don’t stop because we are tired and need a break. In fact the world re-opening post pandemic, combined with some of the scientific distrust that the political handling of the pandemic created, and the fear people experienced, means that managing outbreaks since has been an ongoing struggle. Vaccine hesitancy is having a real impact on transmission and making a key line of defense less effective. Many experienced experts in this field and others related to infection and public health have now retired or moved away due to the ongoing personal impacts. This means it’s more important than ever to turn up, be seen and to have engaged conversations across boundaries and silo’s in order to develop trust and support patient safety. No matter how hard it feels, it is still worth it.
My clinical world has changed a lot, partly because of the changing organisms and the pandemic, but also because the patients and healthcare are changing. It can take quite a lot to keep up with all of these changes, and you have to be fully engaged with an approach that aligns with continuous learning to stay up to date. On top of this, when you start out as a trainee with over a decade of training ahead of you, you have also got a list of key education targets to prioritise. It can therefore feel very much like you are just working your way through a list of items that need to be ticked off so you can eventually get to the finish line. There is a lot of ‘onto the next thing’ as soon as you manage each key milestone because otherwise it can feel overwhelming. One of the key things I’ve realised since 2015 is the importance of cherishing the moment and recognising the importance of progress, rather than rushing from one thing to the next with my entire focus about keeping an eye on the prize.
Passing FRCPath first time is still one of the most challenging things I’ve done in over 2 decades in healthcare. To be honest, I’d rather do another PhD than take FRCPath again, any day of the week. I wish that I could have found a way forward where I didn’t let my ability to pass, or risk of failure of an exam define me, but for many years it did. I’m pretty sure that telling my younger self this would have achieved nothing, as it takes time and distance to be able to understand that the tick list isn’t everything, but just in case it helps anyone reading this……you are more than the sum of the exams you sit, the letters after your name or the achievements on your CV. You have value no matter where you are on the pathway, no matter how many diversions you have taken, and to be honest, it’s OK to also decide the end destination is no longer for you. Who you are matters more than any tick list.
Part of the way I’ve gained perspective on my own training is by supporting others now through theirs. Seeing PhD students go through their own trials and tribulations, and sharing in their eventual successes., has given me insight I couldn’t have gained any other way. Supporting Healthcare Science training, everywhere from writing curricula to mentoring individuals at all stages of their careers, has allowed me to see things from all kinds of different perspectives. It’s given me so much insight, as well as time to reflect on how I felt and what might have helped me along the way, in order to try to help others better.
I feel more seen as a Healthcare Scientist than I ever have. I feel that Healthcare Science as a discipline and a profession is more seen than it ever has been. There are so many more routes into Healthcare Science these days, with so many more options. This is a truly brilliant step forward from when I joined, when there really was only one route as a Clinical Scientist and having to really fight to show that you could do things differently if you wanted to go another way. As the same time however, all that choice can feel a bit overwhelming, and in some cases paralysing, as people just don’t know where to start. In order to reach more people and support them in navigating this changing landscape though does require a willingness to be visible, to bring ourselves and our stories, in order to show others what an amazing profession this is. To show the openness and diversity of the workforce, in order to make sure everyone knows this can be a profession that is welcoming and open to everyone. You can’t be what you can’t see, so let’s make sure we are seen!
I have been fortunate enough to have experienced opportunities that I never believed would be open to someone as normal as me. I don’t come from a privileged background. I didn’t go to private school or attend Oxbridge. I don’t have connections, or a rich family to bail me out and pay for my exams/conference fees/fancy memberships. So when I get invited or asked to do amazing things, I of course say yes, but I’d think to think I’m saying yes for more than just me. I’m going into spaces and having conversations with people so that I can represent. Represent my workforce. Represent my gender. Represent my background and represent my family. To do so is an immense honour and a privilege that I don’t ever lose sight of.
No one I knew, outside of work, had ever had a New Years Honour, so it never even occurred to me I would get one. Being able to undertake work in Africa which aims to reduce infant mortality by 20% in high mortality settings, is not work that I thought I would ever get involved with, it felt too big for someone like me. That’s just it though, ‘someone like me’. We put so many labels and restrictions on ourselves. We limit our own vision. If the last 10 years have taught me anything it’s that you probably can’t see where you will end up, there’s too much joyful chaos in life for that, but you can control saying yes. Saying yes to things that scare you. Saying yes to rooms that may intimidate. Saying yes to being open to opportunities and changes in direction, even when you have no idea where they might lead you. Half the joy is in the discovery, so put on that adventure outfit and head out the door.
I’ve talked about the tick list and why visibility matters, and not just for you as an individual. Now I want to talk a bit about glass ceilings and choosing to do things differently. I have, over the years, lost count of how many times I have been told that something wasn’t for me. Not for me because of my background, profession or gender, or maybe just because I didn’t fit in. I used to hear a lot of ‘no’ and I used to feel like others could define me. The thing I’ve learnt is, that the only person who can define you is you. You can give away your power to others and let them made those choices for you, or you can own your path, your career and your choices, in order to define yourself. I’m not saying any of this is easy. I’m not saying it is fast or straight forward. I am saying it is a choice.
I became the first non-medical Infection Control Doctor (that I know of), because I worked to create the path to get there, which hopefully others will now follow. I didn’t know that was possible when I started, and it came with a goodly number of fights along the way. There were days when I definitely believed the ‘no’s’ and didn’t think it would happen, but I kept trying, I kept showing up. It became clear that I would never make Professor at my original home within UCL, due to long standing bias for medical over scientific backgrounds. So I pivoted and found a new academic UCL home that welcomed me and supported me in my journey instead. Things that are worth fighting for take time and commitment, and nothing is guaranteed. Paths are often not well trodden, and so finding the right people to support you along the way is key. Don’t drift. Make your choices consciously. Know what you are willing to fight for. Know also what you are prepared to let go of. When things come together share the knowledge, share the path, and make it easier for others to follow. Drop that ladder down or prop the doorway open.
I had thought it was post pandemic blues but I think it’s just transitioning to another phase of life and career that got me thinking about this one. I’ve been working at GOSH for 21 years this year, pretty much my entire working life. During this time there have been two mentors that have pretty much introduced me to and gotten me through everything. In my clinical life it has been Dr John Hartley, and in my academic world it has been Professor Nigel Klein. Now, John retired part way through the pandemic, and he really is the reason I have my Consultant post, as I took his Infection Control Doctor role. Nigel sadly passed away last year, before he had the chance to retire. In my head, I’m still the new girl on the block, the new person in the department, the young upstart. It is a shock to look around and realise I am now one of the people who have been there longest and I have very large shoes to fill, knowing how unprepared I feel to fill them. The giants that have gone before have left, but I wasn’tt prepared for them to leave. I think the biggest shocker has been that there are some who now look at me in the same way that I looked at John and Nigel, when I don’t feel like I am even in the same league. I think they will always loom large in my mind, and I honour what they taught me by embedding it in my practice.
Your career can feel like such an open pathway ahead of you. Then you wake up one day and realise you, probably, have less than a decade left. It’s at moments like that you really need to think about what it is that you want to achieve, what you want to prioritise, in order to maximise the impact of the time you have left. Ten years feels like a long time, but its really just 2 cycles of PhD students, 2 large project grants and only 3 trainee Clinical Scientists. It’s no where near as long as it feels and so planning ahead takes on an all new perspective. If your a planner like me, now is the time to plan for this new phase of your career.
Learning that you can’t fix everyone or everything
Part of that planning for the future is also knowing what not take on. I am a simple soul, I like being liked. It’s taken me a long time to grow in my leadership to the point where I acknowledge that I not a god, and I don’t have a magic wand, therefore I can’t fix everything or everyone. Nor can I be liked by everyone. Part of being a leader is making tough decisions, part of being a leader is also about honesty and not saying the easy things, just to be liked. Sometimes, I have learned, putting off the difficult conversations and the difficult decisions does no one any favours and so it’s best to have them early. As a mentor, you are there to advise, but the decision are owned by the person making them. You are not people’s parents and they are not children, we should therefore be aiming for adult adult conversations. Acting like a White Knight can actually do more harm than good, as you are removing learning opportunities for those you swoop in and save. It is a difficult balance to know when to step in and when to maintain a pure supporting role. It is one that I will continue to get wrong. All I can do is learn, do my best, own the consequences, and aspire to be better.
The flip side of learning you can’t fix everything is being aware of your duty to try to make things that are in your remit of control or influence as good as they can be. As I’ve said, I have a decade left in all likelihood, and therefore my job is to ensure that I maximise the opportunities for others until the day I don’t have the ability to influence any more. My career is very much no longer about me, it’s about those who I will be leaving behind to carry on once I’m writing murder mysteries and drinking martinis at three in the afternoon. My job is to support as many people as possible to be in the best position possible when I walk out the door for the last time. I realise it’s now my job to keep the doors open and assist people through them. Whether it’s mentorship, nominations, or speaking peoples names in rooms they haven’t been invited into, I plan to do all I can to make sure that I pay it forward every opportunity I get.
I have the job I planned for and dreamt about for 2 decades. It is my dream job and I love it I wouldn’t change it or my decision to go for it for the world. There is no doubt however that post pandemic it has been hard. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older, because the job and the world right now feels pretty intense and hard core, or because my body still kind of hates me for what I put it through during the pandemic, but I definitely feel burnt out and recognise that even a dream job can be a lonely place to be.
The thing is, not every day is going to be a great day. Even in a dream job there will be bits that are harder or speak to you less. It’s also OK to not be OK. The world, and especially those of us in infection control, have been through a prolonged period of pretty significant stress and trauma. We are not going to be the same people we were going in. You don’t have to change the world every moment of every day, sometimes showing up and doing your best is enough, and what your best looks like will be different at different times. I have learnt the importance of asking myself, what would I say to a friend in this situation, and to show myself the kindness that I would show to others rather than acting as my own harshest critic. Try to take a step back and give yourself the prospective you need to find a route forward.
Just the act of writing this post has made me realise how far I’ve come. If you’d asked me in 2015, I would have said being a leader is about setting an example, about getting things right, about showing competence and keeping a cool head. I’m sure leadership is about some of those things, but what I have learnt, for me, is that leadership is about authenticity.
It’s about prioritising bringing my whole self to every encounter. It’s about saying sorry when I make mistakes, rather than pretending to always be right. It’s about sharing that I too am finding it hard, rather than pretending to be OK, but that success is about showing up anyway. It’s about the fact that some people will find this bringing of self about sharing of weakness and use it as a route to criticise, not everyone will like or even ‘get’ what you bring to the table. It is also about knowing that you don’t have to like or be liked to work with others, but that it is instead about developing shared goals, and that diversity of thought makes us stronger and not weaker. Finally, it’s about knowing that it can be scary to share who you truly are as the comments and the insults hit harder without having an armoured shell in the way. However, if you don’t show that you can bring your whole self to a space others will feel less able to do so. Creating safe spaces where people can truly be themselves is one of the greatest things we can do, and so we need to model the way forward so that others don’t have to take that risk instead of us.
Of all the posts I was most scared to share when I wrote it in April 2021 was the one where I talked about losing my sister and how it felt to know that I wouldn’t be able to have children on top of losing her. It was one of the first really personal and vulnerable posts that I put out and I was really scared of what the response might be, both from family and from strangers. Instead, it was shared more times than any other post, and people still come up and talk to me about it, my sister, and Morgan my niece, who we also lost. Something that terrified me, led me to being able to talk about something that impacts so many and is talked about so little. Sharing, was a bravery I don’t think I would have managed in any other way than on this blog, and having conversations with people who read it are so meaningful to me, even now.
More recently I shared a post about what it feels like now, over 10 years since losing my sister. I really wanted to post how something that feels so insurmountable, in terms of not having children when you wanted them, can actually turn into something where your life still has so much meaning and joy. A position I could not have even imagined in 2010 when I lost them. I truly, honestly, love my life. My life has meaning and I have achieved things that I’ve been forced to admit would not have been possible if my life had taken a different course. I hope that sharing this can help others who are not there yet to know that there is a future where they will smile, laugh and feel valued again, no matter how dark the moment feels.
I’ve always been a family girl, but I’ve not always prioritised them in the way that I should. I’ve missed funerals and weddings for work. I’ve cancelled dinners and missed trains home. The pandemic, and life in general, has made me decide that I need to put my family first, and thus myself. There needs to be balance to make it through the marathon of a healthcare career, and some of that balance requires that the job cannot always be the thing that defines who we are. Mummy and Mr Girlymicro are my world, and every moment spent with them makes me a better person and thus better at my job. Bringing my whole self to my job and my leadership requires me to nurture precisely that, my whole self. So credit where credit is due. My family support me in being able to do what I do. They make me martinis when I’ve had a bad day, give me water when I’ve forgotten to drink, and feed me when I’ve inevitably forgotten to eat. They love me for my flaws as well as my strengths, and put me back together when I break. They are my everything, and so they need to feel like my priority in life. I guess my learning is this, don’t become so focused that you forget to acknowledge the people that got you there, and don’t be so ‘eyes on the prize’ that you forget to enjoy the journey with those who care.
Last, but by no means least. I have learnt to embrace the unexpected. I’m a planner but when I started posting on this blog I didn’t really have a plan. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I just knew that it felt like it was something that was needed and had been asked for as part of a challenging time when people were looking for information. It was something that was supposed to be a little hobby that unexpectedly became a central rhythm of my life. Something that is a focus of a little time every day. Something that feels mine when less and less of my working life feels that way. It’s a space where I really feel I can connect, in a way that is probably a little insane for something I throw onto a page and don’t see people read. None of this was planned, and yet it has changed my world. It has changed my plans for the future. It has given me a creative outlet, and some hope in pretty dark times. So, if I have a thought at all for you to take from this overly long blog post, it is this. Embrace the random moments that come your way. Embrace the actions that you roll a dice on and don’t think will lead you anywhere, because every once in a while, without you even being aware of the whys or the how, they may change your life for the better.
This time of year is always special to me. Not only do I adore all things Christmas, but 10 years ago on the 10th December, I passed my PhD viva, and so it holds some pretty significant memories.
The thing is, and what I did not fully realise in the moment when this awesome photo and meme were made by Mr Girlymicro, was that although it felt like the end of something, it was really just a brilliant beginning.
Now, I say a brilliant beginning, but since this picture was taken there has been my fair share of being lost in the wilderness. There has been a chunk of self-doubt. There’s been plenty of agonising about career decisions and next moves. When you are working towards a PhD, although challenging, the end point is clear and there’s plenty of sign posting along the way. When working towards a career, all of those things are much more amorphous, and it’s much harder to know whether the decisions you are making are either right or significant, in any given moment.
In light of all of us I thought, to celebrate being 10 years on, now might be a good time to share some of what I’ve found to be helpful in navigating the forest of decision-making that comes with entering your post doctoral era.
Take time to know yourself
When you finish any big piece of career development it is both joyous and, for me, confusing. You have been running head long towards a goal for years, laser focussed on crossing that finish line. If, like me, you focus so much on the target you forget to think about what comes next, the end can actually be quite jarring. So, I think it’s actually important to build in time to review throughout the process if possible, but definitely at the end. Which aspects did you really enjoy and would like to ensure you include as a priority in any future career planning? Which bits did you not enjoy? Can the bits you didn’t enjoy be avoided or reduced by making decisions linked to next steps? Bearing in mind we all have bits of any job we don’t adore…….If the bits you dislike are a feature of academia, then maybe also think more widely about where your science might fit.
Another thing that it is worth doing, is really taking some time to map and focus on your skill gaps. The great thing about entering a different career phase it that it is an opportunity to really re-invent yourself and re-set. The next thing you do, science wise, after a PhD might actually be pretty different. Choosing a post doc is an opportunity to take all you’ve experienced during your PhD and use it make a more informed decision about your future. It may be that you, for example, had never had the opportunity to undertake bioinformatics before your third year, and now it really interests and inspires you. What skills would you need to develop to have this as a more dominant feature in your career? What further experience do you need to make you competitive in the job market? Then use this reflection to make informed choices when you are developing your next steps.
The final thing to really take some time to review will be your personal priorities. I don’t want the same things now that I did in my twenties. To be honest I don’t really want the same things now that I wanted before the pandemic, my priorities have definitely changed. When you reach the end of a big career stage it is worth doing a piece of reflection, as you may have been working towards something for a period of years whilst life went on around you. I’ve had plenty of friends who were super career focussed and then reached a point, post 1st post doc, where their priorities changed and they wanted to focus more on their families for a while. Giving yourself some time to decide what work life balance looks like for you, and what your priorities are, will mean you maintain yourself as well as your career along the way.
Foster the old
It can be tempting, especially if you didn’t have the greatest experience, to walk away from everything linked to what you’ve just completed, like a PhD, into the sunset and never look back. Some people have great PhD experiences, some have awful ones, and most people have a time of both highs and lows. No matter how tempting it is to close the door on this chapter of your life this is my plea to you to consider maintaining those links. You will have spent years working in an environment where you will have invested in networks, relationships and learning. Utilising that foundation, even if not all of it, to support your next steps is one of the best things that can come out of your PhD. It doesn’t have to be via your supervisor, but through the peers you bonded with, or even other academics you encountered during the way. Invest a little in making sure that you don’t lose the things you have already put a lot of energy into when you start to move into something new.
Find your people
Now, having said about maintaining the old, we all know people who’ve clung so tightly to where they’ve come from that they never really move forward. This is also not great. You’re entering a new phase and you can’t truly maximise on the potential of that if you carry over too much of where you’ve been. If you want to continue to thrive, this is the time to expand and find your new tribe.
This can be an intimidating time but there are often routes out there within your organisation that really support you in doing this. I would advocate that, during any career transition phase, it is worth taking some time to see if you can find a mentor or get access to coaching, in order to help you through the reflection and to maximise the opportunity.
A key early focus should always be to get out there and start making your own connections, building your own relationships, and start stepping into that independent researcher space. Mentorship can really help with this, as its an intimidating thing to need to do, and it’s important to not shy away from. If you are not the best networker, like me, one of the things that I found really helpful for this was joining and becoming an active participant in professional bodies/societies or other opportunities that may exist within your organisation. This provides an organic way to meet people and build relationships, whilst also undertaking activities that interest you and service your CV. The people I met early on are not only my colleagues but many are now my friends. They are the people I call who keep me sane. So it’s time well spent.
Be prepared for the studying to continue
You reach the end of your PhD and most of us say that’s it, we are never studying again. Then, within a fairly short time, reality makes a liar of us all. If you want an academic career then the studying will continue. There will be a need to become a better educator, as well as researcher, with things like working towards Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) to support how well you teach, and ensure you remain competitive in the job market. There are always new techniques and specialist skills to pick up, and I would make a plea that we could all do with spending some time on developing our communication skills. I’m talking everything from grant writing skills, to media training and public engagement skills. No matter how little you think you need some of these things, you will always need them more than you predict. The added bonus is that they will also beneficially impact on other parts of your work, for instance things like public engagement skills make your general presentation skills better.
Throw your hat into the ring often
We all have moments of high and low confidence. One of the things that I’ve learnt is how important it is to notice and acknowledge whatever period I’m in, but not let it impact my activity, as how I’m feeling personally does not really alter my chances of success on any given thing as that it usually linked to external factors. It is also easy to not be applying for grants and other things if you are in a comfortable place, because you have funding etc. The thing is, the most important thing, for both your CV and your development is consistency. You won’t get better at writing grants, papers etc if you aren’t doing it, so even if you don’t ‘need’ to do it as you have funding that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. You may choose to apply for a public engagement or development grant instead, but you should still do it.
The same is true for throwing your hat into the ring for roles and other opportunities, you often don’t know where they will lead you, but if you don’t do it you’ll never know. Practice makes perfect, and you won’t always succeed in the moment, but the experience gained will always stand you in good stead.
Learn how to process failure
I’ve posted plenty about failure before, and why I actually think I’ve learnt more from my failures than my successes. The truth of it is that academic feels like it is 80% failure and rejection, and it is, if you only focus on the outcome instead of the process. The learning is in the experience. In producing the work. So yes, by throwing your hat into the ring you are opening yourself up to a lot of failure when it comes to outcomes, but there is a lot less uncertainty linked to the fact that you will develop as a consequence. Each of us has to come to terms, and find a way of thinking about and dealing with the outcome failures in a way that supports our personal thinking and processing. Yours is likely to be different to mine, but investing some time working out how best to manage yourself in these moments will be ones of the best investments in time you can make if you want to maintain an academic career.
Practice all forms of communication
I’ve mentioned this a little all the way through, but I’m going to re-state it here as it’s important. Take every opportunity you are offered to practice and improve your communication skills. Every chance to write a lay summary, or patient information leaflet. Every chance to present, small or large, no matter how terrified you are. Every opportunity to copy edit someone’s grant or paper. Every chance to be on an interview panel, or review committee. All of it will enable you to see how other people communicate and find new ideas for things you like, or get you to put your research dissemination in a new way to a different audience, and therefore be able to see it in a new light. The only way you get better at any of this stuff is by putting in the hours, there are no short cuts.
I’m not the best writer, but it’s not about skill, it’s about putting in the time and practicing. I write every week, and hope that I get better by doing so. Some people may have an initial talent, but even they need to do the work. So take every opportunity you can to develop your skills early so that you can maximise the benefit during your career.
Don’t be tempted by rabbit holes
Coming out of something, like a PhD, where the your focus has had to be on a single very defined goal, it can be tempting to approach the next phase of your career in the same way. I don’t think it hurts to have focus, to have your list of gaps to address, and the things you’ve identified that you want to include and prioritise. I also want to state here that unlike your PhD phase, you might want to consciously keep the next phase broad and ensure that you maximise your opportunities to try and experience a breadth of options. Not just to help inform future decision making, but also because, as I’ve posted linked to making professor, you can’t progress on the basis of one area of interest alone. You may be an amazing researcher, but you also need to know how to communicate your research. You may be a wonderful teacher, but you also need to develop your strategic awareness skills in order to understand how best to navigate the system you find yourself in. Be aware of your future career needs and make sure you don’t close doors without realising it by failing to maintain and grow across development areas, and know how much these areas cross support each other to make you the best scientist you can be.
Be prepared to be flexible
I’ve discovered that pathways are never as direct as I once believed them to be, and I have previously struggled to be kind to myself in understanding that the most direct path is not always the correct one for me. I failed to see the joy in the diversions for a long time. Looking back on it though, this diversions and deviations have frequently ended up in giving me the experiences and opportunities where I’ve learnt most about myself or gained most in terms of career progression. Being open to the less travelled path can reap unexpected rewards. Being open minded when presented with choices, and sometimes over looking short term gain, can have great career benefits in the long term.
Sometimes this flexibility is also about allowing yourself to choose to prioritise your personal priorities at times over career ones. It can feel like, if you are making a choice, it is a permanent closing of a door but more often than not it is a choice you are making for right now based on what works for you. Being mindful of when choices are permanent or for ‘right now’ can be really helpful in evaluating next moves. Also, knowing that your choices are about you and what’s right for your life, and not listening too much to outside distractions can be helpful. It may be right for you to move into industry, to step back from clinical, to move into strategy or policy, only you can judge. There can be perceived judgement linked to leaving a standard academic path, but career paths are so much more diverse and flexible than they used to be, and so we should not just accept but embrace the freedom that creates.
Define yourself, don’t let others do it for you
The truth is, if you don’t define yourself you will be defined by other people. It is natural for human beings to want to put each other into boxes, that’s how we process and see the world, but you need to step up and choose which boxes are right for you and not be scared if they are perceived as different or unusual. Knowing how to communicate who you are, your unique selling points, and almost developing your own brand, can also help others understand and support you.
If others start to define you it can be easy to become a passenger in the early stages of your career, and then once you’ve established yourself enough to know who you are you’ve travelled down a path that takes time to re-set. Being able to communicate your values, beliefs and core vision, is essential in so many different interactions, be they in your personal or professional life. Doing this well means you are less likely to swayed or worse mis-labelled, leading you to end up somewhere that is out of alignment with who you are and where you want to be. This path leads to unhappiness and real issues with career satisfaction and fulfilment. Don’t be a passenger in someone else’s story, or an imitation of someone else’s aspirations, work hard to ensure you are the leading character in your own life. That is the path to real satisfaction in your career and supports you finding the happiness you deserve in your day to day life.
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
I’m back from a lovely week away at Disneyland Paris, celebrating Christmas and escaping reality (a post on Disney and denial as a coping mechanism is on its way). Whilst I am still struggling with the return to reality this weeks blog post is supplied by the wonderful Callum Barnes. Callum is a disciple of the biomedical sciences, current master’s student creating a more authentic lab experience for those after me, aspiring consultant microbiologist (the best discipline, sorry Claire – you see he understands, like me, that micro will always trump immunology).
Callum is supervised by Dr Claire Walker who is a paid up member of the Dream Team since 2013, token immunologist and occasional defector from the Immunology Mafia. Registered Clinical Scientist in Immunology with a background in genetics (PhD), microbiology and immunology (MSc), biological sciences (mBiolSci), education (PgCert) and indecisiveness (everything else). Now a Senior Lecturer in Immunology at University of Lincoln. She has previously written many great guest blogs for The Girlymicrobiologist, including one on turning criticism into a catalyst for change.
Two years ago, I began a placement year in the microbiology department of a pathology lab, unsure of what was to come, and unsure of myself and my skillset as a scientist. As I think every scientist feels at some point, I was mostly concerned that I would be a hinderance to all the wonderful staff that were just trying to get on with their jobs. Everyone was amazing though and helped me develop the skills and confidence I needed to successfully complete my IBMS portfolio verification. Returning back to university for my final year, I found the lab-based work so much easier than in my second year with my experience, but… something was different. This wasn’t the same stuff I just spent the last year working on, where was the LIMS? The booking in of the samples, the investigative process and the, frankly, the occasional chaos were missing. That’s not to say the labs weren’t good – they were great – and the staff that developed and ran them miles better, but something felt like it was missing. And that’s when my now supervisor Dr Claire Walker came to me with a project for my Mbio year.
Claire and I both have experience in the NHS, herself a lot more than me, but we have both felt and experienced the environment that a pathology lab has. It has a very unique feel to it, slightly alive in my opinion. This is not a very common experience to have in academia though as most academics have a research background, which means that the practical pathology side of things can sometimes get lost when students do their practical work. As such, Claire and I have been working on creating a lab experience that is as authentic to an NHS pathology lab as possible.
But why even bother? The students are learning the same things, just in a different way, so does it really matter? Well in fact, yes, it does! As Claire has said previously, the pilot study she did had very good results, so the data is there to back up our work. But imagine for just a second that you are looking at applying for medicine, and you have two offers. One university offers a fully simulated experience using manikins and actors – the whole shebang. And the other university teaches mostly through theory and shadowing – no practical experience is offered. I know which course I would enjoy and learn the most from. Medical schools know this too and is why most of them offer simulated teaching – it makes for better doctors too.
So, we should really ask, why isn’t this offered for biomedical scientists? Maybe it’s cost, maybe there isn’t the associated prestige. Whatever it is, I am sure that our work will guarantee a truly authentic clinical laboratory experience here on the iBMS accredited course at the University of Lincoln – something I know will provide the right skills for the pathologists of tomorrow.
I’m off to the Federation of Infection Societies (FIS) conference this week. I’m involved in 3 sessions over 2 days, and in many ways, these types of events are a complete highlight for me. I get to be inspired by hearing new science, I get to catch up with wonderful colleagues who I don’t get time to see very often, and I get to immerse myself in all things microbiology without the distraction.
There is another side to this coin, however, and that is both the anxiety that builds before I go, and that can last throughout the whole event. The ever-present spirals of ‘do I know anything?’, ‘will I say something stupid?’, ‘will I know anyone?’, and the classic ‘do any of these people actually like me?’.
The combination of this social anxiety with the, sometimes long, very peopley days, can mean that I hit spirals pretty easily and the lack of solo recovery time means that I can find it pretty exhausting by the end.
Now, I’m obviously not talking about extreme cases of social anxiety that may require informed medical or long-term support. I’m talking about situational anxiety that most of us may find ourselves in from time to time.
Just in case there is anyone out there in a similar boat, I thought I might put together some things I’ve learnt along the way that help manage some of my anxiety traits and enable me to actually enjoy the experience rather than dreading it.
Do your prep work ahead of time
The first thing I’ve had to learn is that I can’t just pretend that doesn’t happen. I can’t wish it away. What I can do is be prepared and make sure that I have made the process as trigger free as possible.
For me, this is about simple things, like getting a hotel as close to the venue as possible. It means that if I just need a 30-minute alone break, I can take one. It removes anxiety about getting lost or forgetting something crucial and not having time to go back for it, which, although minor, can be the final straw. It’s also about making sure that I have pre-found all the rooms I need to locate ahead of time, so I know where I’m going, and that ahead of multi-day meetings I have a plan for which sessions I’m going to before I even travel to the event.
Know your triggers
I know that I have a few things that really lead to anxiety, but perhaps more unique to me, is the fear that I was have an auto immune attack and won’t be with people who understand what is needed. I learnt early that the best way to cover this one off is that I very rarely travel alone, especially over seas. I often travel with my mum or one of a very small list of truly trusted people, who I know would understand how to get me help if required.
Something that is more likely to strike a cord with others, is that I am also the girl who has walked into conference rooms, spent 15 minutes and walked out, as I knew no one and was just overwhelmed. I’m not proud of these moments, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that they have occurred. Although, to be honest, when they’ve happened, I mostly felt invisible, so I doubt anyone noticed.
I have discovered that I need to know that the space is one where I feel welcome for me to perform at my best. This sense of welcome can be either intellectual, because of the topics covered, or because of feeling a sense of community, as the room contains people within my field or in strong alignment with my values. I’ve found the overwhelming feeling hits most strongly when I’ve been in very large political or strategic sessions, where I felt out of my comfort zone on both intellectual and community counts.
That said, I’m not too bad in the sessions themselves, I’m there to learn something new, and learning excites me even now. It’s the breaks that are my nemesis, especially when large groups all surge into a space at the same time, and the weight of expectation that you must now network lands. The seconds that feel like hours of desperately searching for faces you recognise and being forced to face the fact that yes, you really should go up and speak to that absolute stranger, as it’s the right thing to do. It’s these moments that can cause me to bolt for the nearest bathroom.
Carve out time for yourself
One of the key mechanisms I’ve identified to help with my triggers is that I make sure I have enough time to myself, be that eating food away from the venue so I feel more certain what it contains and less at risk, to making sure I have evenings to myself to process and unwind.
I usually come over as really social, and really into spending time with people, and I am both of those things. I also only have a limited amount of social battery, and so in order to maintain that extrovert part of myself I have to have recharge time. I love talking to people about this blog, I love hearing about and responding to other peoples work, but at a certain point I need to sit down with an audio book and a cup of tea in order to do it well. This means that when I go through the brochure ahead of time, and plan my sessions, I make sure that I have enough blocks of time to enable me to be my best self when I’m in the space with others. Sometimes all you need is a walk to a local coffee shop and back to give you the perspective you need.
The wonderful thing about having hit my 20th year as a Healthcare Scientist, is that I now also know quite a few people, some of whom I’ve known for well over a decade. This means that at most events, there are also people who I count not only as colleagues but as friends. People that I can just go and spend time with that doesn’t include social commitment. Those friends you have that you can just be in the same space without any demands being made. If I’m at an event where these people are also attending, then I know that I have someone I can just excuse myself to catch up with if I’m having a moment. It’s also the great thing about ensuring that you have a hotel room nearby. Your safe bolt hole is only minutes away.
Make an agreement with yourself about how much is enough
The fact that you have social anxiety does not provide a free pass to escape one of the fundamental purposes of attending conferences, networking. It’s key to your career, it’s key to your development, it needs to happen. The thing is that there are varying degrees of what networking can be, and before you’re in the space, you need to decide what level you are aiming for and will therefore achieve. For me, my deal is that I will, on each day, speak to one person I don’t know. I am not allowed to finish my day without this happening, but once I have had that one daily interaction, then any further moments are a bonus. Once that one challenging moment is over with the pressure is off, and then I almost always over achieve on my goal.
Be realistic about how much you can expect of yourself
The key thing I’ve learnt is that I have to realistic when I’m making that deal with myself and deciding on achievable targets. For me, there is not point is saying I will speak to five people I haven’t met before, as I’ll just be setting myself up for failure. You will also find that I rarely sign up for conference dinners, as I have over the years found that if I’m in a space with other people from 08:00 – 18:00 I will really struggle to then spend yet more time with other people, no matter how lovely or interesting those people are. All I will want at that point is room service, tea, and a movie in my room.
Everyone will have their own tolerances and lines. The important thing is to have enough self reflection to know what yours are. Otherwise, you just add guilt into the anxiety mix, which is not much fun for anyone.
Learn how to work a room using tools you are comfortable with
One of the other things that I’ve learnt about myself, is that although I get super anxious standing in a room trying to approach someone at the coffee table, I am much much more comfortable moving around the exhibitor stands. The guys at the exhibitor stands are motivated to speak to those who approach, and there are usually science based discussions that I am eager to have. This, for me, is a match made in heaven, as it breaks me into the speaking to people I don’t know in a very gentle way. If I’m lucky, I will also meet others when I’m wandering around, which will allow me to tick my ‘speak to one stranger box’ as exhibitors do not count on that front. The added bonus is that I also often manage to find cool new stuff I’m interested in or develop collaborations whilst this is happening, so it’s a no lose scenario for me.
The other thing that having worked for 20 years has given me is the opportunity to be asked to be involved with sessions. For this girl with social anxiety, this is actually a great thing, despite the fact that it sounds like it should be stressful. I’ve never minded public speaking in the same way as I worry about 1:1 interactions. When I speak, all I can do is put my best foot forward and hope that others will be interested in what I have to say. For the most part, if people don’t engage they will just leave and not give it another thought. On the positive side though, if people find what you say interesting enough to want to speak to you afterwards, this a great way to tick the ‘speak to one person you don’t know box’ and as they are approaching you all you have to do is respond. I find this so rewarding, but I also appreciate how fortunate I am to have this type of opportunity and how much it helps me manage to get the most out of events.
Prepare your exit strategy
One of the important things to bear in mind, and which I often forget, is that others do not necessarily feel the same way about social requirements. I struggle when people arrange evening meals at meetings when you’re already booked to spend a full day together. I understand the purpose, it’s lovely to build bonds and memories, and logistically it’s easier. I rarely, if ever, hit the end of the meeting day and wish to spend the few hours downtime I have with others, over reading in the bath however. There are frequently times I can’t opt out of these moments, but where I can, I will often have a pre planned reason to excuse myself. Often, this is work related, as I will always genuinely need to do some email catch up, and doing this after dinner means working till midnight. I don’t lie but I may pre-plan my rationale for not being available to support both my work load and my mental well being. I will never not pre-inform, as that is rude. People will have budgeted and made arrangements, so I will never last minute drop, but if the option arises I may flag unavailability at the planning stage.
Don’t succumb to expectations and pressure
People are amazing and much more welcoming than you expect. I’m always counting myself as so fortunate is be asked to unexpected drinks, meals and catch ups at conferences. I have learnt that I need to not get caught up in the moment and end up crossing the carefully curated boundaries I have put together, in order to ensure that I can last the social distance of the conference. I’m a planner for a reason and I don’t riff off the plan well. I also struggle with saying no. This means that there have been multiple times when I’ve said yes to that dinner, or those drinks, and have then suffered the consequences afterwards. Now, I work hard to keep to my boundaries so that I don’t make life harder for myself. This can be surprisingly difficult as all these invites are inclusive and well intended, I just have to remind myself to make the sensible choice to enjoy the entire event, rather than burning out after a single evening.
Know that this is an essential part of the job, so invest in coping strategies early in your career
The truth is that networking and attending these kinds of events is essential. They are a fundamental way of hearing the latest science and expanding your knowledge. They are also key for collaboration and building your networks, as well as dissemination of your work. No matter what anyone says, I have found that science fields tend not to be meritocracies, there’s plenty of ‘who you know’ involved, and the only way to address that is to get yourself out there. So you will need to learn how to navigate these settings, and the earlier in your career you manage that, the more rewards you will reap.
I’ve talked about some of my own pitfalls and things that I’ve implemented to help me, but you will have your own triggers, and each response will need to be customised to yoi and your needs. What is true for all of us is that you are not alone, and if you are in need of someone to speak to during the horror of a break, then I am always happy to be your person. This is what I look like and I will never turn you away.
Know that it gets easier
The longer you hang on in there, the easier it gets, honestly. I haven’t walked out on an event in a decade, although the toilet hiding is still a little more frequent 🤣
Pre manage your expectations of yourself and make sure they are reasonable
Book with a group or a friend if you can to take the edge of socialising with strangers
Join a social network, as you can use it to find like-minded people, and it can give you a virtual introduction rather than the cold approach
Similarly, join a society. Societies often have small meet-ups either before events or at meetings, and so you can make connections in a smaller, less intimidating space
Submit work. It’s much less intimidating if people come and speak to you rather than the other way around
Know it’s absolutely OK to need to tap out and have your own space, but make sure this is pre-planned so you don’t miss the reason you came to the event
Right, well, having talked about the need to be prepared. I haven’t even packed yet, so I’d better get on that. If any of you are Liverpool bound, make sure you come and say hi. I’m there Wednesday and Thursday.
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
I’ve been thinking a lot about goals lately as I have two awesome PhD students who are currently in the thesis writing mines, and having taken a few years away, I’m preparing to re-enter the grant writing labyrinth. This thinking has led me to actively spend some time considering what can make a goal helpful, but also what can make it a millstone around your neck and something that actually makes life tougher.
As you’d probably expect, I spend a lot of my working life talking to people about goals, be they personal or organisational. I’ve also spent the last 20 or so years setting good goals and also setting some truly dreadful ones, either because they were unachievable or developed in a way that just wasn’t helpful. So I thought this might be a good moment to share what I think a good goal should look like in case it helps.
Goals should be S.M.A.R.T.
You will hear an awful lot about how goals should be S.M.A.R.T. These criteria were proposed by George T. Doran (1981) and stated that goals should be:
Specific: Targeting a particular area for improvement.
Measurable: Quantifying, or at least suggesting, an indicator of progress.
Assignable: Defining responsibility clearly.
Realistic: Outlining attainable results with available resources.
Time-related: Including a timeline for expected results
These principles can make goal setting sound really complex, and like their development will take a whole bunch of time. That can definitely be true if you are setting things up for a big piece of work or a project. The principles can however also be applied to more modest goals that aren’t about big things. For instance, if I manage to do a 20 minute block of writing right now, I will reward myself with a pot of the pink earl grey tea I currently love so much. Therefore getting into a habit of thinking what is achievable and embedding specificity, even into the little things, is a good routine to get into.
One of the reasons I find goal setting so useful is it can get me away from big picture thinking. Sometimes, seeing the big picture is what you need. They are other times, however, when seeing that big picture can feel overwhelming or dis-empowering, and what I need is to be able to break my task/goal into small enough chunks that I think I will be able to take the steps forward that I need.
In all honesty, sometimes those chunks have to be pretty damn small if I’m struggling. Sometimes, they can be larger. Sometimes, they can aim at controlling the next 5 minutes of my life, and sometimes, they can focus on a whole day. A key piece of learning for me has been to understand what I need to have in order to service the need, whilst acknowledging that I’m not a robot, and so some days I will need to accept that my productivity looks different.
If I’m setting up a big set of goals for a project, I therefore need to be flexible enough in my approach to allow variation in how any blocks of sub goals written can be brought together or modified based on the needs of the day. Motivating enough to get me over the hump, not so formidable that I’d rather do nothing than look them in the eye.
No goal stage should take longer than you can attain in one sitting
This is a big one, for me at least, no individual goal should take you longer than one sitting. That one sitting could be a day, on some days that one sitting could be 20 minutes, but one sitting is my time boundary for an individual sub goal.
There are a few reasons for this:
Different sub goals can get combined based on how I’m feeling and my capacity to be challenged on any specific day
Keeping them time limited means that they are easier to monitor, tick off and see progress, even when it feels like a slog
I find it easier to plan my total work that needs to be achieved/go into something if I have a workable unit of input that is going to be required
It means that I only ever have to do one achievable thing in order to feel like I’ve done something. Otherwise, failing to complete my goal because I’ve set myself too much to do, can leave me feeling like I’ve failed rather than I’ve failed to plan appropriately
A lot of this, for me, is about learning how to trick my brain so I can move forward even on those days when I just don’t really want to but it has wider benefits in terms of tracking and flexibility in terms of thinking outside of delivery alone.
Goals can be multistage
All of this doesn’t mean that you can’t use goal setting to work towards a big plan, a big vision, or a big task. If you are working towards your 5 year plan, your thesis, your fellowship, you absolutely need to have a plan and goals that encompasses everything. The plan cannot however be ‘write a thesis’ or even ‘write a thesis by the end of 2024’. Those types of goals are the ones that become millstones as they include all the expectation aspects of a goal with none of the pathway that would enable you to achieve what’s needed.
Multistage goals require you to look at your big picture and then turn it into a 1000 piece jigsaw, where most of the time you are trying to find a home for a single piece, but you keep the lid of the box with the picture to hand in order to guide you along the way. Getting to a point where you are able to break the whole down requires you to do 2 things. One, do your research so you know about the project/larger goal in detail. This enables you to sensibly decide where you can segment it. Two, spend some time getting to know yourself, what motivates you and your rhythms, so that you can be sure you are breaking down the whole in a way that facilitates rather than hinders the way that you work. There is no point in being deluded and pretending you are or work like someone else. At this point, realism, no matter how much you like or dislike the truth, is key.
Goals should have details
I will say this once more with feeling (still one of my favourite Buffy episodes). Your goals must never be things like: ‘write a chapter’, ‘write a paper’, ‘write a thesis’. Not unless you have a constant level of superhuman motivation. Your goals need to be much more specific and achievable.
There’s an example of a high level goal written below, but I tell you that I would find that unachievable if that is all I had. I would need sub goals below it per week and per day. I say this as someone who used to run half marathons. I would need a ‘on week one of training I will run so many miles’ and ‘on day one of week one I will do X’. Otherwise, I would get to the end of week one supposedly needing to run 30 miles that week having run none, and facing up to the fact that I would have failed at the first hurdle as there was no way I was running 30 miles on a single weekend. This kind of failure can really get into your head and change how you feel about the next stage, and ensuring you don’t make life harder for yourself is a key life lesson.
Goals should aid focus
You will not feel world beating every day. What good looks like will change on different days. It is foolish, therefore, to pretend otherwise when you are planning your sub goals. Again, you need to be planning for reality, not idealism. It is not only sensible but essential therefore to include flexibility in your goal setting that takes this into account.
One of the best ways I’ve found to do this is to make sure that I have a mix of different styles and types of goals. I include tasks for those days where I don’t have the focus for sustained deep activities, where all I can face is picking around the edges, as well as ones for those days when I can tackle the big thinking and can really dig deep. A good example of this is making sure you have a list of the essential, time consuming but slightly mindless work that always needs to be done for any paper or thesis. Things like figure checking, formatting wrinkles and cross referencing. Don’t waste your days when you have energy and focus on these, keep a list to one side so that even on days you don’t feel ‘on it’ you are able to still feel like you are moving things forwards. Be cogniscent of your state of mind and use that to make the best use of your time.
Goals should support your process not become an additional stressor
My husband has probably lost count of the number of times he’s found me crying on the sofa, and when he’s asked what’s wrong, I’ve said the world is going to end because I’m going to miss deadline X or Y. When he’s then followed up with a question linked to who has set the deadline, invariably he finds that it’s self imposed. He then looks at me with compassion and gently (or forcibly depending on my need) reminds me that if I set the deadline I could also, you know, change the deadline…..
These moments always remind me that the purpose of a goal is that it should enable you to cut out the noise and focus on the now, not become a distraction or thing to be overcome. A good goal should enable you to be motivated even when you don’t feel like it. A good goal should give you an objective way to capture progress, even when you feel you aren’t making any. The best kind of goal should mean that you don’t end up in a crying heap on the sofa as they stop you reaching that point. So develop good habits about goal setting, and your future self will thank you.
Ensure you have a way to monitor progress
I’ve said a good goal should be measurable. There a couple of reasons for this. First, at a very basic level you need to be able to tell when it’s been completed. Setting a goal like ‘improve my piano skills’ sounds fine, but how do you classify that? When will enough improvement be reached? Is sitting for 5 minutes and running scales enough, or are you wanting to be able to play more than Chopsticks?
Second, if you are involved in something that is big or multi goal, you will need to be able to see progress being made. Part of this, if you think like me, is that I need to be able to visualise that I’m moving forward in order to maintain my motivation, and being a scientist I like quantitative data to show that I’m not just lying to myself. The other component of this is about learning for future activities. By setting measurable goals that have time scales attached, in order to can capture trends, supports you to be able to set better goals in the future . For instance, I know that I always under allocate time and have learnt the hard way that I need to add 1/4 additional time to things vs. the time I originally planned. I have also learnt that I will take an age on the initial phases of any piece of work, way way longer than I had allocated. This means, however, that my writing phases tend to be much shorter than allocated, as if I’ve done my planning/thinking, I can get 5000 words down a day.
If I don’t have goals that are not only measurable but monitored, I can only get part of the benefit of undertaking the work linked to setting the goal in the first place. So do future you a favour and make sure that you have mechanisms for doing both as part of your day to day to maximise both your outputs and your learning.
Goals should be regularly reviewed
You will only get the learning potential out of goals if you see those goals as live items. Pieces of a puzzle that should be regularly reviewed by holding them up against the box lid, which has the wider picture. Goals that are no longer helping should be reviewed, and the whole plan should remain flexible enough to change so that it can better fulfil the purpose. If you find out that you have allocated time scales that don’t work, missed out crucial stages, or just made individual goals too big and need to break them up, this is much easier to fix if you embed reflection throughout. Otherwise, you can end up crying on the sofa as you have been too inflexible or focused on the finish line to flex the details along the way.
I would advocate setting reflection points at regular time intervals, but also at the start and end of a new stage, in order to think what went well and not so well. For instance, if you are writing the first data chapter of your thesis, were your time allocations correct? How did your list of mop up activities work? Was there anything you missed out or had present that you didn’t need? Then, use this learning to adjust everything moving forward. It’s also worth having a wider review stage at the end so that you can roll any higher level themes into your learning for next time. You may not write another thesis, but you will write other large documents, so maximise the learning opportunities where ever possible.
At the end of the day, you rather than the goal, are the one who needs to be in control
The purpose of all of this thinking and preparation is not, in the end, to make extra work for yourself. The purpose of this is to give yourself a framework to support thought and mean you don’t waste time or lose direction later on. A goal is a tool to help, not a noose to choke self confidence or creativity.
The other thing to bear in mind is that a goal is not a deadline, and we should stop treating them as such. A goal is a way of helping you deliver to deadlines, but it is not an end in itself. You will have goals for things that don’t have formal deadlines, and you may even have deadlines for things that don’t require goals. Knowing the difference and seeing goal setting as just another tool in your toolkit that is there to help you achieve and reach your aspirations can really help change your relationship with goals and goal setting. If your goal does take control and end up becoming a deadline in itself, lay back and enjoy the feeling that comes with the sound of it whooshing past in order to re-set your relationship and put yourself back in the driving seat. You are the one in control after all.
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
I’ve been thinking a lot about pathways in healthcare lately, from having conversations about T-levels and apprenticeships this week, to equivalence and Higher Specialist Scientific Training (HSST) posts. It’s made me reflect a lot on my own training pathways and the fact that the majority of the advice I received was that the only option, in terms of approach, was to work harder and do more. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is some merit to that, and there is also some truth, but I had it drilled into me that you can’t be successful if you do a 9 – 5. You must always do more. You must always over deliver. You must always be adding to and diversifying your CV.
This advice and approach has been key to me developing into the person I am now. I am objectively successful and so grateful for the support I’ve received along the way. I have the long dreamed of Consultant post, and my dream job. I was made a professor within 10 years of finishing my PhD. I’ve held multi-million pound grants and have over 50 publications. The other side of the coin is that, despite being exhausted, I can never sleep for the number of things I haven’t finished, and I constantly feel like I’m not doing or achieving enough. I’ve also written before about the impact of my anxiety levels when I’m tired or try to step away. So, as new starter season comes upon us, I wanted to take a moment to really talk about the messages we are giving our trainees, and ourselves, to think about how true they are for current training opportunities and what we can do better for those that follow us.
Let’s start with a bit of history and the messaging that we used to focus on as part of training
Goal orientated view of the world
During my first week as a trainee Clinical Scientist, I was sat down and told that it was an 11 year training scheme to Consultant, but it was up to me to put in the work and make it happen. Well, I worked pretty damn hard, including not having a weekend off at one point for 3 years, and it still took me 16 years. Does that make me a failure? I don’t think so. Does that mean that I should have worked hard to make it happen in 11? I’m not sure of how I could. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who made it happen in 11 years. Of the 4 of us who started, only 3 are now Consultants, and we were a pretty committed bunch. So were we all set up to fail?
The whole scheme was designed with that 11 year target in mind. I understand it from a strategic point of view. There are a lot of boxes to be ticked. Our situation was made even harder as there were only 3 years’ worth of funding for a scheme that required 4 years of professional practice to gain registration. That meant you also had to prove yourself worthy and useful enough that someone would decide to fund you for that extra year. Otherwise, everything had been a waste, and you would walk away unregistered and unlikely therefore to get a job.
My main problem with this approach is that it doesn’t really allow scope for exploration, and it really doesn’t allow time for creativity. It trains you into the ‘onto the next thing’ approach. I certainly had no time for celebration or reflection between stages. I was always trying to make sure that I was useful enough to remain employed, and in later stages, as it took me 13 years to be made permanent, I had to also ensure I was bringing in sufficient money to cover my salary so I would be kept in a job. It also means that when you finally do get all those boxes ticked and get your dream job, you are so trained into the tick box way of life that you are left searching for what the next box should be, rather than embedding and celebrating what you have achieved.
There is nothing that cannot be fixed if you work hard enough
When I started work, I used to read a book at my desk during my lunchtime, like I had when I worked at Birmingham City Council. It would always be some variety of fiction novel. I came into work one day during my first few months, and a pile of textbooks had been left on my desk with a post-it note suggesting that maybe I should read these instead. The implication, to me, was that it was not acceptable to have downtime, that any moment I had should be used to continuously work and improve myself. In short,’I must try harder’ ‘I must work more’ in order to justify the privileged position I was in. If I wasn’t going to lunchtime talks, the time should be used for other improving activities.
I also remember clearly listening to amazing female Healthcare Scientists talking at events about how, to achieve as a woman, you always had to work harder and do more than anyone around you. It was made very clear that it was required to constantly go above and beyond if you wanted to reach their position, if you wanted to succeed, if you wanted to make a difference.
The messaging has always been pretty clear. No matter how hard you are working, it probably isn’t enough, and you must work harder. Otherwise, you will fail and let everyone who had faith in you down, as well as yourself. If experiments fail, you don’t go home, rest and reflect, and come back tomorrow. You stay and set it up again. There were just too many midnight finishes to count during my journey to Consultant. If you want it, you will just work harder until it happens. I submitted my PhD a year early in order to achieve FRCPath whilst on my fellowship. At the same time, I took a PGCert in education because I recognised that it was important for my career path and my interests. Looking back, doing those three things simultaneously was foolish beyond measure. At the time, I thought I was just demonstrating that I had what it took.
Effort must be continuous
At the very start of training, I remember sitting over a bunsen burner crying. I was so ill, but no one around me ever took any time off sick, and it was just not considered to be OK. Eventually, I was sent home as I just couldn’t breathe, but it was very much ‘see you tomorrow’. Having an ‘off day’ was not something that happened. The hard earned truth I’ve learned to accept is that my best looks different from day to day. Some days, I could take on the world. Other days, I struggle to crawl across the line at the end of the day. Especially with a health condition made worse by stress, the idea that I can just ignore it, carry on, and always achieve amazing things every day is sheer madness. This was how I tried to work, however, and it took seniority and growing older to come to terms with the fact that this was just not achievable.
The thing about seniority is interesting. There is something about seniority and being able to give yourself permission to do things differently, which is worth mentioning. That’s not the real difference, though. I think the real difference is in the expectation setting. I try to be the person who gives others permission to acknowledge that some days are harder than others. Who checks why people are still there when they should have gone home. Doing this for others has the side benefit of reminding me that sometimes it’s OK to also do this for myself. It is not possible, nor is it necessary, to work at 100% all of the time. There will be days when you absolutely need to bring it, but there will be recovery days when what you should do is catch your breath, and if possible, do some reflection in order to make things better long term. A career is a marathon and not a sprint, after all.
There is no room for failure
This one isn’t just a work thing. It’s definitely a family thing too. My father is infamous for saying that no child of his has ever failed anything, and we weren’t about to start now when I was worried about FRCPath.
The Clinical Scientist training programme has always been competitive. Getting into the programme was competitive, but even when you were in it, my experience was that the programme itself was pretty competitive. The people on it were used to being at the top of their class, and I experienced a fair amount of posturing throughout my first 4 years. Far from being tackled and a focus placed in peer support and collaboration, I feel like the rhetoric around the programme added to this. The focus on there not being enough places for us all to get posts when we finished, and the constant commentary on only the best of the best being able to get Consultant posts, placed us in direct competition with each other from day one. Therefore, you couldn’t talk about challenges for fear of disclosing weakness that would impact your future. That atmosphere is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about talking about the reality of the job on this blog, both the highs and the lows, as I didn’t have any way to normalise my experiences when I was training and in the midst of them. I hope posting will help others in finding a benchmark for ‘normal’ that I didn’t have.
Even on a day to day basis failure was not an acceptable part of training. To this day, I remember that one of my fellow trainees reported a NEQAS result (part of a quality control scheme), and she got it wrong. The result got reported, and the department lost a point on the national scheme. In reality, it should have been checked by someone else before it went out, but it happened. The virology consultant at the time never spoke to them again. We would sit in joint tutorials, and he would ask a question, he would then wait for my response even if I was just repeating what my colleague just said. He would respond to my answer but not theirs. There was never a review of what had happened and how the mistake had occurred. There was no acceptance of the fact that being part of a quality scheme is there to support learning and to identify where improvements can be made. There was just a long-term change in the way that trainee was seen and how they were then supported. It was a clear demonstration of what would happen if a mistake was made and that it would impact how your working life would be from that point on.
Quitting is not an option
The same trainee went through a hard time during her final year. She basically spent a lot of her time crying, and the response was that she was allowed to come in 30 minutes late. She started to see a therapist, and even though we never met, I owe that therapist a lot. Her therapist pointed out that in the three years she had been in post she had never been out for a cup of tea with a colleague, so she was given homework to ask someone out for tea, and she asked me. This was a real turning point for me. We went for tea, and we had a real conversation about the things that were both hard and good. It was the first time that I felt less alone. It was also the start of a conscious decision I made to take people off site for tea, to support better conversations, that I’ve continued to this day.
Later that year, she walked away. She made a decision to go a different way. It took enormous strength to do it, and even now, I have enormous admiration for her. Until that point, I hadn’t known anyone make a decision that prioritised their wellbeing rather than the CV tick boxing. The general attitude was that Healthcare Science is a small world, and you were incredibly fortunate to be a part of it. It was so hard to get into, and you had put in so much that you would be crazy to walk away. There was judgement linked to failed experiments, let alone walking away from the programme. Seeing someone break that mould was incredibly powerful.
The truth is none of these messages are entirely true, so how do we do a better job of messaging for current training programmes?
Training is just that, a learning programme, a time to explore, fail, and reflect on those failures in order to learn to do things better. If the messaging I experienced as a trainee now feel less than ideal, what messages should we be encouraging? I’ve been having a think and these are some that I would like us to have better conversations about:
We are more than the sum of our qualifications
Not everyone is going to become a Consultant. Not everyone is going to get FRCPath and a PhD. You know what, that’s perfectly OK. It doesn’t stop you aspiring for those things if that’s what you want. However, our trainees are not in a Hunger Games style competition to be the last one standing. More than that, how good you are at your job is not dictated by how many qualifications you pick up along the way. Some of the most amazing Biomedical Scientists I know and have the privilege to work with don’t have a masters degree. It’s OK to be a brilliant band 7, and be satisfied and fulfilled by the role you have. Your qualifications don’t define your worth, and it’s OK to make choices that aren’t about playing CV bingo. It is also OK to decide that those things matter to you, you still aren’t defined by them. They have the value you choose to give them.
It’s OK to pause and reflect
No career is a straight path, no matter how it looks from the outside. There will be bumps along the way and the odd hill/mountain to climb. You will reach the destination better for it. You will be able to handle the journey a whole lot better if you allow yourself time to pause and reflect along the way. A big part of development is about making time to reflect on where you are and where you are going to, but also asking the big questions about whether those decisions and reflections you’ve made previously are valid for where you are now. You will be working for decades, and the decisions you make in your 20s are unlikely to reflect the decisions you might make in your 40s, so making time for active reflection isn’t a luxury, it’s an essential part of a professional career.
Knowing when to change direction requires courage
In many ways, I’ve been pretty fortunate, the things that I’ve wanted have aligned with my values and have stayed pretty consistent. This could easily have changed, however. I suspect that if I’d been able to have a family, my focus may have altered somewhat. Knowing when to change your focus or direction is important. This a balancing act between knowing when you just need to double down because things are getting difficult, or when you have truly shifted as a person and that you have to change direction to reflect this. Mentorship and coaching can really help with both this and the reflection that may get you to that moment. Acknowledging that continuing down a path ‘just because’ may not be the right thing and that it requires courage to sometimes jump off a cliff and make a big switch is a step that may require additional support.
Your value is not defined by your productivity
This is the one that I struggle with most and therefore know I probably fail to provide the best leadership around. I often feel that ‘I’m do what I say’ not ‘do what I do’ in this area. I often feel defined by my to-do list, and when that gets out of control, as it often does, I place a LOT of judgement on myself. The thing is, if I get hit by a car tomorrow, no one is talking about my to-do list failures at my funeral. I hope that they will talk about how I made them feel, and maybe even this blog. It is hard, but we can choose what defines us. You have that power. One of the reasons this blog is ‘Tales of a recovering workaholic’ is because I recognise I need to change, and I’m hoping to do a better job of playing this on forward and encouraging our trainees to be defined as well rounded individuals with interests outside of work. We need to encourage a holistic view of value in ourselves and others.
There is no prize for working the hardest
The biggest lie I felt that was embedded in my original training programme was that if you just worked hard enough and ticked the required boxes, the prize was there at the end of the race. The hard truth is working hardest does not get you the job. Ticking all the boxes makes the outcome more likely, but it doesn’t guarantee you anything. There is no prize for the most midnight finishes. Trust me, I’ve done enough of them to know. To a certain extent, the prize for working hard is more work. If you set the bar at working most weekends, then your work just expands, so you have to work most weekends in order to keep on top of everything. If you require external validation, like me, this can be a really dangerous game to get into. If we see this in our trainees or ourselves, I think it’s important to recognise and actively find other ways to find that validation before it becomes built in or results in negative consequences.
The next generation of trainees deserve to benefit from the experiences of those that came before, both in terms of knowledge and in learning how we could do it differently. The working environment has changed, as have our trainees and training pathways. By thinking more about our messaging we can make the work place right now more suited to where we want it to be, rather than relying on chance to make it better. Everyone has a role to play, but we, as leaders and educators, should be prepared to lead by example and own the change we wish to see.
I posted a couple of weeks ago about application tips when applying for a PhD. In that post, I talked a bit about researching the supervisors in order to be able to talk about their work and department. In all honesty, though, there is a much stronger reason to start early on understanding your supervisor. They can make or break your experience during your PhD.
It’s no secret that I did not have the best supervisory experience during my own PhD, and there are plenty of reasons for that, but one of the main ones was that I didn’t start off understanding enough that there is a requirement to curate and nurture the supervisor – student relationship. I didn’t know what questions to ask, what clarity to seek, or frankly even what was normal. The relationship therefore broke down, and I retrospectively had to unpick why. Having learnt the hard way, and now having sat on both sides of the table, I thought I would share some thoughts about how to get the most out of your relationship with any academic/educational supervisor, PhD or not.
Do your research
As I’ve said, doing your research should probably start before you even have the post. It’s worth reaching out and speaking to previous and current students so you can to get an idea of what their experience has been. If you are already in post, it’s still worth speaking to people to find out as much as you can about what kind of supervision style they’ve experienced. Every supervisor is different, just like every leader is different. The more you know, the better placed you are to understand what the dynamics of your relationship might look like, and importantly whether there are any possible pitfalls which you could then address early, preventing then becoming something more. In this one, knowledge really is power. So get as much knowledge as you can as early as you can.
Expectations matter
We all enter relationships and situations with expectations, but too often, these are internalised and therefore opaque to both ourselves and others. Not getting these into the open where they can be discussed and expectations clarified can be a key reason for relationship breakdown, at least it was for mine. One of the reasons I think this happens is because, as students, we are often entering a completely new arena, and so we just don’t know the unwritten rules. I’d like to think that most supervisors know this and will therefore spend time at the starting point of the relationship to talk through what their expectations are. I’ve previously written about the use of learning agreements to help this process. Sadly, I’m all too aware that this is often not the case, and supervisors, who live in this different world, often forget that others don’t come with all the information they may need to deliver what is expected.
Get to know their work and working patterns
My inbox is the place where emails go to die, and my diary is a horror show. These are facts. No matter how much I try to keep up, I get hundreds of emails every day, and to be honest, I can’t. If you only send me a single email, it will get lost. If you try to get a same day meeting with me, you will fail. I therefore ask that, if it is important, you email me three times and make it high priority. This vastly increases the chance that I will see it. If you want to see me every 2 weeks, then let’s get a regular slot in, which will move, but at least it’s there. All of this is not because I don’t care, it’s just the only way I can manage multiple competing priorities. Everyone is different. You will have your own way of working, as will your supervisor. There is no point in being passive in the process and miserable about the outcome. If you have needs, you have to actively work to find the best way that they can be met.
Be aware that you are the one driving your work
One of the largest changes when you start a PhD is that it is YOUR PhD. You are in the driving seat. A PhD is effectively a job, and the switch up to the responsibility sitting with you can be a challenging shift. No one is policing deadlines, and in fact, you are the one that should be setting them. No one is prioritising your workload. You need to work out, with support, what needs to come first at any given time. The lesson about not being passive is important across all aspects of your PhD. You are no longer in a taught process. A PhD is effectively an apprenticeship in research, and like in any job, there are expectations placed on the employee in terms of delivery and performance. The earlier you can come to terms with this the easier your pathway will be.
Identify peer support
All of this change can make the start of any PhD stressful, and you will need to find sources of support outside of your supervisor. Even if you have a great relationship with your supervisor, even if everything is going well, there will be times when you dislike them or part of your PhD. In these circumstances, you need to have safe spaces to vent and seek support alongside benchmarking from others. It’s important to invest some time early on to build wider relationships with your peers and, if in a small lab, potentially seek out groups or networks. These will stand you in good stead during your PhD, but also in your future career, as learning to build networks is a key skill to be invested in.
Know your benchmarks
Everyone enters a PhD at a different place. The same is also true for PhD projects, some are more developed on day one than others. It can be hard therefore to work out how you are doing, especially if you haven’t established supervisor expectations. There are some useful tools out there to help. Every University should have some form of pathway which lays out the dates and timelines that PhD students need to deliver on, from reporting and upgrade to final submission. These are invaluable in making sure that you are on track and on target for your work. Projects will often have individual timelines, if they are grant funded, that you need to maintain. Grant funded projects will usually have milestones, reporting, and dissemination deadlines, which need to be kept to. It is worth noting that some of these things mean that it is not always so meaningful to benchmark against your peers. I would always advocate using them as a source of support rather than self judgement, as you may not be comparing like with like.
Manage your relationship
All relationships require work. All relationships, especially ones that last years, will go through peaks and troughs. Your relationship with your supervisor is no different, and because of this, communication is key. This sounds easy enough, but sadly, it is often not. Finding the balance between being that student who needs supervisor input into ever thought/decision, meaning you don’t find independence, and being that student who never speaks up and therefore ostriches on issues, meaning that issues don’t get addressed, is not an easy one. It requires the pair of you to build trust, and that is a gradual process. A lot of this is helped by laying the groundwork and having open discussions about expectations. Being open to supportive feedback, asking questions, and owning your work by doing things like reading and coming prepared to meetings goes a long way towards making these relationships flourish. Also, being transparent about challenges and identifying issues early can mean that both sides are facilitated in addressing issues. Your supervisor can’t help if they don’t know.
Friendly is not the same as friends
I’m going to say this here, being friendly is not the same as being friends. We all hear great tales of supervisors and students being best friends. I’m sure that happens after the PhD is over, but I’ve never known it happen during. I’d like to say I get on really well with most of students. I’m invested in them. I care about them. I will happily buy them a beer in the pub. We are however not friends. My wellbeing is not on them. It is not an even relationship. I am there to support them, but I am also their boss. In a friendship, if we went to the pub, my friends and I would take turns buying in rounds and discussing our problems. I’m pretty open about my work based challenges, but I don’t expect my students to take them onboard. I don’t ever expect them to buy me a drink. I personally don’t think that’s how these things should work. When they are done being my students, when I no longer have responsibility for them, then the relationship can become more bi-directional. Until then I have a duty of care which means I should put them first.
Know the rules
These next few ones are for if, like mine, your relationship takes on a less healthy trajectory. The first thing I learnt was that I really needed to understand the rules. That’s both the formal written rules and the informal social academic rules. It’s only by knowing these that you can judge whether the breakdown is precipitated by a valid breach. If you don’t know the rules, how can you tell if you’ve broken them? If you have broken them, then we all need to act like adults, hold up our hands, and seek forgiveness whilst taking corrective action. The other reason to know the rules is that you may need the information. My primary supervisor refused to sign off on allowing me to submit my thesis. As I’d done my research, I knew that I didn’t need supervisor sign off, it just meant I couldn’t sue the University if I failed. Hopefully, you will never get to a similar point, but knowing your parameters will never do you any harm. This one is back to knowledge is power, and so gain as much of it as you can.
Keep up your end of the bargain
It takes two to tango, and knowing the rules won’t help if you don’t keep up your end of the bargain. Grant deadlines, if you are externally funded, are often immovable, and so if you are required to get data or reports out by a certain date it can hold ramifications, not just for you, if you don’t deliver. Even if you are not grant funded, you need to deliver on the agreed timelines you made with your supervisor. This may all sound really simple, but you would be shocked at the number of students who don’t seem to grasp this fairly straightforward concept. PhDs are not like undergraduate work where you can ask for an extension on every piece of work or merely have an assignment capped. This is your first job in research, and like any job, if you keep missing deadlines, then eventually you will get fired. I had one PhD student who kept missing all deadlines because they believed no one would ever be allowed to fail a PhD or would be removed from the course. I had to explain to them that this was not true and show the mechanisms that existed to do just those things. After which we got on much better and they re-focussed on the task in hand. It’s obviously better if things don’t reach that point before being addressed, and so it is key both sides bear in mind the social contract they have made.
Have a plan B
If academic life has taught me anything, it’s that you should always have a plan B, and I think it’s a sensible approach no matter what stage you’re at. Hopefully, you will never need it, but strategic thinking is a good skill to develop regardless. You should always have more than one supervisor, even if the others have variable involvement. If you can, it’s always worth trying to include them and investing in developing relationships with them as well. They can provide a counterpoint view on your work, and they can help with benchmarking your relationship and expectations with your primary. Your secondary supervisor is also likely to be involved at times, such as your upgrade viva, and so understanding their expectations can be really helpful. In the unlikely event that your relationship with your primary is not great, they can also take on a mediation role to help both sides gain clarity and hopefully move forward. If you hope for the best and plan for the worst, you should have all sides covered and hopefully have the most fulfilling experience possible during you PhD.
Finally, it’s worth remembering that supervisors are people too. They have good days and bad days. They have personal stuff going on that can impact their mood and decision-making. They will make mistakes and hopefully apologise for them. They will aim for perfection and always fall short. What I hope more than anything is that you will find a supervisor who wants and drives for you to reach your potential and who always has your best interests at heart. Sometimes, that means that there will be hard conversations, and sometimes that means they will push you, as they have faith in your ability to improve. I want all of my students to grow to be better than I am. I want them to know that I have faith in them even when they feel lost and can’t find faith in themselves. So do your research and find a supervisor who works for you and the way you work. Find that supervisor who will make you better than you could be on your own.
All opinions on this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Someone said to me a few weeks ago that the story of my career is to ‘have good ideas and then to have them taken’. This was an interesting comment made spontaneously, and to be honest, I’ve never really thought about it in that way. So I’ve taken a few days to reflect on it as it obviously resonated enough with me to stick in my mind, and this is what I’ve landed on. We don’t own anything, at least when it comes to concepts and innovations at work, and I’d rather see any transition as a gifting than anything negative.
There will always be competing circles, hierarchies, or priorities, which means that things you developed sitting within one may be better placed or coveted by somewhere else. Workplaces are dynamic, and there is always flux. Denying that will just result in additional stress and tension. Sometimes, you just have to have a little faith. Faith that handing something off is the right thing to do, and faith in yourself that you will always have another idea or innovation, nothing is ending, this is an opportunity for new beginnings. Despite having come to terms with it now I found this very challenging early on in my career and so I thought it was worth exploring more, in case the journey I’ve been on is helpful to others in developing their own coping mechanisms for dealing with this reality.
The academic challenge
Academia is a strange and unusual world and, although I love it, it can be baffling and difficult to understand how it works, especially when you first join. When working clinically, you are generally in a scenario where you are responsible, and therefore in some way ‘own’, the results you are working with, even if you are not the one giving actionable advice. The same is often not true in an academic context. When you are starting out, your Primary Investigator (PI) has a lot of control over the work, and owns both the risk linked to any given project and the data. As a result, I think many of us have experienced a scenario where a PI has taken either our data or our ideas and utilised them without our inclusion or consent. I once found a paper that had a bunch of my data in it, interpreted incorrectly, that had been published by a Professor in my department without my knowledge. I’ve also popped in whilst I was on leave to find a different Professor going through my lab books to see my data when they were nothing to do with me.
These are extreme examples of not great behaviour, but the principle is still present. You don’t own what you produce in academia until you get to the point where you are the one who is bringing in the money that pays for the production, and even then your funder could be considered the owner. There are lots of ways to improve this, and there are plenty of people who behave better despite this scenario. It is important to understand the dynamics and drivers in order to be able to come to terms with some of the unwritten rules however. Once you have understanding, you are in a position where you can learn to navigate the challenges.
It’s less about seniority than you’d think
I used to think that the more senior I became the more I would have the freedom to own my initiatives. That I would no longer set things up to have them taken once the majority of the work had been done or the risk managed. This is true in some ways but not in quite a lot more. The last 20 years have shown me that the difference is less about seniority and more about advocacy. If you have people in the room who will challenge and speak up for you that is more important than status alone. For instance, if a project is being discussed then the meeting will hand designated responsibility for it to someone in the room. If you are not in that room, you need someone who is to go ‘Elaine has been doing a great job on this, I’ll feedback on how it’s going right now and make sure I continue support. Elaine will have more details so how about we invite her to the next meeting in order to give us an update?’. One of the problems with working between worlds (in my case scientific, clinical and academic) is that you have fewer people invested in this kind of exchange, as you don’t sit with any particular group in a way that feels like you are a full member. You therefore have less people who are prepared to take those steps to advocate for you and your work without significant prior campaigning. I now sit in a lot more meetings, and have a much closer team, and that advocacy pathway is easier, so seniority plays in, but is not always the main driver.
Be prepared to have hard conversations with yourself
It can be tempting to play the victim. It can be tempting to see the world as unfair and that things should be different. I hate to break it to you, and I am often forced to remind myself, it’s not about you. Very few things that happen in a professional context are truly personal. We work within systems, and those systems have rules, some of which are obvious and some of which are less so. If something works, if an idea is good, and it serves the system, sometimes people will just take it. If the idea is to benefit patients, or to serve a change, then maybe we can’t ‘own’ anything, as it belongs to the system we are working within. It can feel really tough whilst you’re in it. It can feel pretty dreadful to have something you’re invested in taken away.
Sadly, ideas are not toys, and we are not in nursery, rarely is someone going to sweep in and return things to us. So you need to be able to take a reflective step back and decide how important this particular moment is. When I sit in meetings, and yet again someone is claiming ownership of a research idea, or I feel pushed out, I consciously ask myself will this matter? Will this matter tomorrow? Will this matter next week? Will this matter in six months? Will this matter next year? I do it in precisely this order, almost as a mantra, and I often find that the answer is no to at least one of these questions. This calms me in the moment and enables me to react in a logical mind set rather than an emotional one. You need to find a way to get into the right mind set to serve you, not be the servant of an emotion in that moment. Otherwise you won’t get the outcome that you are striving for.
Battles inhibit creativity
One of the reasons I try to get myself to a space where I can rationalise and move on is because it helps me. I’m not doing it for anyone else. If you are spending time fighting every battle, I find, that it means I have less band width for creativity, for new ideas, to be inspired. Frankly, I’m not interested in giving other people enough space in my head to mean that I can’t be the best version of me. There are definitely times that you need to suit up and go into battle, but most of the time it isn’t worth the impact. Keeping yourself focused on why it is that you decided to do what you are doing, and making sure you can do it in the best way possible is the best version of success. You have to let go of the fear and the protectionism in order to enable you to succeed in the long term, rather than always having a short term focus.
Assess whether you are still the right person
One of the other reasons to move to a rational space is to enable you to make balanced assessments. One of these assessments is to evaluate whether you are clinging to things for the right reasons. Sometimes we have invested so much of ourselves, of our energy, into a project that it is hard to let it go. That doesn’t mean that we are always the right person to continue. There are plenty of times when the right decision for the work is for it to pass to someone else or another group. You may have too many other projects to give it the focus it needs, or you may have upcoming work which means it will have less investment in the future. It may be that the project now needs to be advocated for at a different level, and therefore expansion requires it to be taken over by a senior leader. A really common one is that you don’t have the CV or track record to be able to be PI on the grant that is needed to take it to the next level, and therefore you need to hand over primary responsibility in order for it to succeed. Not all handing over is linked with loss, sometimes you have to let go of control of an idea or piece of work to enable it to flourish. In these moments it’s important to recognise that the handing over is something to be celebrated, rather than mourned, and seen as a sign of how far it’s come.
Know what matters to you
If, when you ask yourself the does this matter questions, you answer yes, then you need to decide if the potential costs are worth it. There are definitely times that you will recognise that something does truly matter, and when that happens you need to be able to come up with a logical plan of response. Who can you speak to? Where can you build support? How much impact can you have and will that be enough? I’m very lucky to have a great team around me who will not only advocate when I’m not in the room, but will also offer peer support. If you are not in the place to influence and you decide that it matters, you have to maneuver yourself into a position where you can. This takes time, it takes investment, it requires the expansion of social and other capital. You can’t do this for everything and so you have to be selective. The other thing that you may learn, is that during the early stages of a project that is significant to you, you can take proactive steps in order to determine the future pathway and therefore reduce any challenges before they become insurmountable.
Keep the faith
Not matter how bad it can feel in the moment, know this. You will have a new idea. You will find a new challenge. You will be inspired again. This is not the end, this is a window to a different beginning. Be honest with yourself about your personal drivers, why is this so important? Take these moments and challenges as learning opportunities. I have found people that I am over the moon to collaborate and work with long term, but they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I have collaborated and worked with vastly more, where I have completed the work, taken the learning, but know that I would prefer not to repeat the experience. All of that is OK. Building trust takes time. Sometimes you need to work with people that have different values and drivers to you, and often once you understand those you can deliver, but every now and again it doesn’t work. You have to have the courage to keep going, the courage to keep trying, and the courage to let go of failures and difficult experiences. You have what it takes to come out of this particular crucible so much stronger. So keep the faith in yourself and you will climb mountains!
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Spring has sprung and that means academic application time has also begun. I’ve already had a number of queries about what it is that I look for when I receive PhD applications. Selfishly, I therefore thought I might write this post so that I can refer people here to read it. Don’t worry if you’re not applying for a PhD though. I’ve just interviewed for a senior role and had to go through a LOT of applications when shortlisting. It’s probably obvious, but worth stating, that a lot of these tips are also relevant to when you are pulling together any personal statement or piece where you need to sell yourself. So, good luck, and I hope these help.
Understand what’s being asked of you
The first thing is to really understand what is being asked of you. A PhD application, although in many ways a job application, is also much more than that. It’s less about where you are at right now and more about where you could be at the end. There’s a lot more in the assessment about being able to demonstrate the way you think, your aspirations, and your passion, therefore, than the box ticking against a job spec that is often required for other posts. Your cover letter is therefore critical in order to help you stand out from the crowd and a generic letter that you’ve sent to 20+ options just won’t cut it, if like me you’re are getting tens to hundreds of applications to shortlist. Your generic version just won’t pass the skim test. Below are the kinds of things I want to see if I’m glancing over your application in order to put it in the consider pile.
Be specific, details matter
Having looked at a LOT of applications over the years for PhDs and other roles, my first big tip is that details matter. Making statements like ‘I have good communication skills’ won’t tick any of my boxes. I need to have it followed up by a concrete example such as ‘this was shown by me winning X poster prize at X conference’ or ‘me being asked to lead our group presentation on X, where received a distinction’. Your examples don’t have to be revolutionary, but you do need to back up your statement with something concrete. You are applying for a science post after all, so evidence matters.
Show what got you here
It’s easy to think you have to be exceptional to succeed, but the truth is most of us aren’t exceptional. We just have a passion, interest, or tenacity that gets us somewhere. My father recently referred to me as ‘an academic late bloomer’, and I’ve written before that we are all more than the sum of our grades. Because of this, when I’m looking at applications, I’m most interested in the person behind the grades and the details. Some people will be exceptional undergraduates but will hit a ceiling when it comes to postgraduate study. Some of us dealt less well with the thought constrictions at that level and only really grew into our potential when the safety wheels were removed. I’m looking for your application to show me what makes you tick, how you think and approach challenges, and how you ended up sitting in front of a computer writing this application.
Be clear about where you want to go
I’ve talked in previous posts about the need for you to show me your why when discussing undertaking a PhD. There are lots of reasons why you might decide that a PhD is the right next move for you, and it doesn’t just have to be that you want a future career in academia. In some ways, the reason doesn’t matter as long as it’s thought out. What does matter is that you’ve taken the time to do that thinking and have the skills to be able to communicate it. PhDs are not a walk in the park. There will be hard days and challenging periods where you question whether this was the right move. Your motivation, whatever it is, has to be strong enough to get you through those dark days. It’s also important, that if you get the role, I understand how to support you in your future goals, and I can’t do that if you don’t know what they are.
Why this PhD
There are PhDs advertised all the time. One of the top things I want to have jump out of your letter is why you think this particular PhD is the one you want to do. What is it about the topic that interests you? How does this fit in as a logical next step from what you’ve been doing so far? Where is your passion or interest in this particular topic? PhDs with me will always have a clinical aspect, so what is it about this rather than primary science PhD that speaks to you. I want to know that you have considered, in my case, what it will be like to do research in healthcare and the benefits and challenges of the setting. I also want to know how it fits in with your goals as described above. This needs to be done in enough detail that I know you have thought about it and that it’s specific to the PhD I have advertised. Anything generic is a real turn-off at this point.
Why this supervisor
Supervisors make or break your PhD. It’s the honest truth. Demonstrating you have awareness of how important this relationship is to your PhD goes a long way to show that you understand the challenge you are choosing to take on. I would always recommend reaching out to the primary supervisor ahead of applying therefore. You can then make an informed choice about whether this person will be the right support for you. Every supervisor has different styles and you as a learner have different needs. Understanding whether those 2 things will mesh is so important. You can then address why the supervisory team on offer is the right choice for you in your application.
Why this university
The other thing that is worth including is why the university you’re applying for is the right choice for you. Each university has a slightly different ethos or feel, and so why does the one you are applying to match your requirements? Is is because it has an associated medical school or strong pre-existing links to local hospitals? Is it because you really like the structure of the PhD programme? Is that they have a doctoral school or other funding that links into a research council you are particularly interested in working with? It’s always worth looking up what the PhD structure is actually like, some will require you to submit regular essays, others will just have an ongoing log, each is likely to have different upgrade windows and structures. State why this university works for you and your learning style. This not only makes it clear that you’ve done additional reading to understand the programme, but that you’ve also done the reflective thinking to see how you would fit into what is being offered.
What skills do you have
Let me be clear, no one expects you to have all the skills to do a PhD when you apply, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing a PhD you’d be doing a post doc. That said, on the advert there will be some skill requirements that you will be expected to meet or be on the pathway to meeting. It’s key that you cover these off in your application, either in the covering letter or CV. One of the key errors I find people make when putting together their applications is that they think all of the skills and experience listed have to come from their scientific or academic backgrounds. This really isn’t true, especially for an early career post. Leadership skills can be demonstrated from volunteer or other work experience, such as helping out at Scouts, Guides or Duke of Edinburgh. Conflict resolution skills can include things like bar work on a Saturday night. Time management could include how you helped your parents manage your 6 younger siblings when it came to after school activities. As part of you bringing your entire self to the post you should feel free to include all of the skills developed as part of the route that brought you to making the application.
What experience do you have
It can be challenging to split out skills from experience, but if you have any, experiences can go a big way to demonstrating your commitment to the career you are hoping to embark upon. Have you attended seminars or other voluntary activities as part of your time at university? Have you arranged to shadow or undertake placements within a laboratory to gain extra experience? Did you engage in weekend or other field trips? These help demonstrate interest, but they can also help to round out some of the short listers’ understanding of what you may be bringing in terms of scientific experience, and how that might benefit the initial phases of your PhD. I also always appreciate the way that applicants introduce items like these into the application, as it also helps me start to get a feel for how they think and approach challenges, which is one of the things I’m looking for to help an application stand out from the rest.
Ensure you use the literature
Another way you can show what you thought process is and how you might develop as a scientist is by making sure you use the scientific literature in developing your application. I want applicants to reference a couple of key pieces of literature when they talk about why this PhD interests them. It also makes the application stand out if you reference published literature from the group or supervisors when you talk about why you are interested in working with them. Finally, if the PhD is funded by a particular funder, or through a particularly funded centre then I would also expect the application to reference what the funders remit is and what they aim to achieve. Demonstrating that you’ve taken the time to understand the context in which your research will be undertaken shows, to me, that you have the beginnings of the strategic awareness you will need to develop future funding applications during an academic career.
Demonstrate your added extra
I hate it sounding like I’m saying that everyone has to go above and beyond, because that’s not really what I’m saying. What I think you need to do is embed something that makes your application stand out. That can be by including a lot of reading and referencing in your application, if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy. It can also be about sharing a story about why you have always wanted to work in this kind of research. One application I recently reviewed, focussed on the applicant talking about how much they wanted to engage with dementia research as their grandmother had been in a care home linked to dementia, and they they had spent a lot of time therefore getting to know individuals with dementia and had personally witnessed the impacts on their families. They then followed it up with information linked to dementia UK, showing they had both the drive and ability to find information. There are many different ways to make an impression. Your application is a blank slate but making sure that it has enough detail to show that you have thought through what might help you stand out is key. How you do that is completely up to you. Think of it as getting a head start on developing your scientific elevator pitch!
Follow the rules
Having said that PhDs are different, in terms of not being so tightly tied to a person specification, there were still be boxes you need to tick that are listed on the advert details. Please please therefore make sure that you do maintain enough focus to be certain to cover off the stated requirements. You want to weave in the other aspects that will make you stand out linked into what is being asked for. One thing it is always worth asking, is for someone else to read your application against the requirements, preferably a none expert, to get a neutral assessment of whether you have clearly covered off everything that is needed.
I do have one personal plea linked to this though. Please do not send a 90 page attachment with all of the certificates you have ever achieved and every paper you have ever written in full. It is possible to go too far the other way and send too much. I will tell you honestly, if your combined letter and CV for a starting level post is more than 5 pages I will start to become less and less engaged with the application. If you send me more than 10 pages, I will not consider it for shortlisting. A key skill as a scientist is being able to engage with a question, shift information to identify what is relevant, and build an evidence based response. If you send more than 10 pages it signals, to me, that you are unable to manage at least one of these steps in an efficient manner, and therefore cannot meet the person specification.
Have a little faith in yourself
My final tip is this, have some faith in who you are and your ability to succeed. If you write your application from a position of confidence rather than imposter syndrome, you will use words like ‘will’ and ‘can’, rather than using works ‘like’ and ‘attempt’. It seems a small change but there is a subconscious difference that is detected by the reader when someone writes in a definitive style that inspires confidence. It will not be the only thing that gets you across the finishing line, but it can definitely help. You have achieved so much to get you to the point where you are qualified to apply for a PhD. You deserve to give yourself the same self belief and encouragement that you would offer friends and family if they were in same situation. Remember. You are braver than you know, and so much stronger and more able than you believe, so take that leap and fly.
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
I’m off for some much needed leave enjoying being a Disney adult this week, it’s really needed as between COVID and a broken foot the start of 2024 has not been kind. I’ve called upon a great friend therefore to help me out and write this weeks blog post, so I can focus on drinking cocktails and braving the Tower of Terror. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
Dr Walker is a paid up member of the Dream Team since 2013, token immunologist and occasional defector from the Immunology Mafia. Registered Clinical Scientist in Immunology with a background in genetics (PhD), microbiology and immunology (MSc), biological sciences (mBiolSci), education (PgCert) and indecisiveness (everything else). Now a Senior Lecturer in Immunology at University of Lincoln. She has previously written many great guest blogs for The Girlymicrobiologist, including one on turning criticism into a catalyst for change.
I’ve written before on this blog about how inspired I was by the work of Professor Ian Davies and Aimee Pinnington on the introduction of clinical simulation to biomedical science education. Clinical simulation is used widely across medical training but to date, has largely been overlooked in biomedical science education. I signed off my last post on this subject with the intentions to build this into my own immunology module on the iBMS accredited course at the University of Lincoln. We are fortunate to have many Health and Care Professional Council registered members of staff across a wide range of disciplines teaching on our course, as well as a very active iBMS liaison committee with links to local laboratories. So I had many wonderful people to pester endlessly with my ideas for how to integrate more clinical simulation across our course. We already do a brilliant job of incorporating our own experiences as healthcare professions into our teaching through both use of case studies and work with simulated patients. My feeling is that enhancing this work with additional clinical simulation practical sessions can only further benefit our students here.
Immunology, in particular, as a discipline lends itself beautifully to clinical simulation as a learning technique. Students often view immunology as challenging due to its complex and multi-faceted nature. It can be seen as dry because we ask them to develop an understanding of abstract concepts and use a diverse array of terminology which often are difficult to pronounce and even harder to remember. I often remind students that though immunologists are quite brilliant, but we probably shouldn’t have been allowed to name our own findings – especially given how frequently we tend to rename molecules. Furthermore, immunology is a notoriously difficult discipline to find placement opportunities in, thus it is essential for students to have authentic learning experiences in this field whilst at university. As such, using clinical simulation to create realistic scenarios which foster active learning and emotional engagement can only help students with this dry, dusty old subject.
I might love Immunology so much I own the teacup, but it isn’t for everyone. Perhaps Clinical Simulation can change this.
One of the most significant barriers to the introduction of clinical simulation to immunology is the frankly exorbitant cost of the commercial reagents to laboratory practicals. Fortunately, my students here at the University of Lincoln have a dry, dusty old teacher (me!) who remembers the days when we made, rather than bought, all of our kit in the clinical laboratory. To that end, with the help of my favourite histologist Dr Issam Hussain and my delightful mBio student, we have been making ANCA slides and using antibodies to manufacture patient samples for clinical simulation. For those of you who haven’t come across ANCA testing before, this is the preparation of ethanol-fixed neutrophil slides which we use in the clinical laboratory to run immunofluorescence staining to help diagnose patients with autoimmune vasculitis. This is a particularly serious condition which often presents as a clinical emergency and is probably the most urgent test run in the immunology laboratory. The results can be highly subjective and difficult to interpret, with extensive follow-on testing required. The clinical decision is often made based solely on the patient presentation and this single immunology test. Thus, the reporting of these urgent results can be nerve wracking for the most experienced of healthcare scientists. The opportunity to practice this skill in a risk-free environment with a range of clinical scenarios offers the ideal space for students to make mistakes and learn from them without putting a patient at risk. Simulation of this work can help to build confidence and competence, and introduces our students to the concepts of clinical judgment and decision-making.
Figure depicting the production of ANCA slides, their staining and visualisation with a immunofluorescence microscope.
Before and after the simulation lab session we ran anonymous surveys to evaluate what our students thought of the learning experience. I was delighted to see in our preliminary review of the data that more than 95% of the students felt the simulation improved their understanding of both the techniques and the diagnostic process, and 98% felt that clinical simulation was a good learning experience. With a really significant number of responses, and so few negative comments, I feel my view point on simulation has been reaffirmed. Watch this space. I am now fully committed to the idea that we can really enhance the training of our future workforce of biomedical scientists through this powerful teaching strategy. And thank goodness the students enjoy it too.
An example of weak ANCA staining seen down the microscope during for a simulated patient. Students are asked to identify the staining pattern, and with some additional clinical information, make a decision about whether to report urgently or wait for further tests.
One of my brilliant PhD students had his first experience of responding to reviewers comments last week, and as we sat and talked it through I thought that it might actually be a useful topic to write a blog about. Now, Sam was responding to reviewers comments on a review, but I think a lot of the principles stand no matter the response is linked to. I feel the same way about responding to comments and reviews on any piece of work I’ve poured my heart and soul into, be that manuscripts, grants, a piece of guidance, a policy or a business case, or my current horror – book submission. It might be that I need to remind myself of this advice as much as I wanted to share it with you 🤣.
Getting the opportunity to respond to reviewers is a success in itself
No matter how rough it feels in the moment when you first open the email/attachment and read all those comments where the reviewers have blatantly failed to read your carefully crafted wording in the way it was intended remember this. Being able to respond to reviewers is itself worthy of celebration. It means you haven’t got a full on NO. It means that the people see there is value in what you have done, even if they believe that it could be improved with some tweaking. Anything that isn’t a rejection is worthy of allowing yourself a mini celebration, chocolate bar, glass of wine, cup of tea, before you tackle the trauma of starting to make the changes.
Put on your positive specs
Whilst I drink my celebratory cup of tea I always take a moment to remind myself that this is actually an opportunity, an opportunity to make something I care about better than it would be without this process, that it’s an opportunity for improvement, and that this opportunity is something to be seized and embraced. Who doesn’t want to deliver the best thing they possibly can?
Always be polite
Now, it can also be said that sometimes recognising that opportunity for improvement can be challenging. Sometimes, those responding can have missed something that you clearly stated in both paragraphs X and Y. The thing is, they won’t have spent hours and hours reading your writing, and they are unlikely to have come to know it in the exquisite detail that you do. I tell you this as the person who blocks out only an hour to review your precious creation as that is all my diary allows. The thing is, most reviewers are doing it for the good of the community/trust/committee. They are, in essence, doing us all a favour. Therefore, when responding to what they have said its important to recognise that, and always always be polite in your response that you write. You are a professional after all.
The moral high ground gives combat bonuses
I have, on occasion, seen reviewers’ comments that shouldn’t have gotten by the editor or panel. Comments that could be considered racist or sexist, or to be honest, blatantly are. I’ve also seen responses where editors return those comments and just added a comment of their own to say ignore them and don’t respond in the review. This later one is interesting to me, I feel editors shouldn’t return these comments and should really respond to the submitter to say they are not acceptable. When responding to these, I think it’s even more important to respond with grace. I separate out the science and deliberately respond to these with my science head. I then flag and escalate the rest of it, as if it’s a completely separate incident.
Don’t respond immediately
This is my top tip, my one thing if you only take one thing from this blog post. Never ever respond immediately. Open the email, read it once, maybe twice, to really ascertain what’s been said and see the response deadline, then close it and walk away. Nothing good ever comes from responding in the moment. I personally have a 48 hour rule. I will leave that email closed for at least 48 hours before I open it again, during which time I will drink that celebratory cup of tea and try not to dwell. After 48 hours, I’m allowed to re-open and read it again. If at that point I can read it without an overt emotional response I’m ready to respond. If not, I will give it another 48 hours. Almost always, after 48 hours, I open it and it’s nowhere near as bad as I had originally perceived with my emotional goggles on and I can just get on with a response.
Bite the bullet and get on with it
I know, I know. I just told you you need space to switch from emotional to logical response and to read what’s there in an analytical way, but you also can’t wait too long to respond. This is for a number of reasons. One, there will be a deadline for you to accept or reject what you’ve been asked to do, and you have already invested a LOT of time to get to this point. Two, you want to draft your response when the original submission is still relatively fresh in your mind as it helps with rebuttals and references. Finally, if you need more than two 48 hour breaks to get your head in the right space it’s likely that this is feeding into something bigger and you probably need to find a coping mechanism and to start processing what that is, and responding is a good way to start unpicking and reflecting on what’s driving how you feel.
Decide on the structure of your response
You’ve finally got to the point where you are going to sit down and start drafting your response. There are lots of ways that you can do this, everyone is different, but in case you haven’t had the opportunity before, I thought I’d share how I do it in case it helps.
There are two main pieces that I would work on in parallel, the response to reviewers document and the in-text changes.
Response to reviewers:
I do this in Word and always have my paper title as the header.
I open with a paragraph where I thank my reviewers for their helpful comments (whether you truly feel it or not, this goes back to always being polite, but in all honesty there’s usually a lot of good to be thankful for)
I then break my responses down by reviewer, so I will have a section headed reviewer 1, another headed reviewer 2 etc, also a general one for the editors comments if there are any
Within each section for each reviewer, I will copy and paste over the comments I have received. I then break down these comments. Some reviewers give you a lovely bullet pointed list, sometimes with line numbers, and so this is easy. Some will give you paragraphs of text where you then have to extract each point and effectively make a bullet pointed list out of it.
At this stage, I tend to remove commentary, things where they is no change requested. This gives me a working list to work from, and I will colour code this text so it stands out from my responses, which I will write under each bullet point. I tend to make the reviewers comments red, I don’t know why I just do. Then, when I start writing my responses, I do these in black.
You can also, at this point, identify whether several reviewers have given similar comments, and then you can cluster those changes.
It’s only really at this point that I can see the wood for the trees, and generally, it’s much less bad than I had initially thought.
In-text changes:
This one is pretty straight forward. You may not have this if you are responding to a business case or grant review as they will want all the information contained in the response document. This additional document is mainly for manuscripts and contains the changes that you make in response to the review in your original paper. I tend to highlight changes to the text in yellow and then make sure I cross reference back in my response to reviewers with line numbers, as well as any commentary, so they are easy to find. The main thing to remember here is, once you’ve completed your response, save off a ‘clean’ copy without the highlights as well as the highlighted version as some places will want you to upload both.
Read what is there not what you think is there
So, the above information is about how you prepare to respond, but how do you actually respond? The first thing, and I think this is key, is to read what they have actually said, not what you think they have said. This is where I find splitting the points to be addressed up really helps, as it enables you to read them in a different way.
Common features that reviewers want added/addressed include:
addition of references
spelling mistakes
improvements in unclear sentence structure
other nuance changes
For all of these the action is fairly straight forward, you just make the changes within the original document and write a comment in your response to reviewers stating ‘changed in text – line XX and YY’. If you get similar comments from more than one reviewer, I would address them in the order in which they occur. So reviewer 1 has a similar comment to reviewer 3, I’d respond in the reviewer 1 section and in the reviewer 3 section state, for instance, ‘already addressed under reviewer 1 in line XX’.
Decide where you line is
It’s actually quite lovely if you just get quick responses as described above, sometimes however the comments require a little more. Sometimes the reviewers will want new points addressed, or occasionally fresh data included. At this point you need to decide how much the paper in it’s current format is important to you to maintain. This has happened to me a few times. Normally the additional points made actually really strengthen the paper and I am more than happy to spend the few extra hours to add in, especially as they tend to be points I already had in drafts but was forced to lose due to word count. There have however been occasions where I disagreed with the reviewer on either the fact that certain points should be included or the way they had suggested that they be done. On these occasions you are entitled, and I have done, to include commentary under the reviewers’ comment where you state why you don’t feel that it would be a suitable edit. You will need to be polite and clear, and ideally evidence, why you don’t agree. The decision will then lie with the editor as to whether they agree or not.
Get a second opinion
Once you’ve completed your response, or earlier if you are deciding to rebut points, it’s valuable to get a second opinion. You should send your response documents to your other authors for sign off, but if you are a sole author you should still find someone to sense check. This process is important, both to help ensure that you have actually addressed all the points raised, but also to help ensure that your arguments are robust where needed. I have been on papers where the first author has returned the response to reviewers without showing it to the other authors, and on reading it I have seen the response hasn’t fully addressed the reviewers which has then led to another round delaying paper submission. Some papers have loads of authors and you, with their support, may not need all of them to comment, but they should have sight prior to submission and at least the 1st and senior authors should have fully reviewed.
Learn lessons for when you are reviewing in the future
My final point is that this is a great learning opportunity, not just on the subject matter, but on what and what not to do when you are reviewing papers, grants etc. I always try to review and write comments in a way that is clear and actionable for those receiving the comments, in a way that I would like to receive them if the submission was mine. I also think it is so important to consider what should and should not be included in your review. Most journals, for instance, want to know whether the level of writing is good enough for publication but I would never cross the line into making comments about the English skills of the authors, I personally don’t feel that’s appropriate, for me, I’m there to comment on the science. It’s crucial to consider what it constructive and what is not as part of this process. When writing a review it is so important to think ‘is it helpful?’ ‘is it kind?’.
I hope all of this helps you when you are thinking about the best way to take onboard comments as they come in. I would also plea that you aim to see them as an opportunity to improve and learn rather than something that puts you into a spiral and causes you distress. Just getting the opportunity to respond is a success after all!
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
It’s been just over a year since it was confirmed that I’d been made an Honourary Professor at UCL. It’s such an odd and yet brilliant thing to achieve the thing you never really believed would happen. Also, because I had dreamed but never thought it would be a reality, I don’t think I’d ever thought about what difference, if any, it would actually make. I thought I would, therefore, write this blog post to help all the dreamers, like me, who might benefit from some details about what it feels like after you’ve finally crossed the finish line.
Everything and nothing
I suppose the first thing to say is both that everything has changed, but in many ways nothing has. My job for all intents and purposes is exactly the same as it was, do clinical work and try to embed research along the way.
The biggest change is probably the level of respect you get from some people based on title alone. This happened to me when I made Consultant as well. You still get dismissed, or challenged (which isn’t a bad thing), but it happens less and somehow is generally done in a nicer way. This isn’t universally true of course, but the majority of interactions are smoother. In some ways this fascinates me, as I’m the same person. The social interplay linked to this hierarchy is something I’d love to go into more at some, but as much as it’s nice I’m not sure it’s how we should work.
The other thing has made my heart full on multiple occasions. I’ve had a number of people come up and tell me spontaneously how happy they are for me, which is lovely, but they’ve followed up with ‘you making professor makes me think it’s something that I can aspire for’, which is even better! I’ve had other people say I can’t be a professor because of my age, background, or gender, but not in a bad way, in a way where their eyes were opened as I didn’t fit the image they had in their mind. Frankly, I think this in itself is brilliant, being able to hold this space whilst being who I am and changing expectations is one of the reasons I fought so hard to get here. So thank you, thank you for helping me get here. In case you are fighting your own fight, and in case it helps, whatever happens next, the fight was worth it.
A world of unexpected opportunities
There are a few key ways that change has happened that I thought it would be worth talking about. Most of these are internal, but this first one is not. I do feel like I get offered more opportunities now. Now, I don’t know for definite that this is a consequence of me making professor, but the timing feels coincidental.
Within weeks of it being official, I received my first requests for commissioned articles from journals. I’ve never had these before, and it was so exciting I accepted the first three without realising that this wasn’t a one-off and that they’d all result in a heap of extra work. I’m glad I did. It’s been nice to spread the opportunity by picking awesome co-authors who haven’t had paper writing opportunities previously or where it benefits most, like my PhD students. The ones I’ve done have been brilliant learning and fun, but to be honest, are too much on top of an already full-on job. Writing them on top of this blog has been fairly challenging as I don’t get a lot of time at home as it is.
I also get a lot of invites to attend events and sit on committees, etc. These have always happened, but they happen much more frequently now. The same is also true with paper and grant reviews for organisations. The irony of some of this is that many of these opportunities are probably much more needed for those who are working to get established or still ticking the essential boxes rather than being wasted on me. I’m honoured, and I still get a lot out of them and feel I can contribute, but I’m not sure we should focus so much on defaulting to including the already embedded, maybe we should be opening those doors wider? That said, I’m frequently the only woman or scientist in those rooms, and so maybe these invites are just that? Still, I will try to pay it forward and spread the inclusion if I can by sending others and stepping back.
A certain kind of freedom
Most of the changes, as I said above, have been in how I feel and see myself. There is a freedom in feeling you’ve achieved something that felt out of reach. It validates the dream, and the sheer act of achieving one means that it inspires you to dream more and dream bigger. It also provides a level of freedom in terms of academic thought and process. I feel there is less justifying my research interests, removing some of the early hurdles you have to get over when starting any project.
There is also freedom to have a voice and express your opinions. Now, I’ve never been exactly meek about this. You read this blog after all. Being called a disrupter and boat rocker in the past is one of the reasons I didn’t think making professor would happen. Now I’m on the other side of the line, I feel even more empowered to stand tall as it would have been easier to not give it to me than it is to take it away. I think secretly everyone loves a little bit of disruption to the status quo.
A need to change my automatic yes
One of the things I still need to get better at and embrace more is the art of saying no. Interestingly, becoming a professor has really helped with this. All of the reasons why are touched on in the following sections, but this sits as an aspect within all of them. It’s changed my thinking about saying no as a negative thing, which I need to justify and flagelate myself over. Saying no to things I’ve come to realise can be an incredibly positive choice, both for myself and others. I’m embracing the power of no, and I would encourage you to do the same.
A need to change my mindset
One of the things that I wrote about in the original post when I made professor was about the fact that you have to demonstrate that you have achieved and ticked a fairly large number of boxes, from publications and grant funding to teaching and public engagement. In all honesty, some of these boxes will appeal to each person more than others. Many of them I love, and some of them are just key parts of the job. There are others however that I can now be more selective about.
I’ve always struggled with feeling like I have to cover all bases, as I didn’t have certainty about where I would end up. Career pathways in Healthcare Science were not very obvious when I started, and so you had to maintain and develop all aspects in case that’s where the job or opportunity would be. There is so much joy in knowing where that path has led, but also in having certainty about the fact that I have the power to now make informed choices about my next steps, as I know where I’ve ended up. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but being the master of your own destiny gives you the ability to choose steps that serve your purpose rather than trying to be everything to everyone. It provides freedom from the constant striving to please.
A redefinition of identity
Something that has been a challenge for me over the last few years has been linked to whether I’m still a scientist. This may sound odd, as of course, I still do a lot of scientific activities: writing papers, reviewing grants, sorting protocols etc, but I don’t DO science any more. I’m not in the lab wearing a lab coat processing specimens, I’m also not often there undertaking experiments. It’s taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that all of the activities that don’t take place in a lab are still part of what makes me a scientist. I find this one fascinating, as it took me ages to ‘feel’ like I was a scientist, and I went through a complete panic at the thought of no longer being considered one. The process of redefining my identity to include these new aspects has been been important, but not always straight forward.
A stronger sense of self
Titles shouldn’t change how you feel about yourself, they shouldn’t, your sense of self should not be dependent on labels. The thing is though, those labels sometimes make life easier. I’m still the same person I was before I became a consultant or a professor. I’ve not morphed overnight into someone different. It does however remove some of that constant need I have to prove myself and show to others I’m good enough, whatever that means. When I’m questioned and challenged, which of course does and should happen, it enables me to have slightly less self doubt. I’m not saying that questioning yourself is not a useful reflective tool, everything is good in moderation, but sometimes I can lean too far into that questioning. I feel like having gone through the external review process, by people who have never met me, and been assessed as reaching this level of knowledge and experience does give me a baseline level of confidence that I didn’t have before. This confidence translates itself into an improved sense of self assurance which is really helpful across my professional practice.
An increased sense of responsibility
Now, I’m not old and dead yet, but crossing this milestone has really made me think about what I want next, and what the next phase looks like. Over the last year I’ve come to realise that the crucial thing for me is about opening doors for others. I want others to be able to progress in a more defined way than I did, and to find some of the doors already ajar. They will face different obstacles, but I feel like that is how we move forward. I really feel that increased sense of responsibility to help those who will come after to me, and to pay forward the support that I have had along the way to others. Having ticked my boxes it’s time to help others tick theirs.
A new sense of direction
All of this has given me a sense of direction, one that involves not being afraid to be seen, and of embracing sticking my head above the parapet for the sake of change and for the sake of others. For the first time in my career I have a stable permanent post which means that I can afford to take risks in a way that I couldn’t have really contemplated before. I have privilege, that I recognise, own, and want to harness for the benefit of others.
I want to be in this position and still be me. I want to wave my geek flag, hold my head high as an obstinate head strong girl, and show that you don’t have to fit the mould in order to be successful. It’s one reason that this blog continues to be important to me. I want to show you can have self doubt and still progress. That you can make mistakes and learn from them, and that that’s OK. I want to stand tall and embrace being ‘Too Much’ to show you don’t have to compromise who you are to make things happen. That you can aspire and achieve more than you dreamed possible by being entirely, authentically you. I want to use the platform I’ve been given and hope that you will all join me along the way,
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Last week I was part of a careers day for Queen Mary University of London, where I did my second Masters degree and where I currently act as an external examiner for the same Masters 15+ years later. I used to do these kinds of events all the time pre-pandemic but it’s been the first one I’ve done for some time. I know that many of the people who read this blog are already working scientists, but there are definitely some of you who are just starting out on your journey and so I thought I would share some thoughts in relation to some of the questions I was asked.
What is a day in the life of Clinical Scientist like?
I’ve blogged before about what a Clinical Scientist job is like as a Clinical Microbiologist. I think the main defining characterisation of Clinical Scientist jobs is that they are all quite different from each other. If you look at the NHS website it gives the following fairly generic description:
Clinical scientists research and develop techniques and equipment to help prevent, diagnose and treat illness.
Clinical scientists are healthcare and medical experts who support clinical staff in their work with patients. Their work is very wide ranging and can include laboratory work and testing, basic and applied research, management and teaching.
There are 4 main areas of Healthcare Science, each of which will have sub disciplines:
The day is a life for each is therefore pretty different. I work as a Consultant Clinical Scientist, and my training was within Microbiology. My Consultant post is even more specialised however, as my main area of practice is within Infection Prevention and Control. I love this as it means that I still maintain my practice within virology, mycology and bacteriology, whereas otherwise I would have had to choose a specific route.
These days I don’t get to spend so much time in the lab. My day to day involves supporting clinical decision making, managing outbreaks and infection risks, as well as supporting PhD students and research activity. I basically act as a hospital detective, trying to work out what is going on and solving cases of infection. I also sit on a number of national and international committees to try and translate some of the learning I experience and research into clinical practice. One of the things I love is that I run something called the Environment Network, that came out of my PhD.
What was my pathway into Healthcare Science?
My pathway into Healthcare Science was probably not that similar to most of you applying today, mostly because it wasn’t really something that was discussed when I was at uni and there were really quite restricted ways into the profession – things like T-Levels and apprenticeships just didn’t exist back then. My undergraduate degree was in Zoology, and although I loved it there were no real jobs in it. When I was an undergraduate I knew I didn’t really want to be your typical academic, where I thought you would spend your whole career looking at a single pathway in a lab, and that it wouldn’t really impact on the ‘real world’. I always knew I wanted to do something that changed things, that made life better for people, I just didn’t know how to do it.
When I graduated doing a master wasn’t really an option. I wasn’t in a position to pay for ongoing education – I needed to work. I then lucked out and was approached because the uni where I did my degree was looking for biologists to start on a new trial MRes that was focused on developing an interdisciplinary approach. They were developing a course called the Physics of Biological Interactions at Surfaces, and they wanted biologists to take it in conjunction with physicists, not only that but they were paying £10,000 tax free to anyone who would do it. I jumped at the chance, who wouldn’t.
During this MRes I discovered clinical research, research that was aimed at change and at making life better for patients. All of a sudden a new world opened up to me, I knew this was the kind of science I wanted to do. My best friend, who was a microbiologist, handed me an advert for a trainee Clinical Scientist job in London in Microbiology. Now, my project had included micro during my MRes, and I’d done one module of micro during my undergrad, but I was far from being a microbiologist. Despite that I took a leap of faith and applied for the job. There 240 applicants and 4 posts. I cried when I left the interview as I really wanted the job and I felt the interview was a disaster. Next day they called and offered me the job. I was shocked, so shocked I asked them why. The interview had been a bunch of scenarios, they replied that that they could teach me facts but they couldn’t teach someone how to think, and they liked the way my mind worked. That has stuck with me, and I bear it in mind as I interview to this day. The rest, as they say, is history.
What are the common routes available to people trying to enter into Healthcare Science today?
There are multiple points into Healthcare Science careers, which is great because no matter what stage of your career you discover them there is a route that will be appropriate for you!
College level entry
Discovering Healthcare Science careers early is great as it maximises your ability to choose your path forward and the amount of time that you can spend developing in this particular careers path. The main way to enter at this point is via T-Levels (I’ve written a separate blog post on these), as they enable you to build a good base and explore the different specialisms to help you make an informed choice.
Degree level entry
Degree level entry can look different depending on whether you are looking at going down the physiological sciences or life sciences route. For physiological science there are accredited degrees that enable you to access the Practitioner Training Programme, or PTP. This enables you to get work experience and training during your degree. There are also two different types of programme that in life sciences will support entry into the field as a Biomedical Scientist (BMS). Both of these include selecting Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS) accredited degrees, but one includes choosing a degree that has a placement year so that you come out ready for registration, whereas the other will require you to do a registration year as part of work when you graduate (see post graduate entry).
Post graduate level entry
Once you have a life science (or other acceptable degree depending on specialism) the there are multiple routes into Healthcare Science:
Direct entry training posts – these include trainee BMS posts for those who have undertaken an accredited degree but still need the year in post to complete their portfolio.
Centrally recruited training post – these posts are traditionally either Scientific Training posts (STP), or Higher Specialist Scientific Training posts (HSST). STP posts involve training over three years to be a Clinical Scientists, and HSST posts involve training for 5 years (once already registered as a Clinical Scientist) to become a Consultant Clinical Scientist. STP posts involve further academic training to get an MSc, whereas HSST posts require working towards clinical exams and a taught doctorate.
In-post development and training, there are frequently opportunities to develop via informal routes when you are in post. If you have taken an accredited degree some posts will support you in completing your portfolio to get state registration whilst working as an associate practitioner (AP), or if your degree was not accredited, your employer may support you in taking top up modules that would then enable you to move onto the next stage of portfolio completion.
Finally, there are routes in via something known as equivalence or route 2 registration, especially for Clinical and Biomedical Science routes. These routes mean that you might do something like apply for a post when you have gained an appropriate PhD and over a period of years gain enough clinical experience to be able to complete a portfolio that demonstrates a similar level of knowledge and experience to someone whose gone through a formal training route. This is what I need for my HSST registration, as I already had a PhD and several years of clinical and academic experience.
Apprenticeships
I’ve put apprenticeships separately here as these are applicable to every level, although the Clinical Scientist one is not yet formalised. This means there are routes where you can be training and earning qualifications that support your career progress, as well as gaining valuable experience. These change periodically and different Trusts will support different ones, so I’m not going to list them in detail but I would encourage you to look at the .Gov website I’ve listed below so you can find the latest information and entry requirements:
Healthcare science assistant (level 2) Carrying out routine technical and scientific procedures and support within hospitals, doctor surgeries and other healthcare settings for a wide range of people. Apprenticeship category: Health and science
Healthcare science associate (level 4) Working in hospitals, primary care and other healthcare settings, carrying out routine technical and scientific procedures. Supporting healthcare science (HCS) practitioners and clinical scientists. Apprenticeship category: Health and science
Healthcare Science is obviously not the only way to become as a scientist as a career, there are a world of different types of way to work in science. Starting in one does not mean that you cannot transfer to another, and different career options may be appropriate at different stages of your life. What I’m really saying is don’t worry too much about feeling like you are committing to a certain pathway if you get offered an entry level job in one area when your idea may be in another. Gain learning and experience and don’t be afraid to move between if that’s the decision that is right for you. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
Industry – pharmaceutical, manufacturing, medical writing and so so many others
Academia – university based, but there are plenty of different pathways within, including specialising in teaching or research
Public sector – this can include jobs such as Healthcare Science, but could also include other routes such as public health, food science, environmental science, and options such as science policy
Clinical – there are other routes that enable you to work with a clinical aspect to your role, such as clinical trails, without entering into Healthcare Science
Charity sector – there are numerous charities, such as cancer research, Wellcome etc, that employ scientists and really value scientific input, whether that’s in their grant structure, policy development or science governance
Communication – science communication and public engagement is a really important area, from writing for news papers to developing content for employers such as the BBC, there are a lot of options in this area
What are my top tips for science applications?
I’ve previously written about this is more detail in 2 blog posts, application tips and interview tips, which I hope will be useful. Below are some more general tips that might help:
Don’t be afraid to use non-science examples. Have you worked in retail and dealt with money or conflicts? Have you been a guide or a school council member, both of which show leadership potential? You don’t have to have spent a year in a lab to be able to complete the form
Be prepared to talk about your why? Why science? Why this job? Why this place?
Know how to complete the application form. If you are applying for an NHS job you will need to explicitly state how you match each point with examples. Do avoid recruitment bias it’s all done on a point based system. You can’t get points if you aren’t writing against the JD, so don’t waste word count on items that are unlinked
Make sure you tailor your application to the job. Generic CVs won’t get you very far and a generic NHS application form will not get you the points you need. It takes time but it will pay dividends
If you get an interview make sure you visit before hand. It will give you pointers as to what they are looking for and ensure that it also feels like the kind of place you want to work
Practice common interview question answers ahead of time
If you are interested in them supporting further development, like supporting portfolio completion, use your opportunity at the end of the interview to raise it. An interview is as much you interviewing them as them interviewing you. If something is important to you make sure that you raise it, then you can make a fully informed decision about whether the role is right for you
What are my top tips for career planning?
I’ve blogged before about the fact that I’ve not had the smoothest academic pathway and that I really believe that academic success does not have to define who you are. I really believe there are so many many ways to end up in a place and a career that is right for you. There is not one way to do something, but here are some principles that I hope might help:
Don’t think you have to have it all figured out – follow what inspires you and supports your passions and everything will work out
You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room – being tenacious gets you far further than being talented alone, just keep going
Do your research – if you want something invest the time to learn about it, if there is a specific job reach out and speak to the people advertising it to get to know them, the workplace and more about the job
It’s OK to try a number of different ways to get into the field, don’t focus too much on it being on the ‘right’ pathway, as long as it enables you to be gaining experience, and in an ideal world training, you are still moving forward even if you need to move horizontally later
Keep an open mind about training routes in, don’t rule out apprenticeships and vocational routes, even if you consider yourself to be more academic, they will let you gain experience at the same time as earning money and studying
Be open to the fact that you are likely to have to invest your own time. Working in science has enormous opportunities, but if you sign up to a Healthcare Science pathway you are also signing up to continuous professional development, some of which will likely need to happen in your own time if you want the best possible outcomes
Maintain a growth mindset – no matter what the stage of your career be open to still developing, be open to opportunities and next steps, and be prepared to keep driving yourself to be better
Take a chance on yourself – sometimes we are our own biggest barriers and the most important thing is to get out of our own way. Don’t talk yourself out of taking chances, don’t tell yourself you can’t or that things won’t work out so you won’t try. Be brave, take your chances and leap!
How can I get work experience?
Work experience in Healthcare Science can be difficult to acquire, don’t be disheartened though there are still plenty of ways forward:
See if you can gain experience within industry or academia as these both tend to have specific work experience programmes that you can tap into
Some professional bodies, such as Applied Microbiology International, Microbiology Society and the Royal Society of Biology all have studentship and placement grants. I’m sure there are many others. Consider becoming a student member if you can afford it, or reach out to someone you would like to have a placement with and see whether they could apply or support you to do so. These mean that you can have some living allowance, if like me you couldn’t do it without, and bring some money with you to do a short project. They also look good on your CV as demonstrate both commitment and application/grant writing skills
Ask one of your current lecturers if they have any project opportunities with them
Gain an entry level post and use that to gain the experience you need to support your next steps
Consider apprenticeships to gain some exposure alongside your qualifications
Consider volunteering in adjacent roles, most hospitals and care facilities have volunteer programmes where you can gain experience, but also give back
Remember, you don’t need extensive experience to support your application for an entry level role, even a cup of tea with someone who does the job will enable you have a better understanding of the role. A couple of days to a couple of weeks is an advantage but not essential.
Useful places to find more information
Below are some links that might be helpful in getting some further information and reading up about possible next steps. These are great jumping off points, but you should also reach out to mentors and people doing the different types of jobs you are interested in to get deeper information not listed on the websites. There will be an option that works for you, but not every option works for everyone, so the more research you do the better fit you are likely to find.
I was presenting at my first conference of the year last week, which is a sign that conference season is soon to well and truly kick off. I know that this often puts many of us in a state of anxiety. We know that conference presentations are important for both getting our work out there and also for personal and career development. Presenting however, can feel like quite a high stakes manoeuvre, especially if you are not comfortable with public speaking. With this in mind I thought it might be useful to share some tips that I have learnt, in the hopes that it might help with your next upcoming session.
1 – Know your audience
The first thing to realise is that we often make presentations about us, when actually they aren’t really about us at all, they are about the audience and what we are trying to achieve on their behalf. We are often given a fairly generic topic to speak on, or have submitted an abstract of what we wish to present. That’s great but actually probably doesn’t have enough clarity to start putting together the session. My first step whenever I’m asked to speak is to think about the learning objectives for the session. What might benefit the audience most? What are they expecting? Learning objectives act as a guidepost, and I will usually include them with the blurb I’m asked to write for the agenda. This means that people selecting their sessions will be able to make an informed decision about whether your session will work for them. Are you pitching an introduction level session or an update on the latest research that assumes pre-existing knowledge? You want to match your pitch to the audience that you are expecting.
It is also worth thinking about what kind of atmosphere is likely to be present? Is it a fairly informal setting where the session will be more discursive or is it a formal conference session where you may need to prepare for possible confrontational questions? Prepare for questions and queries whilst you’re preparing your session, try to think about the rabbit holes that the audience might want to go down and for any potential pitfalls where you will need to have a pre-prepared strategic response. If you’ve been clear about what the session covers and audience pitch this should be less of an issue, but it’s always worth being prepared.
2 – Be prepared to bring your authentic self
One of the things I’ve come to truly believe is that, no matter how formal the session, you should bring your whole self to it. I’ve written previously about how we should feel free to wear clothes that empower us, and conference sessions are no different. This can be something as simple as wearing your favourite colour, but whatever it is, delivering talks is easier when you feel good and empowered so do whatever you need to feel that way. My top tip is that whatever you decide to wear, ensure that it’s comfortable. I used to wear heels to speak but now I always wear flats, as I’ve decided that the pain isn’t worth it for me, especially when you consider how long you will be networking after your session.
The other place were I try to ensure that I also include something that is a little bit me, is within the presentation itself. Again, this can be levelled dependent on setting, sometimes I just choose a colour scheme or icon that speaks to me. Other things you can include are quotes or images that are meaningful to you. Again, it doesn’t have to be something big or in the face of your audience, but something that centres you and makes you feel more like you own the space you are presenting in. Sometimes however going big is the way forward, sometimes making something memorable is the right approach, it all depends on your confidence level and the setting.
3 – Judge your session
I’ve talked up above about thinking about how informal/formal the setting you are presenting in and how this can impact on your content. There are however other things that are beneficial to think about in terms of expectations for your setting. The type of session will dictate a number of things, as will time slot and room allocation. If you know the venue you are going to you may be able to predict numbers of attendees for instance, if you are allocated a room you may be able to find out whether its for 15 people versus 1500. High numbers of attendees will limit your options for interactions, as will being given a 15 minute time slot.
Common types of sessions include:
Debates
Research presentations
Topic presentations
Workshop
Plenary or keynote
Speed presenting
Poster presentation
Careers presentations
Panel sessions
There are obviously others but these are the main ones that spring to mind. Just from looking at the list you’ll be able to see how different ones will attract people with different levels of pre-existing knowledge or interest. There are some key questions that are worth asking to help you support judging your session when the email comes in. First, always confirm length of session and whether or not this will include time for questions. Second, ask about number and types of attendees both for your session and the target audience for the conference/meeting itself. Finally, as this will impact your options for engagement with large audiences, will there be free Wi-Fi available for attendees so they can access voting apps? Don’t feel like this information should confine your creativity and what you want to undertake but build any limitations into your thinking in order find solutions ahead of time. Finally, please please please never be the person that delivers a 40+ minute talk despite being given a 30 minute slot.
4 – Use the agenda to guide you
Once the agenda is released and you’ve starting to build the content of your session you can also use it to help in your preparation. Your timing and position on the agenda can influence the build of your talk. If you are directly after lunch, you might want to think harder about the engagement side to wake everyone up and get them back into the flow. If you are just pre lunch, you might want to stack some of your more exciting parts towards the end and build towards them to ensure you keep the audiences attention. If you are going first or last you probably need to start and finish with a bang.
The other area where the agenda can really help you is to see what others are covering, especially if they’ve listed any focuses or learning objectives in their descriptions. This may mean you can get valuable slides back if someone is talking on a similar topic ahead of you, and will therefore have given a lot of similar introductory slides, thus giving you more time to build on the subject in your slot. It can also give you ideas of areas to avoid, so that you don’t give too much overlap. One of the things to not do is be intimidated by anyone else on the agenda. If you are speaking/presenting you have earned the right to do so, it doesn’t matter if the person before you is Dame X or Professor Y, acknowledge what that might do to the atmosphere in the room (i.e. may mean you have a larger audience) and then plan as if they were any other speaker.
5 – Have a plan on how to engage attendees
Engagement can start before the event even begins. If you have a poster session for instance, you might want to share a picture of your poster and it’s location on social media. Sometimes I also find running polls can help with working out pitching your session, and also in building engagement so that you are more likely to get an audience. This can be especially important if your session is at an event where there are multiple sessions running at the same time and therefore you almost need to sell why someone should comes to yours when there is so much choice available. Taking some time to raise awareness via social media using the event # can be really beneficial under these circumstances.
Depending on the availability of Wi-Fi and session details you may also want to consider using tools or apps to support interaction with the audience during your session. You can use tools such as Mentimeter and Slido to build voting or other forms of interaction into your session. This approach is especially important if you are asked to do a workshop session. It’s also worth asking additional questions during the prep phase, such as the type of seating, to see whether it would support group discussions.
Even if you are giving a standard presentation without interactive tools you still need to think about how to engage your audience. There obviously many different ways of doing this, starting from basics like pitching correctly so you bring your audience with you. If you can bringing yourself to your session by using framing such as story telling it can really help, alongside the use of humour. You can even think if there are props that would be appropriate to support what you’re talking about, although you also don’t want to make it gimmicky. Whatever tool you feel comfortable with, practice using it as it will make sure your session is more memorable.
6 – Make sure you have a plan B
Things go wrong, they do, despite your very best endeavours. Having a plan B in your pocket never hurts. This can be as simple as having a USB with your slides on it with you in case they haven’t managed to load it before you arrive. If I’ve included videos or anything else ‘fancy’ in my presentation I will always have a plan B and C. Plan B is an extra copy of my talk without the ‘fancy’ bit in it in case it doesn’t work when I test with the AV tech ahead of my talk. Plan C is a script in my head that I can use to describe the video in case it worked on test and suddenly fails during the real thing. If I’m doing a smaller session, I will also sometimes arrive with print outs of my slides so that I can approach it old school if needed.
Having a plan B is especially important if you are using voting or something tech related. If your entire session is going to be based on audience participation you need to have a plan if no one there can get signal or access to Wi-Fi. It’s worth building this flexibility in when you are developing the session so you will not need to entirely wing it if the unexpected happens to you.
7 – Be prepared to push yourself
I’m just throwing this out there. You should be prepared to push yourself into a space where you feel uncomfortable. Growing your skills is a never ending task, even if you feel like you are a pretty good public speaker, there are always things to learn, improve and do better. Sometimes the very act of speaking is a sufficient push because it’s not an area in which you feel comfortable. If you are comfortable talking ‘science’ maybe also stretch yourself by bringing more of yourself into the session. Embrace the creative possibilities and strive to have more impact, build better engagement, be more memorable. Read and research on the topic of how to present better in the same way that you would read and research your content and find inspiration about the next thing you could try.
8 – Facilitate a relaxed state of mind
Having just encouraged you to step out of your comfort zone by planning your presentation I also now want to encourage you to remove the stress that can be present outside of the speaking component itself. I speak from experience. I once agreed to speak at 2 conferences on the same day, on different topics and in different cities. This was beyond foolish. There simply wasn’t enough time to get from point A to point B and I arrived to land on stage for the second session with 1 minute to spare. I’ve also learnt that travelling up on the day of a session doesn’t work for me, it just makes me too stressed. I now will always travel up the night before, even if I arrive really late, because then I can go to sleep knowing that I’m where I need to be rather than lying awake all night stressing about whether an act of god will stop me making it to my session.
I also comfort myself by reading up on the areas that I have identified during my gap analysis that I might get questions linked to, or to reassure myself – even if it’s a topic I know really well – that I have up to date information and references. Feeling like you are walking up to a podium prepared is the best way I have to remove any of my stress linked to presenting.
9 – Plan to do your own timing
This is one I have learnt the hard way. I don’t like clocks present in the corner of a screen when I’m presenting as I want to be looking out at the audience and connecting when I’m speaking not constantly looking down at a monitor, probably slightly influenced by the fact that I don’t use notes as it enables me to feel more organic. I know some of you will feel differently. I’ve learnt to manage this by having a phone with a big clock (on silent) with me when I present so I can see it as I move around. I know that there will often be Chairs or speakers who will signal when you have 5 minutes left. I personally find that I need to pace my session throughout, as otherwise at 5 minutes I could be left with waaaay too much to cover, and so I like to time check myself. The final reason I do this is that I have been caught out. I’ve turned up and started a presentation and realised there was no clock or timing device visible anywhere. The panic, for me, at that point is real people, it’s a real stressor for me. You may have a different thing that triggers you, but once you identify what it is, do your best to have a plan to redress it so it doesn’t distract you from the moment you are in.
10 – Use the opportunity to build your networks
This last one I think is really important, if you are given the opportunity to have a platform use it! No matter how nerve racking it is, no matter how much you may not like presenting. In fact, if this is not your naturally comfort zone all the better, go out and seek opportunities that enable you to do it more. With practice comes familiarity and skill development. Don’t feel alone in your discomfort, but do know that there will be something in you that can inspire and give confidence to others. The world needs to see more people like you, whomever you are, especially if you have the courage to bring some of yourself to the podium. There is not enough diversity present on agendas and that is something that needs to change, and we need to have the courage to do that together as a collective.
The other thing to bear in mind is that so much within health and science is dependent on who you know. It’s probably not fair but it is true. Connections and networks are where you gain invites and opportunities, and presenting and meeting people is a big way to build these relationships. Whether you do this by following the hashtags for the event on social media, by speaking to those presenting or partaking in networking and social events at the meeting, networking is key. For those of you, who like me, find networking challenging I’ve previously written a post which I hope might help, but presenting is often an easy way to do it as people will come to you and you already have a shared interest through the topic. Whatever your level of networking comfort it’s worth putting in some time ahead of the event to think what your strategy might be, and who you might want to catch up with.
I really hope that this post will help support you, no matter how many presentations you’ve done, to bring a little bit more of who you are to the room you are presenting in and to be a little bit braver in some of the choices you make when developing sessions. I also hope that by sharing some of the learning I’ve gained by making mistakes, or making life harder for myself, that you won’t make the same ones. If you have any other top tips that you’ve gained to support presentation preparation then please do add them in the comments. See you at the podium!
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
This has been a pretty amazing week, I was fortunate enough to receive the HIS Early Career Award from the Healthcare Infection Society. As the first woman and the first Healthcare Scientist to receive it, it was pretty wonderful. As part of receiving the award I was also given a 30 minute speaking slot. Now, unlike normal, the brief was pretty open which resulted in 2 things. First, a sense of overwhelming panic about what I should talk about. Two, a gradual realisation of what a privilege it is to be given the opportunity for 30 minutes as yourself and how invaluable such an opportunity is to represent yourself and others.
The other thing that happened was I spent some time thinking about how amazingly fortunate I have been in terms of external recognition in general. The thing is though, at its heart, it’s unsustainable. My husband is always telling me (tongue in cheek) that I have to stop winning things so that others can. No matter how much this is said in jest, there’s a lot of truth in this statement. When do we get out of the way so that recognition can be given to others? And what happens when that external recognition has become a benchmark in how you assess your own standing or success? This blog is the result of some of my musings on reliance on external markers of success, and what work we might need to do on ourselves whilst enjoying the recognition.
Recognition is amazing
In all honesty, I was never someone who won awards, not at school, not at university. It wasn’t really part of my psyche or something that I realised could happen to someone like me. After all, I’m a pretty normal run of the mill kind of girl. I work hard, but that’s my main feature. Then waaaay back in 2015 I was nominated for rising star award at the CSO awards by a kind Consultant Healthcare Scientist. I didn’t win, but it made me aware that such things exist. As Trust Lead Healthcare Scientist, I’ve always remembered that kindness and what it meant to me, and as a team we try to always ensure that we nominate as widely as possible for any external awards that come up. We even started the Healthcare Science Awards at GOSH in order to provide a similar kind of internal recognition.
Recognition is great. It’s a real confidence boost. It can also open doors (like to the Coronation) that you never thought would be open to you. Increasingly, awards and recognition are increasingly important for things like career progression and grant funding, so they are no longer just a nice to have. Now, sitting on/chairing a number award judging panels, I see how it impacts those in the running and how important those decisions are.
Recognition is also sometimes the only thing that gets you through. For a long time, there was not much acknowledgement of my value as a Healthcare Scientist internally. There have been some very challenging times. The external recognition I received was the thing that told me it was worth persisting, that I was doing something right when I spent a lot of time questioning myself, my value and my vision. The problem with this as a coping strategy is that recognition can become addictive, and as a people pleaser, you can come to believe that unless you receive it, you don’t have intrinsic value.
Acknowledge that we are trained into a certain way of viewing the world
Whether you’re a people pleaser, a gifted child, or someone who was just raised to strive, we are taught to see the world through a specific lens and to judge our success by it. There’s an always ‘onto the next thing’ mentality combined with a need to know we are good enough, as we secretly suspect that we aren’t. That specific lens can engender large amounts of success, but it can also make it hard to have a true appreciation of the facts, making external validation take on an increasingly significant role. But what happens when it stops?
I hate to break it to you, but there are only so many awards and qualifications out there, IPC and Healthcare Science are small worlds after all. What do you do when you have ticked the qualification boxes, and other forms of recognition are few and far between. This is especially true when you become a senior leader, and to be honest, no one is interested in tapping you on the back and telling you you’ve done a good job anymore. Doing a good job is assumed. Everyone will be quick enough to tell you you’ve messed up, but silence is where positive feedback used to be. If you are someone who needs external reinforcement, this is a lonely place to be, and it’s better to recognise it before you get there so you can have already begun work on your coping strategies.
There are benefits to the ‘onto the next thing’ mentality
One of the traps we can find ourselves in is that the ‘onto the next thing’ mentality can reap huge rewards. In competitive fields, such as academia and medicine, it can be an important driver to success. It allows you to dig that little bit deeper and be that little bit more focused. To tick the boxes that need ticking, and to sometimes tick them faster or more efficiently than would have been possible otherwise. This means that both the good and bad aspects of this personality trait get enforced, and whilst there are training competencies to be ticked and qualifications to be had, the negative side of this particular coin don’t feel so bad.
As time goes on however, and careers change, the boxes that need ticking are no longer so clearly defined, and the list of things to do has no end. The positive reinforcement produced from this way of dealing with the world therefore turns into a sense of failure and inability to see progress. The list of jobs never ends, and so a sense that it is because of a failure in ourselves, rather than the system we are working in, persists. We run faster on the hamster wheel in order to try to reach the finish line without realising we’re going in circles, and the line will always be just out of reach.
It will never be enough
One of the dangers when on the hamster wheel, therefore, becomes that we further lose sight of how to benchmark progress. This means we turn even more to others to guide us as to whether we are doing OK. Whatever OK is. And that’s a problem, isn’t it. No one really knows what we are seeking, especially when we don’t know what it is ourselves. Progress when early career may be challenging, but it is often fairly straightforward to define. As we develop, both ourselves and our careers progress and how we need others to feed back to us is frequently becomes less clear.
The other thing to note is that if you listen to the positive comments and hold them to be so significant, you will also listen to the negatives, and probably even more intensely. As the saying goes, ‘you have to take the good with the bad’. Now, listening to constructive negative feedback is an important part of developing. The sad thing is that sometimes it’s not so constructive, and that can lead to some pretty destructive self-talk, spiralling, and challenges with processing of the feedback you are getting. So, how do we move ourselves from the position where we hold the opinions of others in such high account, to where we can evaluate and add our own self reflection into the mix, in order to achieve a stable equilibrium?
Know that what success looks like changes
As I’ve said, what success looks like changes, and it may not look the same from day to day, let alone year to year. One of the things I’ve become increasingly aware of in recent times is that I want to achieve across my life. I’ve spent a long time focusing on achieving at work, but this means that my long-suffering husband has lacked support, and any non work achievements have very much been on the back burner. I want to regain some balance in my life. It won’t happen overnight, and progress is being made by inches, but that is what success for me would currently look like. Everyone is different and your idea of success may look very different to my current one, but unless you take the time to identify what it looks like for you you will continue to be driven by how others define it for you.
Beware of your self talk
I’m so guilty of staring at myself in the mirror and telling myself how stupid I’ve been or asking why the fuck I said that. I suspect that no one else talks to me as badly as I talk to myself, and when I do screw up part of me wishes people realised there’s no need to make me feel bad about as I’m already waaaaay ahead of anything they could say. The thing is, this is not a healthy way to treat myself. I am now putting in active effort to become a better cheer leader for myself. Before my talk at HIS, I took 2 minutes to tell myself that I could ‘do this’. I could appear like a grown-up and give a good talk. I tried to speak to myself the same way I would speak to my students and/or colleagues before they were due to do something they were nervous about. I gave myself the same compassionate time that I would give to someone else. This isn’t something that is an embedded behaviour for me yet, but I’m hoping if I continue to work at it it eventually will be.
Miss out on the best bits of yourself
If you live in a spiral of self critism or an echo chamber where you only value the opinions of others, you will miss out on the best bits of yourself. I’m a pretty weird person, but I think at heart we probably all are. I think I’m also pretty compassionate and loyal, as well as occasionally funny. It’s super cliche, but as I get older I do think that our relationship with ourselves is one of the best ones we can ever develop. It takes courage to stand and know your flaws and love yourself anyway. It takes time to see past that long list of flaws to see that many of them have flip sides that represent strengths. To honestly work on them whilst not constantly chastising yourself because they exist. If asked, I could immediately give you a list of the best qualities about just about everyone in my work and personal life. It shouldn’t therefore have taken me to my 40s to be able to produce an equivalent list for myself, but I’m a work in progress afterall.
Start by giving some conscious time to your thought processes
I made the shift (am making the shift?) by giving myself the gift of time and self reflection. When I react strongly, when I feel certain ways, I’m trying to just take a few moments to understand what drove me to behave or feel that way. My poor husband also spends a lot of time with me talking through just about everything. I personally need that verbalisation as part of the process to support my thinking. I should probably just get a coach and relieve my hubby of the process, but I trust him so much to call me on my bullshit when I’m trying to avoid seeing things I don’t like about myself.
I’m also allowing myself to care a little less about others think of me. There are certainly people out there who are not my biggest fans. The thing is that is their process, their decision. I used to try and bend myself into knots to change those opinions, but at its essence, I can’t control what others think of me. I can only control how much weight I give to those opinions. I’ve been described as marmite in the past, and just like you will never persuade me to like marmite, I suppose I cannot persuade those who find me jarring to like me.
Give yourself the pep talk you would give to others
I’ve talked about being aware of the way I talk to myself, and the occasional reassuring pick me up chat before high consequence moments. I’m stuck though by how much we don’t service our own needs in the same way that we respond and service those of others. At least once a day I will have a pep talk conversation with my colleagues or trainees. I may also have virtual ones in order to support my professional communities or friendship groups. Yet we don’t invest the same care, or energy into ourselves. More and more recently I’ve been prioritising the fact that if I feel certain ways that it’s OK to step away, get some alone time and give myself the same kind of pep talk that I give others. Now, in all honesty I don’t always believe the words I say to myself yet, hearing it from yourself is not the same as hearing it from someone else. That said, if we are setting benchmarks of kindness then those should extend to ourselves, not just others. I believe, like most positive change and habit formation, it will become easier the more I do it, and slightly less cringe inducing.
Give yourself permission
One of the biggest changes I’ve consciously made it to also give myself permission to feel the way I feel. Instead of telling myself to ‘get over it’ or telling myself how stupid I am for feeling a specific way, I allow myself to feel it and then to follow up with a question about why I feel that why. Asking why, with the aim to move towards resolution or at least greater understanding, rather than festering in denial. I think it’s important to acknowledge that we don’t live in this idealised space where we all feel good and confident all the time. If we wait on someone else ‘fixing’ us when we feel anything less than perfect then in some ways I’ve come to believe we’re not putting in the work. That’s not to say that I am not over the moon when someone recognises what I’ve been up to, it’s highly validating and makes so much of the extra hours and effort worthwhile. If we wait to be noticed and to receive that recognition however, and don’t strive to have internal validation that stands alone, we may not be able to receive it when we need it most.
If you are fortunate enough to be given a stage you are obligated to use it
Finally, from a recognition junkie, it is so important that if that recognition results in opening doors or giving you a platform that you choose to consciously use it. It is lovely to sit in the warm glow of someone telling you you are doing something right, but recognition offers more than that. It gives you a voice, a voice that you can use to shine a spotlight or to raise awareness. It is one of the reasons that I still strive for recognition, even having acknowledged some of my not so positive personality traits that it can amplify. If someone gives you a stage, stand on it and use it for the good of everyone who hasn’t been given one and who may not yet have a voice of their own.
As I continue the slow road to feeling more like myself again I thought it might be nice to have a guest blog from the wonderful Sam Walker on some of the things that have been happening in the research Girlymicro world, so you know I haven’t been entirely resting on my laurels and eating copious amounts of chocolate. One of my favourite papers ever is based on the release of cauliflower mosaic virus DNA into a ward space, to support prospective tracking of where organisms go, instead of trying to guess based solely on where we find them without origin data. Due to a number of technical factors this approach to improving environmental transmission pathways hasn’t widely been repeated………..until now!
Sam is a Doctoral Research Student whose research focusses on the development for environmental surface monitoring protocols to inform clinical risk assessments and infection control procedures. His project aims to develop an evidence base for the presence of nosocomial pathogens in the hospital environment, as well as model the transmission of pathogens in clinical spaces. He obtained an MBiol degree from Aston University in 2020, with projects focusing on C. difficile spore germination.
Infection Control Research
“I imagine the swabbing part will be easy, it’s the data processing I’m worried about”. I think I said this about a month before the largest, and final, sample collection campaign in my PhD project. Famous last words.
A little bit about me – my name’s Sam and I’m one of Elaine’s PhD students. I’m finishing off my third year now (crunch time!). My project focusses on developing evidence-based surface sampling guidance to inform infection prevention and control practice. Practically, this involves collecting a range of samples from different clinical spaces and seeing that they can tell us in terms of microbial communities and microorganism dissemination, then using this information to target guidance for designing the most effective surface sampling protocols. In order to best inform this, we designed a study which looks at the movement of microbial surrogate markers through several different wards at Great Ormond Street Hospital. This involved a lot of preparation and many evenings swabbing sites across four wards. As of last week, all this sampling work has finished and I thought I’d share a few reflections on what the experience of conducting research in an active clinical space was like.
Working across settings is amazing!
For many projects focusing on clinical practice, particularly ones relating to IPC, working in collaboration with a clinical institution is absolutely essential. As my project involves collecting evidence from clinical settings to then process and develop into guidance, in my case this work wouldn’t be possible without this collaborative approach. As the end goal of my project is guidance that will inform clinical practice, not only is it important that the evidence is gathered from clinical settings, but it’s essential we understand the routine challenges faced by IPC teams. We can design the best set of guidance with all the technical detail in the world, but if we don’t take into account every day IPC challenges and what implementing this guidance will actually look like, then in a way it would fall flat. Being in the clinical space also opens up the possibility for conversations with the people who live and breathe IPC all day – the hospital staff! Informal discussions we have had over the course of this most recent sampling project have given me completely new insights and ways to view the work we’re undertaking which I never would have thought of otherwise! Getting this insight from working in clinical settings will ultimately improve both the quality and utility of the work we produce.
Stepping out of my comfort zone
As a lot of project is lab-based, the trips outside of this setting into clinical environments can be a bit of a shock to the system. I’m used to, and probably most at home in, a quiet laboratory space with a few other people at the most, maybe the odd visitor and the trusty PCR machines. The majority of the time I make the journey from UCL to GOSH, it’s to meet either with Elaine or other members of the IPC team, or maybe to pick something up from the microbiology labs there. When it’s time to collect samples however, this is a completely different experience.
The units we looked at in this most recent piece of work we did were two outpatient and two inpatient wards, serving different patient populations. One of the first things I really noticed was just how different these wards all were. I knew that there would be some big differences, for example I knew that the cardiac intensive care unit would be a very different experience to the oncology day care unit. What I didn’t necessarily expect however, was just how different the two outpatient wards would be from each other, and how different the same ward could be on different days.
With these differences came a different way to approach the research at hand. For the outpatient units, that often meant waiting until all the bed spaces were free so we could go in and collect the samples from the environment. This wasn’t always possible though, and sometimes we just had to accept that we weren’t going to get all of the samples we set out to gather. This took quite a while to get used to – my inner laboratory scientist was wincing at the thought of lost data points. Being able to put this to one side and carry on was a skill that took a while to master, particularly when sampling with a team. No-one will thank you when you’ve been on the ward for an hour and a half and you propose “just waiting a few more minutes” to see if a bed space will become free. Having that skill to just move on however turned out to be very useful when collecting the data, as it meant we could focus more effort in the areas we could collect samples from.
All this boils down to how the space is used completely differently. The hospital is first and foremost for providing care to patients, and as a researcher I have to acknowledge that I am a guest in the space. Understanding and accepting that we won’t always be able to collect all of the 65 or so samples we planned to on a given day is just part of the process when conducting sampling in the real-world hospital setting. At first, I remember feeling like this may be frustrating when it came to analyzing the data, and that it would make interpreting my results harder due to data gaps. However, looking back on it now, I actually feel it makes understanding the story the data tells easier, and much more insightful. Being able to relate the information we gathered to how the space was used at the time of collection, even where samples could not be obtained, just makes the story all the more applicable to real clinical practice and, in this case, how microbes could move through the clinical space under all sorts of conditions.
Anticipate the challenges
While embracing the dynamic environment of the clinical space is really important for putting data gathered in these settings into context, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a fair share of challenges with it. Before I began the sampling campaigns, both my supervisors absolutely insisted that I pre-planned every tiny detail. Down to the exact number of extra swabs I would take for each day. And I cannot think of better advice when it comes to performing this sort of work. Planning is absolutely everything. One of the reasons missing some data points during collection didn’t impact the overall quality of the data was because we anticipated that we may miss some points each day, so planned to take extra to account for this. We planned a detailed sampling sheet, so we could not only check off samples as we took them, but could make notes as we went around the ward on the environment to help with the downstream analysis. I cannot stress it enough; thorough planning made the whole experience so much better.
One challenge of conducting this piece of work was the intensity of the settings. I have a very much academic background, having done my MBiol degree and gone straight into my PhD. In other words, I have no clinical training whatsoever. This wasn’t so much of a problem in wards which were not high dependency, however I really noticed this lack of clinical exposure when we did the sampling in the cardiac intensive care unit. I knew it may be a difficult experience, given the nature of the ward we were going in to, but it still was a shock the first day of sampling there. I’m incredibly grateful for the team I did this part of the work with, who had the experience to navigate the space as well as make sure I was alright being in the setting. I think that this support, alongside taking some time to reflect on the overall experience, was invaluable for this particular component of the work.
This leads me on to the other absolutely key point for doing this sort of research – having the right people with you. As academics, we often won’t have been trained in clinical practice. This can not only make some clinical spaces quite intimidating, but also can make them hard to read. For example, without a clinical understanding of what is going on in a bed space, it can be hard to know whether to ask if it’s alright to take a swab of the bed rail quickly, or if you should leave the space and move on. Having people with you who can help read these situations is so important, both for help with collecting the data but also for supporting the researcher. Another massive benefit I noticed was the links formed between me, the researcher, and the ward staff. Having someone involved who has experience in both worlds can really help break down any barriers on entering the space and help everyone understand the work that is being done, and how it relates to the ward.
Top tips for laboratory researchers gathering samples from clinical spaces
So, having said all that, my top tips on performing research in clinical spaces as an academic are:
Planning is everything!
Anticipate and embrace the unique challenges of this sort of research
Have a good team who can support you in the clinical space
And finally, get involved! Undertaking research in clinical settings is very rewarding and I would highly recommend it wherever possible!
I’m still laid up with COVID, and so today I’m missing out on a pretty great event. The London Healthcare Science Collaborative is running an event on the power of celebration (led by Betty Adamou) and women in leadership (led by Claire Walker and Ant De Souza). Whilst I’ve not been able to attend, it has caused me to reflect on the topic and some of the different thoughts and experiences I’ve had linked to opportunities for celebration.
I’ve gone through periods of my career where I’ve definitely not felt like I’ve been allowed to celebrate my successes. I’ve also gone through periods where the barrier to celebration has definitely been me rather than anyone else. Some days, I feel like I’m not allowed to even discuss or mention successes as it will be seen as ungracious or egotistical. In contrast, there have definitely been times, and other situations, where I’ve felt not only empowered to celebrate but that others fully engaged and amplified those celebrations. I’ve been thinking, therefore, why celebration is important and what factors can impact whether we choose to undertake it or not.
Marking your progress
One of the first reasons I think celebration is important and powerful is that it can be used to mark big transitions in life, whether work related or not. The challenge comes in deciding whether the event is ‘sufficient’ and worthy of celebration. It can be easy, at least work wise, to be so focused on an end goal or big picture that nothing is considered to be worthy of celebration along the way. The problem with this is that there is always another step, another target, and so if celebration is not prioritised, it may just never happen. My plea on this one is that we all support each other to celebrate the little things as well as the big things. Sometimes in life, merely getting out of bed is worth a celebratory cup of tea. At least that’s true right now in my COVID world.
Celebrating the journey, not just the destination
But why should celebration be prioritised anyway? One of the key reasons is that it is easy to forget how far you’ve come and to not sufficiently recognise your true progress if individual moments are not recognised. Ensuring that you take the time to celebrate is actually a key part of you recognising your progress and investing in some self care.
Recognising individual stages of progress can also help with the big stages. Sometimes, completing a task, such as writing a PhD thesis, can just seem unattainable. Breaking down the massive task into sections that feel more achievable and allowing yourself to recognise that progress can, mean the entire task feels more managble. It can also help maintain momentum and positive attitude during tasks that are particularly challenging or where it can be easy to become bogged down. After all, most of the learning, and therefore the reason to celebrate, occurs as part of the journey rather than just at the destination.
Owning your progress
We often talk about owning our failures and the learning that results from them. We don’t talk so much about owning our successes. Now, I suspect that some of this is down to imposter syndrome, and the stories we tell ourselves that our successes are down to luck and is ephemeral, whereas our failures are somehow much more real rooted in truth.
The thing is, if we are going to ‘own it’ we need to own ALL of it, the good and the bad. Your progress is yours alone, you are responsible for the things that don’t go well, but the flip side of that is that you also get to claim responsibility for the times when they do. Own it, celebrate it, for once let taking responsibility not be a burden but an act of celebration and joy. Otherwise, you may find that there are plenty of people out there who may take ownership of the good on your behalf.
Enjoy the moment
The other thing about taking ownership is that you should use it to buy you time to reflect and enjoy the moment. Trust me, if you rush through it, always onto the next thing, you’ll reach your destination, only to be aware that the journey has been a blur, and wishing you’d savoured it more. I was in such a rush to ‘get things done’ that I never stopped after one thing before leaping head first into another. In hindsight, that meant it took me longer to learn key lessons. It took me longer to see where I sat within the big picture. It meant I missed out on sharing my successes with those who had contributed or given up a lot to enable them to happen.
Celebrations are not just about you. They are an opportunity for you to give back and acknowledge the input and impact of others. By choosing not to celebrate, we also steal an opportunity away that could be used to thank and recognise colleagues, friends, and family, without whom none of this stuff would happen.
Extrinsic vs intrinsic recognition of success
One of the reasons I’ve written about owning my success is because this is a real work in progress area for me. Success and reasons to celebrate come in all shapes and sizes. I have gotten into the habit of needing external validation, prizes and the like, in order to measure how well I’m doing. These are lovely, but there are some problems with using this as a yardstick. Firstly, how many prizes and awards can you realistically actually win across your career, and are you suddenly worthless when they become unavailable? The other issue is that if we need others to tell us our value, rather than being able to see it in ourselves, you are are constantly in a vulnerable position, especially with people who would use that requirement against you. It is a necessary step in growth to be able to see that we have intrinsic value and to celebrate that, rather than relying on others to see our worth.
Integrate all the versions of yourself
One of the other big challenges I wrestle with is whether it is OK to be seen to celebrate. Is it boastful? Is it narcissistic? Does it end in arrogance? Here is where I have landed in my thinking. It is not a bad thing to share and celebrate your successes, as long as you also share and discuss the learning from your failures. Those people who only shout about the triumphs are within their rights to do so, but I think those shouts are much more meaningful if you’ve also journeyed with them through the failures it took to get to that success.
The other thing I’ve decided is that it is important to celebrate throughout all the aspects of who I am. I am a scientist, IPC professional, and academic, but I am also a wife, a daughter, an aspiring creative, and sister. Therefore, I want to show the depth of all of that when I celebrate and acknowledge the roles and importance of people across those aspects when the good things happen. It takes a village after all.
Understand the power of being seen
Having struggled with the whole celebration thing for some time, I have also come to realise something else. I celebrate not only to share success and say thank you to those who have helped but also to be visible to others that those attainments are possible. I know I say this a lot, but you can’t be what you can’t see. If you don’t know that a route is open to you, it is much harder to aspire to achieve it. If you only see medical colleagues winning a certain award, you may not think that you could get there as a scientist. We break new ground to make it easier for those who follow, but if no one knows about it, we are not fully completing the job. You never know who may see that tweet, read that blog post, or listen to a podcast. You may never meet or know the people you inspire, but by sharing and being visible, you will be inspiring someone, so don’t be afraid to be seen.
Let no one steal your joy
You will encounter people who will try to mute your celebrations, who attempt to steal your joy. I have been told my success makes other people feel uncomfortable. I know there is sometimes eye rolling at my social media presence. The thing is, that aspect will always be there, whether you celebrate or not. Whether you talk about it or not. Those comments and those people don’t go away. You do, however, have the power to decide how much they influence your decision-making. To decide how much power they have over you. How much right they have to stop the work you are doing or to dampen all the reasons I’ve written about that you should celebrate and be seen to do so. You can’t control the reactions of others, but you can control how they affect you.
Share and amplify the celebrations of others
Finally, celebration is not just about you. To really embrace the art of celebration, we need to see it as the gift it is. We need to amplify the celebration of others! When you hear of good things happening, buy that card or bottle of fizz to support the person who may be struggling to feel they can celebrate. When you see a social media post, share it and comment on it. Let the person know how happy you are for them and help to get the word out. Be genuinely happy, rather than challenged, by the success you see all around you. People are showing you what can be achieved, and you are inspiring others. Let’s truly be a community that values and celebrates success, not just our own but of everyone.
Girlymicro 