It’s the Sunday between Christmas and New Year. In theory it was supposed to be a chilled out, relaxed and refuelling week off work. Instead, due to no fault of anyone, it’s been a week full of chaos, and disruption linked to illness, house moves and life changes. All of which will fade into memory but for now are quite at the forefront of my thinking. Subsequently this means that I am entering 2026 less rested and more discombobulated than I had hoped, feeling very much like a Gemma Correll picture.
For full disclosure, it’s not just 2026 I have entered this way. It feels like every New Year since 2020 I have become less and less likely to greet it with joy and moved more and more towards greeting it with a timid ‘hi’ from behind the curtains. It feels like we’ve all been bitten once too often by providing an optimistic welcome and seeing the resulting 12 months turn into another year of trial and trauma, whilst our resilience is no longer worth writing home about.
Add to this the ever present commentary on all social media platforms, where my professional and social peers list all of their successes, the languages they’ve learnt, the places they’ve been, and the skills they’ve picked up, whilst I rot with unwashed hair and wallow in exhaustion. Life can start to feel hard or like you’re failing in comparison, all of which can make it feel difficult to roll out the red carpet to another New Year.
In order to centre myself and navigate through the triggering level of self proclaimed positivism out there I thought that this year I would not focus on making a list of New Years resolutions, but reflect on what went well in 2025. The aim of this is not to make life worse for others by screaming about my successes, but to remind us all that progress is more impactful than tick boxing, and that the small things count, some days even more than the big things. Fair warning, this post contains a lot of ‘I’s, as it is about how I see the world. I hope that despite this it may still be useful to you all.
My big aim for 2025 was to try and feel more like the 2019 version of me. Someone who had hobbies, friends, and could even find time to spend with them, as well as family. To feel like a whole person, and not just a professional avatar, so this is the benchmark I shall be measuring 2025 success against.
I spent time with Mr Girlymicro and my wider family
This sounds like a basic thing, but I had gotten into the habit of working every weekend, catching up on emails or catching up on work in general. I began to have a lot of anxiety if I didn’t, in case there was something life/job ending between Friday night and Monday morning. This has been the year that I deliberately faced that anxiety and forced myself to work through it by not reacting to it, and allowing it to drive me to work more. It’s meant that I have had to find coping mechanisms. At the moment they could be healthier as they involve doing work adjacent things, such as book writing, but they have enabled me to step away. I have also been forced to accept that things will happen, but that I can’t work 24/7, and attempting to do so was leaving me in a very unhealthy place.
The payoff for this has been being able to spend more time with my family. Now, some of this is because Mummy Girlymicro and my brother moved in with us (hence the Xmas house moving chaos as they moved out) but a lot of it was me prioritising spending time on non-work. Mr Girlymicro and I have been able to have, at least, protected movie time on a Sunday, and we’ve even managed some date nights. I need more of this in 2026, just spending time together is healing and I can’t wait to spend more and improve on my 2025 efforts.
I managed to finish a non-work based project (Mr Girlymicro would scream work adjacent at this header)
Talking about that work based distraction and anxiety management, I decided to do something for me, based on my passion. Now, I acknowledge that deciding to write a book in 4 months may not be the healthiest of anxiety managing techniques, but it enabled a fire break, where I could focus that anxiety on something productive and was sufficiently distracting to allow a re-focus away from work. It was also nice to be able to visualise something productive coming out of that anxiety, seeing the word count increase little by little. A lot of my day job is responsive or constantly writing and changing written guidance, it can sometimes be hard to see what you’ve achieved at the end of a day, week, month, and so to see a book come together from a concept felt incredibly validating.
The other opportunity that writing the book gave me, was that it started, alongside spending time with family, to allow me to form a new identity. I’ve been in work mode for 5 years, and have become so locked in that I almost couldn’t remember the pre-pandemic me. Developing a project that wasn’t directly linked to work allowed me to ask questions like ‘what brings me joy?’ and ‘what message is it that I have to share?’, ‘what can I add?’, ‘what can I do to make the world easier/better?’. This book on a small scale was the answer to those questions. More to follow though, this was a starter for ten.
I acknowledge that I will not return to who I was before
A key part of building a new identity is acknowledging change and letting yourself grieve for your previous one. 2025 was the year that I finally acknowledged that those of us who worked through the pandemic, lost loved ones and colleagues, probably do carry a certain level of trauma with us. I probably don’t see the world the same way now as I did before. The circle of friends that I hold close is much smaller than before, and they have seen all the sides of me. They are the people I trust to always take a 4am call from me. To let me come and crash at their place with 30 minutes notice, just because I need to escape. They are my ride or dies, and I value them so much.
I think I will be sad for the loss of some of the innocence I had before the pandemic, some of the faith and trust in systems. I think I will continue to miss the naivety. I believe I have emerged on the other side better at my job however, and for those I’m close to a better friend. I see the change as an opportunity to re-define who I want to be and where I want to go. It’s hard to know how much of this is truly pandemic, or just hitting peri-menopause and realising I need to be better at setting boundaries. Either way, although I have moments where I reminisce about hopeful past me, I think I am a better person for the journey. I still have hope, it just lands differently.
I spent time focusing on re-connection
Having said that my world had grown fairly small over the past 5 years, and my social circle really limited to those who I knew love all the sides of me, I’m fortunate in my pre-pandemic life to have had a wide circle of lovely people who occupied all kinds of different hobby/interest spaces. All of whom challenged me, cheered me, and helped me grow as a human being. It felt important to saunter back into those spaces, especially as they would be useful in discovering the new me.
I did things that are probably normal for most of you reading. I went out for drinks. I met people for dinner. I even returned to conventions and shared spaces, which have been triggering for me having spent so much time avoiding crowds for the last several years. I remembered that, although these activities and spaces can make me feel anxious at times, the pay off is so very worth it. I’m not sure I will be returning to hosting afternoon tea for 30+ people any time soon, but I’m certainly up for small group activities and have committed to not defaulting to no or an excuse. I also discovered that many lovely people had kept a door open for me to return, and that was a really meaningful thing to discover.
I returned to some pre-pandemic activities
On the back of this re-connection, I also went back to some of the activities that I used to take for granted pre-pandemic. I went to a literary festival, I went to science events, and I even returned to a gaming convention. These events reminded me of how much joy I find in learning, being intellectually curious and exploring. They reminded me of why I became a scientist in the first place, because even when not science related they reminded me of the joy of being inspired by others.
Being at a gaming convention was both so much scarier, and so much more fun than I remembered. It was lovely to take off my head, my identity, my thought processes, and step into those of someone else. I played a modern day police office in the Rivers of London universe, a teenage aristocrat in musketeers France, and a political leader in 1930s Europe. I dealt with murders, magic, and revolution, and not a single virus or infection was in sight. The experience reminded me that it was OK to prioritise both breaks and escapism, and of the benefits they can lead to in terms of reflection and re-fuelling.
I gave myself permission to feel
Speaking of gaming, it’s a great sandbox to explore emotions and feelings in response to stimuli for you character. It’s a safe space and time limited, so anything you dive into can be dropped at any point, and you will move onto a new character in 4 hours anyway. Life isn’t quite like that and exploring emotions, be they positive or negative, can take its toll. In 2025 I specifically gave myself permission to feel. To stop saying ‘I’m fine’ to those close friends and family who I know would be there come what may.
Sometimes the best way forward is through, and I found that being in responsive mode for so long at work had meant I had stopped processing a lot of the emotional side of what had gone on. I’m normally pretty optimistic and I know that things will be fine, but in 2025 I gave myself permission to acknowledge that the route to fine sometimes sucks, and that that is OK. I reminded myself that it’s OK to just acknowledge the moment and have a good weep, before getting it together and moving on.
BTW it appears that Taylor Swift songs are my favourite weeping companions, for both sad and happy tears, according to Spotify in 2025.
I started to try and look forward
Acknowledging that I have work to do in my emotional processing also enabled me to start to look forward, rather than being stuck in a loop. It enabled me to think about what I want, and where I want to be. What fuels me rather than draining me. I am fortunate enough to have the most amazing husband who will always pick me up, dust me off, and put me back together. So these considerations were mostly work related.
I know it’s a shocker, at least it was a surprise to me, but I’m getting older. I turned 46 this year, which is no age, but as I’m planning to retire and explore new directions at 55 that is an ever shrinking time period to make change and have impact. Don’t worry, this blog, my writing, public engagement and microbiology are going nowhere. I still want to work post NHS retirement, but maybe not the 12 hour days that add to my current exhaustion.
A dear colleague passed away just before Christmas and that brought this message home to me even more strongly. We can often approach all aspects of our lives as if we have all the time in the world. The reality is that that is never true, and a lot less of it is in our control than we believe. So, I’m giving some time to thinking what is on my list to accomplish and trying to make sure that it doesn’t just drift because of competing demands. This is a newer focus, but one that will definitely continue in 2026.
I expended effort in trying to find my joy
This has all sounded a bit bleak but the truth about authenticity is that includes sharing all aspects of the truth. even those that are not full of pep. The reality is not as bleak as all that, by doing this hard work I have been able to find true unadulterated joy in a number of moments in 2025. Joy I haven’t been able to feel for a long time. Joy so strong that it made me cry happy tears. Joy so real it reminded me why it is important to connect and follow your passions.
The move from survival mode into engaging with life has not been an easy one. There is still a lot of work to be done, and space for recovery needed. The joy however reminds me of why all of that work is worth it, and at a time when working within the NHS can feel even more challenging than during the pandemic, that joy is needed. So give yourself the gift of compassion you would give others. Offer yourself the space you need to heal, and then be brave about stepping into the world as the new (possibly wiser) version of you. I hope the rest of 2025 is kind to you, and that you too will be able to find joy as we enter 2026.
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you are finding this time of year difficult, and you are in the UK, here are some contact details that I hope may help. No one should need to struggle on their own:
I’ve just dipped my toe into the world of self publishing, so I am far from an expert. That said, one of the reasons it took me a while to move from ‘that is something I’m interested in knowing more about’ to ‘screw it, let’s just give it a go’ is because there is a lot to think about, and there are a lot of options. I thought it might be useful therefore to pull together some of the components that came up for me in an effort to pay it forward, so anyone else thinking about taking a leap can start a little further ahead than I did.
Fair warning, this is a long one as there’s a lot to cover.
The first thing to say, and this now sounds horribly naive, is that I thought that the writing would be the hard part, or the bit that took up most time. How wrong I was.
Before I properly kick off though, one quick word of warning. These are tips and reflections on the steps I took for the type and method of publishing that worked for me and the book I wanted to get out into the world. You will, of course, have your own aims, aspirations, and content type, so you will need to do research that links to the type of book that is in your mind. I found that there is all kinds of great content out there, but it is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle you need to put together to match your own personal needs. I would start by working out what personal resources you already have available to you, then go on an active search for the rest.
Places to consider accessing information include:
YouTube
Blogs
Websites
Books
Social media
Phone a friend
I am really fortunate to have a number of friends who have either written and published books, or who work in/with the publishing industry, and so the phone a friend option was particularly useful for me. I’m hoping that by writing this blog I am helping to pass that good fortune forward to support others.
Even without the assistance of someone who has greater knowledge than you in your friendship circle, I found places like YouTube a great way of learning some of the key phrases and structural terms that then enabled me to move onto more targeted research via other sources.
Writing is the easy part
I don’t know if I’m fortunate or cursed to live with a mind that constantly requires distraction or something challenging to process, but one advantage of it is that I will often arrive at an idea pretty fully formed as I’ve been putting it together in the back of my mind. That means that one day I just woke with a 40 chapter structure for a book that remained pretty much unchanged, even as the word count developed.
Even with this though, in my project plan most of my time was allocated to word count and far far too little of it was allocated to the other tasks. Partly this was because I just had no idea how long they would take in practice until I came to do them. In hindsight though, I think there was a fair amount of denial and ostriching as it was these other parts that triggered my anxiety and fear linked to not really being comfortable with the process. This denial got me to the finish line, but I think the whole book preparation would have gone more smoothly if I had focussed on my discomfort rather than the comfort zone that was the writing process.
What are you planning to publish?
Talking of your project plan. There are some components that it is really helpful if you make decisions about early, as they will impact not only your workload and structure, but also whether self publishing is the right route for you.
The first of these decisions is whether you are working towards a fiction or non-fiction book. I don’t think I’d ever sat down and made a list of the differences between the two until I started to plan both types of content. The first obvious difference is in the type of the content itself, but beyond the actual words, which may have legal and other impacts for non-fiction, there are differences in everything from word count expectations, to paper type, and book size, if you are thinking of including print versions.
This then brings you onto deciding what kinds of formats you are planning to publish in:
Ebook
Print:
paperback
hardback
Audiobook
Now, I haven’t done an audiobook so I’m not going to talk too much about that here. For the other format types it’s key to know what formats you are aiming for as this will dictate all of the formatting, cover and costing decisions you will make moving forward. That said, just because you decide to aim for more than one format it doesn’t mean that they all have to come out simultaneously. You could decide to aim for an Ebook first, with a plan to bring print editions later on.
It is worth doing some bench marking with similar book topics at this stage, not because you have to do what everyone else does, but because it can give you some parameters to work with and mean you feel less overwhelmed by the number of decisions you need to make. I ended up launching all content type pretty simultaneously, as that’s what worked for me, you may choose to take a route that is kinder to yourself and launch them in stages. For instance you may launch your Ebook first so you can incorporate feedback before you move to print editions.
What are your success criteria?
The other key thing to do at this point is to decide what does success look like for you? Almost all of your next steps and decision making will depend on what success looks like and what it is that you are wanting to achieve.
No one can tell you what the answer to this is as there are many different reasons people decide to write books, all of which can be valid:
To educate and inform
To raise awareness of an issue/topic
For financial reasons
To improve the authors profile
To entertain
To process experiences
To tell a story
To connect with others
For career development
To inspire/empower
Once determined your success criteria should play a big part in determining your approach. If you want to make money or sell thousands of books then you probably need to aim for a traditional publishing approach, and this will then impact the kind of topic that you might choose. If your aim is to get something out there for low cost or in a relatively niche topic, the self publishing is probably a way forward.
You need to be realistic with what you are aiming for. For instance, my book topic is relatively niche as it’s linked to post graduate study, and when I did my research it looked like I could expect to sell 2 copies a month based on amazon purchasing number (I used Book Bolt on free trial to run the numbers). My goals and expectations were therefore based on those figures. My initial goal was to sell 20 books in a year, with stretch goal of selling 60. My success criteria have never been about selling huge numbers or making money, but about finding a different way to support the Girlymicro community, and therefore my goals match that. What’s happened in practice in that I’m over the moon to have reached my stretch goal in the first six weeks since publication, but I am also aware that those numbers are likely to drop off and I can’t use them to continue to judge how well the book has landed. If you don’t want to be disappointed it’s important to choose the right success criteria to match your driver for publishing in the first place.
Traditional vs self publishing
Once you’ve decided what it is you want to write, why you want to write it, and what success looks like, then you need to choose your next steps. The biggest of which is to decide whether to pursue traditional publishing or go for self publishing. Now, don’t get me wrong, both are a lot of work and require a lot of prep, but the steps are very different.
For traditional publishing you will need to start to put together a proposal, which for a fiction book will include the entire manuscript of your book plus some additional information. For a non-fiction book it will usually include at least 2 chapters and chapter outlines with descriptors for the rest of your content, plus information on other things you have written, target audience, and other books on the market taht could be used as benchmarks. The aim is to get an agent who will then pitch your book to a publisher, although for some markets you can approach a publisher directly, who will then take care of onward processes such as editing, formatting, cover production. A lot of the non-writing work is therefore forward loaded. There’s lot of advice out there on how to put together a book pitch and there are websites such as Query Tracker that can help you in finding agents to send your pitch to. For fiction this is still a mainstay of publishing, especially as you are wanting to reach wider audiences and have your book available in book stores and libraries.
In terms of self publishing, a lot of my reading indicates that up to 90% of non-fiction books now go down the self publishing and print on demand routes. Non-fiction book deals either tend to be books that have wide audience appeal, such as general popular science books, or have authors with a pre-established audience, think influencers with a million+ followers. So, although it may be worth your while pursuing a traditional publishing approach, it is well worth considering exploring the self publishing route. The down side of this route is that there a lot of tasks that you will need to organise yourself, which would have been taken care of if you’d traditionally published, so be prepared for a steep learning curve.
One extra thing to think of is how strong is your vision is. If you go down a traditional publishing route there will be co-development of your concept with a number of stakeholders. This will make the idea better, but you need to be prepared to hold onto your concept loosely, especially as a new author, and so it is worth considering this aspect of development as part of your decision making. If you go down the self publishing route you will have to fight harder for the credibility that is given to traditionally published authors however, so both routes have pros and cons to consider.
What kind of content are you planning to include?
OK you’ve decided to go down the self publishing route but what does this mean for your content? Content restrictions weren’t something I had considered when I started drafting It Shouldn’t Happen to a PhD Student, and so I included a load of exercises to support the word count that included tables and other non-text formatting. When I then started to format however, I discovered that the templates are set up for text alone, as novels only include text content. This seems obvious in hindsight I guess. That meant that when I undertook my final formatting I ended up removing this content and setting up a new web page on the girlymicrobiologist.com blog in order to host it, as it felt that it was still important to have. This was a lesson for me in how important it is to consider what type of formats are needed to support your content and embed these considerations from the start, rather than finding an eleventh hour fix.
Having discovered the format restrictions of book based content I’ve been thinking of maybe putting together an academic journal set of content that can sit alongside the book in order to host some of these exercises, but that requires finding a whole different set of templates or learning waaay more in order to set ones up myself. Honestly I’m not sure I have the mental energy for that right now. One of the things this experience has taught me is to think hard about the payoff for any energy you will need to expend in order to make something happen and be conscious in your decision making and energy allocations.
Choose your budget
Another thing to consider is that there are many ways to accomplish the tasks you will need to tick off in order to self publish, and the decisions may be more complicated than you think. There are a number of steps, each with a number of component parts, all of which could be outsourced, semi-outsourced, or managed by you:
Editing
Cover
Formatting
Marketing
Printing
Publishing
Book coaching
If you decide to outsource all of these stages, the process of self publishing could, in fact, cost you thousands of pounds. If, like me, you don’t have thousands of pounds just lying around you may need to think carefully about what you can spend, and on what you are prepared to prioritise spending money on.
I didn’t really have a budget for publishing It Shouldn’t Happen to a PhD student, as I didn’t have the disposable income, even so publishing the book ended up costing me several hundred pounds. Costs included things like buying ISBN numbers as I didn’t want to be completely tied into Amazon as a platform. In addition to direct book costs, you need to think about how you will get the word out there or build your community. For instance, many people aren’t aware that running this blog costs rather providing income, with a few hundred pounds a year in outlay to cover hosting costs, email address etc*, which although not directly book related is the reason the my book came into existence. This can all be important to bear in mind when looking at costing your book, and thinking about marketing exercises such as book launches, as you will have to buy in copies of your book, spend money on food etc, all of which adds to your initial outlay.
If you do have personal budget that you are prepared to invest then it is still worth being discerning with how you invest, and especially being aware of predatory publishers. There are plenty of people out there who will take your money, but spending time to look at freelancers who will undertake components is probably better than paying someone £5000 who offers to do it all, especially if there is limited evidence of what the output would look like. Just like in scientific research, predatory publishers exist, and it is important to have undertaken sufficient research to invest your money well.
*NB a good friend mentioned to me that I don’t advertise the fact that you can help with the costs associated with running this blog through a variety of options, from supporting the annual fees (mentioned on the top of the homepage where is says gift the author a wordpress.com plan), buying me a cup of tea as mentioned on the bottom of the blogs by theme page, or even engaging with my new Patreon page. There you have it, I shall swallow my pride and share the details with no expectations or requirement for anyone who might be interested in offering a helping hand.
Where are you planning to sell?
A number of your outlay and pricing decisions will be linked to how and where you wish to sell your books. Obviously, if you are traditionally publishing, all of these options are somewhat easier as they will try to make sure your book is widely available. If you are self publishing you need to decide yourself where it is that you are prepared to sell. Some simple choices, like whether to use a free Amazon ISBN or buy your own, will have significant impacts on subsequent onward options. If you use a free print ISBN from Amazon, then it limits you to only selling on Amazon. Deciding to invest <£100 on ISBN numbers for each of your print editions means that you can choose to sell on different platforms in addition, but also has requirements about providing editions to the British Library, meaning you have to buy the print copies to send off and pay for postage. If you want your book to be in libraries you also need to select these options on your print on demand platform, but they are much less likely to be taken up than if you were going down a traditional publishing route. There are no right or wrong decisions here, only the decision that is right for your success criteria and the audience you are trying to reach.
If you are happy to go down the print on demand route, there a number of different free options available to you:
The best option will depend on what you are publishing and the countries that you are hoping to publish in. It is worth bearing in mind that some platforms (such as KDP) require you to give exclusive rights for you to be involved in certain marketing options, such as signing up to Kindle Unlimited. This may expand your reader market but will tie you into a specific platform. There are also paid for distributions platforms that you could utilise if you have decided to allocate budget in that direction. Of note, there are some interesting YouTube videos out there where authors compare how much they sell across different platforms which can help you make decisions. Utilising multiple platforms requires you to invest energy across multiple formats, and so it is also worth being honest with yourself about what your energy budget is before committing to more than one, even if that might restrict your sales.
Finding your templates
I’ve talked about deciding on your content, and that’s because formatting is time consuming and essential. You may be a wiz at this, in a way that I am not, but if it doesn’t lie in your skill set then being able to access and utilise pre-existing templates is key. Even this can be a mine field though as there are both free and paid for versions available to you. You also need to know a number of things before choosing your template i.e. is it for print or Ebook, as the templates are very different, but also what size of book are you aiming for, as your paperback version will be a different size to your hardback. I did a bunch of research into what are the most common book sizes for non-fiction hardback and paperback versions, but even this changes by country, so you will need to look into what works best for you. I ended up going for 6 x 9 inches for hardback and 5.5 x 8.5 for paperback.
Having tried a few different options, these happen to be the best templates that worked for me and my brain, you may find others work better for you:
Even with the best templates there is a good deal of fiddling once you’ve imported your content, so make sure you leave plenty of time for this part of the process. I didn’t and it meant a number of 14 hour days whilst on leave trying to ensure I could keep to my self imposed deadline.
Choosing your pricing
I, misguidedly, thought I could price my book at whatever price point I fancied, but rapidly learnt that this wasn’t the case. All of the free self publishing platforms take a cut of any print on demand book, which is how they cover their costs. Everything from number of pages to paper type will impact on what your minimum cost point will be. For Ebooks, if you want your book included in schemes, like Kindle Unlimited to maximise your reach, you will also need to have minimum pricing levels. This is one reason why you need to have decided on where you want to sell and some of the book details before you start to think about pricing. Think about the fact that certain paper types are used more commonly for certain book types, and that choosing between them will impact on cost.
Helpfully, you can use things like the https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/royalty-calculator in order to play around with likely book parameters to start to think about what your pricing range might be, even before you have fully completed the templates, to know what the final page counts look like. I have included a random example below so you can see the type of information required:
Once you have entered the information, the royalty calculator will tell you what the minimum price point will be, and from that you can think about what price you may need to charge to cover your costs.
If, like me, you are publishing not to make money but merely to cover costs, you should think about charging minimal amounts in order to maximise accessibility for those who may benefit from your book. If you have spent more on bringing your book to market, you are also likely to need to charge more in order to make your accounts balance. This is another reason why I invested my resources in terms of time rather than financial, as I didn’t want to have to charge more which could limit the book reaching those who would benefit most. This aspect may be less relevant to you, depending on your reason for publishing in the first place and so costing is a personal choice.
The book blurb
Once you have your book written, one of the final steps is thinking about what you are going to write on the back cover in order to help it reach its target market. I found this part, well to be honest the cover in its entirety, a bit of a nightmare. So these are the points I thought about when deciding what to write:
Keep it 150–200 words — short enough to hold attention, long enough to inform
Write in the third person to help you connect directly with the reader
Test different versions — your blurb is a sales tool, not just a summary, no matter how uncomfortable that feels
Think about your structure:
Start with a hook
Open with a single sentence that speaks directly to your reader’s problem
Identify the reader’s goal
Show you understand their challenge or aspiration. Use empathetic, relatable language and speak to how you will address it
Give your unique selling point
Briefly explain what your book delivers and why it’s different
Be specific
Build credibility
Mention relevant credentials, or experience
Give a taste of what’s inside
List 3–5 bullet points of key takeaways
Finish with an invitation or call to action
You can then also use this to help write the wording you will need for the websites you are selling on as an expanded version, and even use shortened versions of it as part of your marketing tools, such as on postcards.
Recognise the skills you have and the skill you don’t
The biggest aid in all of this planning was to be very honest with myself about the skills I have and the skills I don’t have. I am not artistic in any way, and so I knew that I would struggle with not only cover formatting, but with cover design. I know that I am able to utilise a word template, but that I don’t have the skills to make a word template. I know that editing is not my thing. All of the components that I recognised as weaknesses I actively sought out support in order to help me address. I roped in a number of people to help with copy editing, including Mummy Girlymicro. I roped in Mr Girlymicro, who is a keen photographer with an artistic eye, who worked with our good friend who works in book design and publishing Alice Wallace, to help with the cover. I found templates that made up for my lack of formatting and design skills for the internal contents. I was prepared to be honest with myself about where I fell short, and I invested time in learning what options were available to compensate. All of these weaknesses could be countered by outsourcing, but that wasn’t a financial option for me, and I feel that I’ve learnt so much in going through the process and the discussions. Something I would have missed out on if I’d paid a third party. That said, the learning feels worth it for me as I have plans to get more books out, if you have budget and you are only doing this once the decision making is likely to be different.
Find your cheer squad and support team
All of this brings me onto the importance of finding your cheer squad. I spent a lot of hours and a lot of leave on turning an idea into reality, and you can never do it alone. I used my ‘phone a friend’ system, my network, and my family, all of which helped with getting this project across the line. They helped me not only with the technical aspects, but also in managing the emotional aspects. There were a lot of highs and lows. To be honest there still are. Putting yourself out there always requires a certain level of bravery. It is always easy for people to find a way to criticise, or use this as a way to comment or target what you’ve tried to achieve. The other side of this coin though is how wonderful it is when people get behind you, cheer you on, and take the time to invest in you and your concept. When people came out for my book launch it meant the world. No one has a lot of time or money right now, so anyone investing in something I care about has such meaning, and makes the whole thing worth it. When I hear negativity, it is that which I focus on to aid in processing my responses.
The nightmare of a cover
Now, I’m just going to use this section to give the biggest ever thank you shout outs to Mr Girlymicro and Alice Wallace. I genuinely believe that there is one part of this process that I couldn’t manage, even if you gave me a month of full time capacity to play with it. I’m talking about The Cover! I’ve attached the guide link below, but even with this I don’t think I could have achieved it. It is the one part that I just couldn’t get my head around.
There is so much maths involved, let alone the actual design process. That maths changes based on the precise number of pages, but also what those pages are. Can you believe that cream paper is a different thickness to white. I had no idea.
I mention this in order to be transparent that you too may hit certain components that you just can’t get your head around. That’s OK, you can’t be good at everything. More than that, it’s OK to have things that just fill you with so much anxiety that you can’t face them. For me that was the cover, for you it may be something else. The main thing is to have a plan in order to counter these obstacles before you get to the point where it will impact on your delivery.
The submission process
Once all this is done, it is time to submit. I had thought this process would be much faster than it was, and so now I’ve done it I would recommend allowing at least a month window between submission and having any marketing or other components planned. Nothing is immediate. Once uploaded, and this in itself took a number of attempts, all versions need to be checked out by the platform you upload to. For print versions you will also want to build in time to order proof copies (which will need paying for) in order to check you are happy and that your formatting has worked before you release them out into the wild.
My top tip for this stage is to have pre-completed the boxes and info where possible in order to allow you to focus on just the upload when the time comes. This means that fairly early on in the process you want to have set up accounts, provided registration information, undergone identity checks, so that you can start you populate the appropriate pages. I would do the account setting up as part of the research phase of your book development.
Bits I hadn’t thought about
There were several things I had not even thought about before I started this process. For instance, I didn’t know that you had to buy ISBN numbers, let alone that you need one per format and one per edition, and so you can end up needing to buy quite a few. You don’t need an ISBN for Ebooks but if you don’t want to be tied to Amazon (who will give you a free one for use on the Amazon platform) then you will need to buy them for your print versions from here (if UK based) https://www.nielsenisbnstore.com/.
This brings me onto another thing I didn’t realise. If you have a print book you will need to submit a copy to the British Library within a month of it going live for sale. This will require you to have a copy to send and to pay for postage. They may also request that you send 5 copies to a separate address which means they can then be considered for purchase by libraries. All of which is great, but will require you to have brought enough books to post and has cost implications.
Other outlays I hadn’t thought about were the fact that you need technology to sell books, by this I mean the ability to take card payments. This one completely passed me by until Mr Girlymicro mentioned it, and then thankfully he spent a bunch of time looking at how to make it happen before recommending something. He ended up recommending Zettle, which has worked really well. Again, there was no point in spending a lot of money on this as I wasn’t planning on going to book fairs and selling thousands of copies, however it did mean I could sell copies of my book at the book launch, which made the expenditure worth it.
Finally, I was so focussed on getting the book out there that I don’t think I’d prepared myself for some of the commentary. Now, I’ve been really fortunate so far that almost all of the comments have been positive, but there have been some people who I felt were less happy about me a) getting a book out there and b) it being well received. To be honest the same has been true about this blog on occasion. Questions such as why you? Why should anyone care what you have to say? Don’t you have better things to do with your time? Nothing is going to be universally well received, and at some point someone will no doubt put up a review that breaks my heart. That doesn’t make the endeavor any less worth while. It is better to have something real out there that can support people than wait until it reaches a point of perfection and not putting something out for years. Nothing will please everyone, and so being prepared to cope with critique thrown your way is something to be prepared for.
The discomfort of marketing
Once the book is live is to a certain extent when the real work actually starts. There is no getting around the fact that if you want your book to reach the people it could help or who will find it interesting then you are going to have to tell people about it. It is not comfortable but you have to channel why you decided to do this in the first place and focus on that to overcome the discomfort.
This is one of those things that if you have gone down a traditional publishing route may have been more supported but you would still be expected to drive sales on your own. Make sure that you have an idea of where to show content on social media, make accounts if you don’t have them. Think about using stores like Vistaprint to print postcards, book marks, and in my case giant foam boards of my own head, to help with advertising. Again, this is an initial outlay to be aware of. You will also need to buy a number of copies of your own book so you will have some to sell, and that requires thought as you don’t want a hundred copies that will just sit around and do nothing, so how many is enough?
Think about having an event to kick off and celebrate that you have turned a concept into a reality. I was so worried about having a book launch, but it was actually just a wonderful event. It felt so lovely to see people hold physical copies of the book in their hands for the first time and see their reactions. You can also see the people who are really there to show up for you, and it’s a great way of giving back and thanking the cheer leaders who’ve supported you along the way. Note of caution, this is another one of those things that is lovely but will also cost you money, so be prepared to outlay a few hundred pounds if you are going to do it, as you will need to pay for everything from books to catering.
If you have budget, this is another area where you can choose to invest. There are places on the Kindle Direct Publishing page for your book where you can choose to pay money to have your book featured, social media pages will let you run adverts, and you can even pay companies specifically that do this kind of work. I don’t have the budget to go down that kind of route but if you choose to give it a try let me know what your learning and advice is and I can share in a future post, or better yet write me a guest blog.
The long and short of it is that your book won’t reach the people you’ve written it for if they don’t know about it, so suck it up buttercup and get your marketing hat on. No matter how uncomfortable it makes you, and it makes me very uncomfortable, there is no getting around it. If you can find friends and/or champions who will talk about it on your behalf that is a life saver, but you will not be able to avoid putting yourself out there. You wrote a book for a reason, this is the time to remember that reason and step out bravely in order to make your success criteria happen.
In that vein, if you want to check out the final version of my labour of love, you can find the link below:
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.
I am not a big Halloween girly, to be honest I can take it or leave it because I’m mostly excited about the build up to Christmas. That said, what I do love are movies and TV, and despite never being someone who can tolerate a lot of slasher or gore based horror movies, I love a good vampire movie.
A lot of this may be because I enjoy the world building and lore that seems to be more integral to vampire movies and series. This is because, although they share some of the same rules, depending on how the world is built they always need to explain which of the nuance comes into play in that particular setting. It felt fun this Halloween therefore, to write a blog post that talks about some of those tropes when vampirism is linked to infection, and how those rules compare to the real world.
Common vampire tropes to be aware of and to bear in mind as you read on:
Experiencing pain or physical damage in relation to sunlight
Needing to consume blood as a protein source
Inability to eat or digest food other than blood
Avoidance of animals
Ability to influence humans to undertake acts that may be against their will
Violent reactions to garlic
Inability to see themselves in mirrors or via cameras
Death only by beheading
Death by wooden stakes
Damage linked to holy water
Aversion to signs of faith
Aversion to alcohol or drug use
Not all of these are present in every piece of world building, hence why I find the variety of vampire mythos so interesting. The choice of which ones go together combined with different origin stories and creation processes enable a pretty large tapestry to be created from some similar thematic components.
Mystical, infections or something else?
The place to start I guess is by discussing whether all vampire world building includes infectious transmission? And the answer is a definitive no. Sometimes the way that the creation of new vampires works isn’t discussed. Sometimes the rules about the underlying process is unclear. That said, the fear of becoming something new is a frequently used trope for dramatic purposes and so the process by which a human is turned into or by which vampires exist is discussed pretty frequently as part of world building, and from what I can see there are three main routes:
Mystical – some form of occult/magic/cause not routed in science
Genetic – vampires are born and exist as a stand alone species
Infection – transmission via blood or other infectious transfer, even if the agent is unclear or unspecified
Now, I’m not going to cover the mystical/magically as that’s not anything based in science and the science is what I’m here for. The other two, however, are often based (sometimes loosely) in science as they are often inspired by things that actually exist and so I’m going to talk about both of those in a bit more details.
Genetic
I’m going to kick off by talking all things genetics. There are an increasingly large number of vampire movies and TV series where the vampires that featured were born vampires. This includes movies like Abigail, Perfect Creatures, the finale of the Twilight series, but also TV series such as A Discovery of Witches, First Kill and Vampire Academy. Sometimes within these there are vampires that are made through other means (discussed below) in the same world. Often these genetic vampires exist as a separate species to their Homo sapien neighbours either openly or in hiding.
There is often much discussion about where the vampire myth comes from, and in many way these stories of genetic vampires who are birthed through a similar route to standard human deliveries, links in most with what is considered to be a real world inspiration for many vampire myths. The origin is thought to be linked to a rare inherited condition known as Porphyria, the presentation for which may account for for some of the common components of vampire portrayals.
Porphyria is a rare, inherited blood disorder that occurs when the body can’t convert porphyrins into haeme, a vital component of haemoglobin. The resulting symptoms vary depending on the type of porphyria. Acute porphyria presentations include symptoms such as gastro intestinal pain and symptoms like nausea and vomiting – symptoms that are often portrayed linked to vampires attempting to eat normal food. Whilst cutaneous porphyria symptoms include pain, burning and swelling in response to sunlight, skin fragility and a tendency towards skin blistering – all of which are frequently included as vampire responses to exposure to sunlight.
Porphyria D. Montgomery Bissell, M.D., Karl E. Anderson, M.D., and Herbert L. Bonkovsky, N Engl J Med 2017;377:862-872 VOL. 377 NO. 9
Interestingly, in some of the genetic origin vampire stories, the impact of some of the limitations of the lifestyle limitation of traditional vampires are not so extreme. In some of these cases they can be seen in daylight, although not for long and don’t enjoy it, and they may be able to tolerate some, if not all, of human food. They are possibly therefore most aligned to their real world inspirations. I could write pages and pages on this, but infection is where my heart lies so I’m going to crack on.
Virus, parasitic, others?
Now we’ve covered off those born vampires, let’s move onto the most common version of vampirism outside of the traditional Dracula more mystical inspiration, that is vampires who are created linked to transfer of infection by blood or other means.
There are three main ways that this commonly comes into play:
Viral causes
Parasitic routes
Bacteria intoxication
I’m still trying to find a vampire movie where the main infectious agent is fungal, but it seems that most of the movies based on fungi are linked to zombie outbreaks. That makes a lot of sense, due to the fact that fungi are eukaryotes (like us) rather than prokaryotes (like bacteria), and so fungi tend to be linked to changing behaviour linked to interfering with the human nervous system. If you’ve seen a vampire version though please do let me know as I’m collating a list of where different organisms might come into play.
By far the most common route depicted is where the causative agent is a virus. Viruses are featured in movies such as Blade and Daybreakers and TV series such as Ultraviolet. This is because viral transmission in general is associated with transfer of bodily fluids, be that faecal-oral, respiratory via saliva, bodily fluids such as breast milk, or in the case of vampire movies via blood.
The most uncommon causative agent I’ve discovered is the parasitic cause of vampirism as shown in The Strain TV series. During the series transmission of the virus to create a full vampire is via something known as ‘The White’ that contains parasitic worms. These then lead to anatomical changes, including the growth of a proboscis that enables the biting and transmission of the parasite to others.
Bacterial coverage is mostly linked to potential methods of intoxication that supports the control over humans by vampires. Rather than being a direct cause of the vampirism, this seems to be about how transfer of the bacteria releases, or causes anatomical change, which then changes behaviour via things like hormonal or neurological changes. I’ve talked before about why bacteria may feature less in horror movies than other causes, but this can mostly be summed up by the fact that audiences tend to know more about bacteria and therefore it is less tempting for writers, but also horror tends to sit better in ‘the possible but not too close to us’.
Transmission
Obviously it’s not just the infectious agent that is important, but the mode of transmission for that agent. This being all about vampires the biggest mode of transmission is by bite, but it’s not always so straight forward. In mystical vampire movies, there’s usually a whole lot of removing of the original human blood and then transfer of the vampire blood, leading to a mystical baptism and rebirth. Infectious causes are much more one way, any bite could lead to someone turning into a vampire and the most important thing is load related. If someone is in contact for longer, if more blood is drunk and therefore more saliva and fluids exchanged, then the chances of conversion are much higher.
It’s not just blood as a bodily fluid that features in conversion during vampire movies. There are also films, such as Requiem for a Vampire and Trouble Every Day, where vampirism is treated more like a sexually transmitted disease, rather than transfer occurring during feeding on the blood of their victims. It seems that these films have increased since the 1980s, maybe as a result of fear processing linked to the HIV/AIDS pandemic during that time period or maybe because our knowledge about and ability to detect infections has increased and therefore there are a larger part of the collective public awareness. It will be interesting to see how the SAR CoV2 pandemic will impact this further.
The most unusual transmission, and one that aligns most highly with blood borne transmission is the presence of congenital transmission as featured in Blade. Where the main character Blade becomes a vampire hybrid by acquiring the vampire virus at birth, due to his mother being bitten and placental crossing of the virus into his blood stream. As a result, he exhibits some of the characteristics of a vampire due to the virus, but the effects are attenuated linked to his exposure route. It can often be that congenital infection presents differently to primary infection via other causes, and it appears vampirism is no different.
The other variable is linked to the time to turning once the infection has been introduced. I would speculate that this too is load related, as well as the infectious agent behind the symptoms. Viruses, for instance, are likely to reproduce and induce change at a much higher rate than anything linked to bacteria or parasites. This is partly due to their reproductive rate, but also linked to the level of dose that tends to be available. The exception to viruses resulting in the fastest change is likely to be bacterial intoxication and influencing. As the toxin acts immediately, when this is present in media and TV the change is almost instantaneous, but also time limited and therefore requires top up or re-application. Not all impacts are until beheading, some require a more time boundaried set of interventions.
Interventions
Once your characters are aware that vampires exist within their mist, then they will want to look for actions in order to protect themselves. One of the classic ones as featured in many movies, including the classic Lost Boys, is garlic.
In some ways the impact of garlic makes even more sense if you think of vampirism through an infectious transmission route, as garlic has been considered to have anti-infective properties for a long time, although warning you may have to ingest a LOT of it!
Another common feature in vampire movies is the roles that animals play as protectors. For instance, in 30 Days of Night, the vampires kill all of the dogs before they launch their main attack. This kind of thing also often happens in films and TV where vampires are hiding in plain sight. It could be that they are taking out animals as they don’t want to be found, and animals are easier than humans, but I have another proposition. There are a number of infections where animals can be used to sniff out and identify infected individuals. Therefore, if animals could detect vampires they are much more likely to be a risk and warrant removal. Animals could therefore act as a front line of diagnostic defence to enable you to tell friend from foe.
Having determine that a common weakness of vampires is their damage response to ultraviolet light (UV), films such as Underworld weaponise light against the vampire protagonists. Light, and especially UV-C (200 – 280nm), has been known to impact viruses and bacteria for well over 100 years. When light is in this frequency is can damage both RNA and DNA, resulting in cell death, and it is possible that if the infectious agent is the only thing that is keeping your body moving the damage would be more pronounced. We’ve also discussed how the lack of some biochemical pathways can lead to UV-C causing much larger amounts of pain an damage.
Normally, penetration of the light to cause damage might be an issue, but if you are using bullets or other means this may not impact. The most important thing I have to say here is, that despite what is shown in Blade 2, light does not bend around corners. This is also important for when you are considering using UV-C in hospitals to support cleaning, it doesn’t have good penetration and doesn’t go around corners of work in shadows. Using UV-C may work against your vampires but you are going to need to think carefully about where you use it so it does what you think it can.
Vampire movies have amazing world building and are often my favourite genera in terms of their string internal logic. I love the fact that so many types of infection and route of transmission that reflect real world cases are present as part of these pieces of entertainment. They can actually teach us a lot, even when we don’t realise it, and so much of it has origins in real world knowledge, even if only loosely. So, this Halloween evening find one you haven’t seen before and let me know which intervention you would use to stop your town being turned into creatures of the night!
Before I go, I thought I would share a few of the previous years Halloween blog posts in case you are looking for some more spooky season and infection reading:
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 am currently in the middle of secret project, which I hope to announce more about in late August/early September. I’m really excited about it but it’s taking a bunch of my time. I’m hoping that you will be just as excited when I can share more details. The wonderful Dr Claire Walker is helping me deliver my passion project by curating the Girlymicrobiologist blog for a few weeks. This means that I hope you all enjoy getting some great guest blogs from a range of topics. Girlymicrobiologist is a community, and all of the wonderful authors stepping up, sharing their thoughts and projects, to support me in mine means the world. I hope you enjoy this guest blog series. Drop me a line if you too would be interested in joining this community by writing a guest blog.
Dr 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 The Clinical Academic Path – From the Lab to the Lectern.
This weeks blog post is from Dr Shayda Karimi, who is a medical doctor and self published author, discussing how important creativity is in science.
Blog by Shayda Karimi
Hello! My name is Shayda.
I’m a medical doctor, specialising in anaesthesia and pre-hospital emergency care. Medicine has always been considered one of the ‘softer’ sciences, but never the less is more of a science than a humanity, and the subject takes pride in adhering to evidence based practice. Creativity lies at the heart of problem solving, and problem solving is key to providing high quality, innovative medical care, especially in dynamic specialities like emergency care. For example, I was recently faced with the dilemma of a man impaled on a large segment of aluminium ladder. The metal couldn’t be removed without a CT scan to determine which structures it had damaged, and due to the angle of penetration, the patient couldn’t fit through the scanner with it in place. The creative solution was to put a 999 call out to the fire service, who with specialist cutting equipment were able to reduce the size on the metal segment. The patient safely had his scan.
Creativity in science should be encouraged. Through my time at medical school, opportunities to be creative were very limited- most lectures were on never changing topics- anatomy and physiology. I took a student component module called ‘medicine in literature’- even that was factual. To resolve this gap in my undergraduate education, in my F3 year (a common point for junior doctors to take a year out of training, having completed two foundation years and before commencing higher specialist training) I decided to complete a masters degree in creative writing. I was the only person on my course with a ‘science’ background.
The dissertation for this course was a long piece of writing. Which for the first time in my post primary school life, could be completely and utterly false. This dissertation turned into my first novel. Writing fiction develops problem solving skills- characters must resolve the obstacles put into their path, and this must be believable with the rules they are living in. I learned about how language can be used to invoke emotions and atmosphere- this is of vital importance when speaking to patients and colleagues. Or even when writing emails! I developed an appreciation that though creativity is not fact- it can also be to a certain degree taught and developed.
The dissertation turned into my first published novel ‘Heirs’, set in a future dystopian London, conjoined twins are born next in line to the throne. They end up separated and in a fight for power. This was fun experience; taking the science I knew as fact, and adding a whole load of fiction to turn it into a familiar but bizarre future.
Creativity and science go hand in hand. We should all endeavour to leave the cold hard world of facts every once in a while and dive into something purely imaginative; an art class or high fantasy novel.
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination” – Albert Einstein
There’s a lot going on right now, and life is busy for everyone. Despite the challenges, this lack of time can mean that reflection and taking a moment to catch your breath can be even more beneficial. I can’t believe this is the 250th post on this blog and so, if you’ll forgive the indulgence, I’m going to be taking my own advice and spending a little time celebrating this milestone by remembering why I started, what I wanted to achieve, whether that has worked out, and where I would like Girlymicro to go in the future.
Where did it start?
When I chose Girlymicro as my twitter handle back in 2012 I had no idea of the decision I was actually making. I didn’t set out to have a ‘brand’, I never imagined that it would exist outside of a platform that I had newly encountered and was trying to learn how to use. That said Girlymicro was chosen with purpose even back then. I wanted something that allowed me to represent, and consciously go against some of the advice that I had heard during my career. Advice that said that I could be good but I would be better if I tried to fit in and not bring my whole self to the table. To accept that fact that I should be a scientist first and a woman second, and that by putting my femineity and female perspective forward I would isolate myself and limit my ability to succeed. That scientists didn’t look like me. I also wanted to show that I can be Girly in a non-traditional way, I don’t wear lots of makeup, I don’t worry about my appearance, but I enjoy being feminine despite all of those things. I wanted to say I like wearing pinks and purples, and I can also still be good at science. So, Girlymicro was born.
Roll forward to the end of my PhD and I had discovered a love for science communication, and how education can be done differently. It didn’t all need to be lectures, where someone knowledgeable stood at the front of the room and gifted knowledge to those who sat passively within the space. That knowledge could be co-produced instead of given.
This inspired me to start thinking about how I could make a difference in this space. In 2015 I didn’t really know what it was that I wanted, I was still very much thinking about options but I hadn’t pinned anything down. For me, looking back, this shows that sometimes having a passion is the best place to start. You don’t have to have all the detail mapped out, and sometimes knowing what you don’t want to do is almost as important.
When I started to investigate the science blogging space, a lot of the blogs were very technical, highly referenced, and very science forward. These were all brilliant blogs, the trouble was I was pretty sure they weren’t what I wanted to write. This was for a couple of reasons, I’d just finished writing a PhD thesis and a whole bunch of papers. I knew that I could write that kind of work but I was aware that writing that every week would be incredibly time consuming, not necessarily teach me new skills, and not reach the audience I wanted to speak to. I also knew that I wanted to keep the Girlymicro mentality of bringing my whole self and so something that felt one dimensional didn’t tick my boxes for a project that I knew would require a big time investment. I knew that wasn’t right for me, but I had yet to work out what right looked like.
Where have I been?
In 2015 I registered the Girlymicrobiologist domain therefore, whilst not completely sure what it was that I wanted to do. Sometimes I knew you just have to get started. I put out my first, very short blog post, and then frankly kind of chickened out.
It wasn’t until the pandemic that I finally crystalised what it was I wanted to write and who it was I wanted to speak to. By the time my second blog post was launched I’d worked with Nicola Baldwin, as a playwright, on the Nosocomial project. I’d really started to find my feet in terms of knowing who I was as a communicator. I had also spent over 6 months doing various radio and comms linked to the pandemic, and I was getting really frustrated at the fact that all of it boiled down to sound bite communication. I didn’t have a space where I could speak without an intermediary, or where I could explore the complexity of what was happening. That dissatisfaction combined with the fact that I was increasingly aware of the fact that there may be people who were interested in engaging with this kind of content, due to questions across social media and from my friends, meant that I finally got over my fear and put out my first real blog post.
You’ll see that these early blogs are all pretty short. They are definitely Girlymicro blogs, but they fit into the expectations of the time when they will written.
We all know I love a bit of research, and when I started writing regularly I obeyed the rules of the time. That was that blogs should be 500 – 900 words and three pictures. I also really felt the need to demonstrate my credibility, to show that I had the right to be writing. I felt I had to prove to people that I was worthy of their time (not that I don’t now, but it feels different). All of this means that the early blogs feel a bit different to the ones I post today.
It took me longer than I would have thought to get to the point where I could finally do what I had set up my Girlymicro twitter handle for back in 2012, and that was bring my whole self, good, bad and sometimes mortifying, to my blogs. To share weakness as well as strength, and on occasion to write blog posts that are about things I’m exploring and don’t have any answers to. It took me quite a while to be brave and find the courage to throw it out there and deal with whatever reception happened.
It also took me a while to share the big moments, and to think that was OK, rather than being considered boastful. I clearly remember the anxiety of posting about receiving a New Years Honour, and even making consultant. Despite that anxiety I have chosen to live by ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. It’s really important to show that someone as normal as me can achieve, and that those routes are open to everyone. It’s not about being special, or exceptional, it’s about bringing your whole self and continuing to show up, even on the bad days. Therefore being out there and visible is important both to show what can happen and options to get there.
It took me even longer to think of myself (and I’m not entirely sure I still do) as a writer, rather than someone who writes. I don’t think of myself as a particularly good writer, my knowledge of grammar is super weak. What I’ve learnt though is that, if you write from the heart, if you have something to say that is well intentioned and written to support others, then people forgive you for any lack of skill. You also won’t learn and get better if you don’t practice, so I’m practicing in a safe space with a load of supporters who are prepared to think the best of me.
Over the last 10 years, whether actively writing or not, I’ve learnt a lot about myself, how I want to communicate, and who I want to communicate and build a community with. It is that learning that has helped me develop and build. The feedback and support has been invaluable, and it’s help me to know that it is OK to learn and evolve as I go. It’s then so important to share that learning so that the next person looking to start a blog can build upon knowledge already gained and make something that works for them.
Life gets busy for all of us, and it can be challenging sometimes to get a blog out every week, plus we all know that sometimes I fail to deliver. Frequency is key though, both because I don’t want to let everyone down, and because it is all too easy to fall out of the habit of writing if you start skipping weeks. Those were the reasons for posting regularly at the start anyway. If you read any ‘how to start a blog’ page it will tell you about the importance of regular content updates.
I don’t think that’s the reason why I post regularly now and feel unsettled if I miss posts these days however. I think that I have come to find writing an invaluable way of sorting through my thoughts and processing my responses. I started writing a blog for the benefit of others, but I have discovered how much creating a regular space for reflection, as part of writing, has massive benefits for me and my well being. It’s become a habit that I absolutely don’t want to break, plus I have 350 plus posts in draft so it’ll take me time to get through them.
I also feel that as you build and develop you are able to see the vision more and more clearly, and so what you build naturally changes. I didn’t deliberately set out to post on key topics such as Infection Prevention and Control, Healthcare Science, Leadership, Academia/research and personal growth, but looking back now I can’t see that Girlymicro could have been anything but what it is. It started from a place of authenticity, and so what has developed is something that is uniquely me, and I couldn’t be happier.
What’s my current reality?
Talking about what Girlymicro is now, in the world of AI I thought it would be interesting to see what Gemini (Googles AI) thinks of the Girlymicro blog. So If you hit up Google and ask ‘what is the Girlymicrobiologist blog’ it comes up (as of the 22nd June 2025) with the below:
The Girlymicro blog is a science blog written by a Healthcare Scientist and Infection Prevention and Control Consultant named Professor Elaine Cloutman-Green. It focuses on various topics including leadership, academia, Healthcare Science, infection control, and personal experiences, with a strong emphasis on community and raising awareness within these fields.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Focus Areas:The blog covers a range of topics, including leadership, PhD tips, Healthcare Science, infection control and microbiology, personal experiences, and guest blogs/book reviews.
Purpose:The blog aims to demystify science, make it accessible to everyone, and build a supportive community for those working in or interested in these fields.
Community Engagement:The blog actively encourages interaction with the audience, featuring guest blogs to broaden perspectives and inviting feedback to improve content.
Author’s Perspective:The author, Professor Cloutman-Green, shares her expertise as a scientist and consultant while also offering insights into her personal journey and experiences.
Content Style:The blog features a mix of informative posts, personal reflections, and discussions on current issues related to science and healthcare.
Now I know that AI will scrape a lot of what I wrote and therefore may be seen as just posting positive reinforcement, but I have to say that summary did not make me miserable. I’m pretty happy that it covers a lot of what I hope it would cover. When it is hard to write, it is sometimes nice to reflect and see if whether what you are doing still fits your purpose and the reason you started, so that alignment with my ‘why’ feels pretty good.
What am I proudest of?
Talking about evolution, when I first started I had never considered guest blogs or what they could look like. It took about a year for me to feel like I knew what I was doing enough to put out a call for people who would be willing to write guest blogs. Now, out of the posts published, ~13% are guest blogs, This is so important to me. I’ve always wanted Girlymicro to be a community, a community where we listen to and support each other. Guest blogs are an important component of that as they work to offer others a voice, and to be able to practice within what I hope is a safe and supportive space. Writing guest blogs enables others to feel supported in sharing their views, but also to try out a type of writing that authors may not have done before, and to build confidence. I’m especially happy that many of those who write guest blogs are undergraduates or early post graduates, where developing these skills and potentially raising their profile, might help them in their future.
I know that I asked AI what they thought of the blog, but in order to be a little more thorough I also reached out across social media platforms in order to ask others what they thought. What they liked and found helpful, but also where it could get better. So whilst I’m talking about gratitude, I’m so proud and grateful for the responses received. When everyone is up against it, the fact that people took time to respond and give their thoughts means the world:
What are the lessons I’ve learnt?
One of the thing I’ve discovered when speaking to people about this blog is that people read blogs for all kinds of reasons. Now, I know I said that I don’t write Girlymicro as a hard science blog, but I do always want to include interesting other pieces of reading where I can. Apparently, according to the article below, people read science blogs for a variety of reasons, and you can either try to double down on one of them, or do what I do, and hope to achieve all of the different aspects but at different moments and in different articles. This is probably quite obvious if you spend time thinking about it, but it was not something I had particularly realised. It is however one of the reasons why posting a variety of different types of content seems to work. Every day is a school day.
I knew none of those things when I started, and I will always continue to write the things that speak to me in the hope it is helpful to others, rather than trying to hit an algorithm or meet requirements laid out by others. That said, and as food for thought, I thought I would shared some of the lessons I’ve learnt over the last ten years, many of which could be applied to just life in general:
You don’t have to have it all figured out, but you need to have a direction of travel and a purpose
Things will change so don’t cling to where you started, be open to learning and evolution
Just keep showing up, even when you don’t want to, especially when it’s hard
Sometimes knowing what you don’t want to do is helpful and shouldn’t be dismissed
Take the risk, and make the jump. Nothing is perfect, failure will happen, but you will end up better for it
Have a little faith. Have faith in your gut. Have faith that others will be there to catch you and support you when you need it
Try to think about your community and building your networks. Focus on what serves them than what serves you only
Everything takes longer than you think and nothing is ever finished. Starting a project like this is a commitment of years with no end date. Make sure you have the passion to see you through
If you bring your whole self it will always be a success, as it will be truly and uniquely you
What are my hopes and aspirations for the future?
I still aspire to turning the blog into a book, I’m still working on it. I have big dreams and I’m not done yet. Most of my hopes are about continuing to build community though, that’s where my dreams are all seated. What can we do better to learn from each other? How can I do this better in order to help? How can I reach people who might find this useful? People who don’t read blogs in this way or exist on the platforms I use? This blog, like me, is a work in progress, and long may that continue.
The one thing that I am certain of is that I want to continue to be grateful, to see what we are building together and to continue to experience awe that I get to be a part of it. Girlymicro was never meant to be a brand but I’m beyond grateful for the fact that, with the support of all of you, it kind of is, and it’s a platform that I commit to using for the good of all of us. To support, to inform, and hopefully to enable positive change. Thank you so much for being part of this and here’s to the next 250!
I got a cab this yesterday, and I said good morning and asked how the driver was doing, as I always do when I grab a cab. They looked at me and said ‘you are a happy person, so many of my rides are not’. This really got me thinking about happiness and outlook. Life is challenging for a lot of us right now. The world is a scary place. A lot of the rules that we thought existed to manage how society works are being challenged, and for those of us who work in the NHS the job feels harder than it’s ever been. It is easy to fall into what Mr Girlymicro and I describe as the pit of despair. Some days, the only thing we can control is what that pit looks like. Can you line it with pillows, blankets and Darjeeling tea, to make it manageable until you find the ladder out? On days where I find myself within the pit I try to focus on what positives I can i.e. find my pillows, and use what comfort there is to ride the wave. Here are a few of my reflections from my recent pit time about my things to be grateful for, even on bad days in case anyone else is finding it hard right now.
Allows people to show you who they are
I like to think that I approach everyone with the same baseline attitude of trust and optimism. There have been a few times in my career where this may have been an approach that ended up costing me, either emotionally or professionally. I’ve made an active decision that this is how I want to continue however, as I don’t want to be someone who is forced into a cynical existence. I want to continue to think the best of everyone and their intentions.
If I then get caught out because of this ‘glass is half full’ approach I think there are still positives, even if it can come with a cost. It may not always feel like it but knowing who people are is a gift. Seeing the person behind the mask enables you to know what really motivates their behaviour, which only makes you more empowered to interact with them in the future. In this one, reality, no matter how painful, is better than existing in your previous delusion. That said, someone told me once ‘when someone shows us they are believe them the first time’. So I now try to face up to my new reality on first exposure rather than getting stuck in a loop of second chances.
Aids with learning more about who you are
When your back is against the wall, when resources are limited or you are in a place where every interaction feels like a battle, it’s tiring, it’s draining and boy is it depressing. Part of survival in these circumstances is choosing your battles, and often doing a lot of thinking about how to manage yourself within that space. If you’re like me, there will also be a lot of questioning about how you ended up in that difficult spot. All of this can feel a bit like self flagellation in the moment, but it actually fulfils an important purpose, and it’s not just about survival. All of this strategising and reflection is an essential part of learning.
The learning, for me, is always about which decisions did I make that led me to this place, and how can I make better choices and see red flags when I have previously missed them. When making decisions about which battles to go into, what do those choices say about my priorities and the things I value? How can I use this self knowledge better? The big one though, is also what was/is my role in where I’ve found myself. The ugly and oft unwanted truth is that I have always played a role, so where was I the protagonist is the piece? Where is my learning about how to be better? A better person? A better colleague? A better scientist? Learning is a gift and we should take it where we can find it.
Motivates you to channel creativity
You may not be able to control the external forces that feel like they are whipping your existence into a hurricane, but you can control some of your responses to them. Now, I’m an emotional person, and in my hurricane I often feel like Dorothy in her house as it’s flying to Oz. For me, I need to find a way to ground myself and my thinking. I need an outlet and something that I can focus on to stop my mind from running wild. During these times I have so many thoughts but also moments of inspiration.
If I were a more creative person I suspect I would paint or write poetry. It will surprise none of you though to find that instead I tend to list possible future blog titles based around what I’m processing. If a particular ideas seizes me I will just sit and write the whole thing but often it’s about capturing the moment in the form of titles. I know that 2024 and 2025 have been hard times by the fact that I have over 300 blogs in some level of draft. Some of those will get collated, some of them will go nowhere, and some of them will keep me busy writing for the next several years. Looking back on these titles shows me that positive things can come out of difficult times, and helps me process where I’ve been, where I am now, and where I’d like to get to.
Provides you with moments to practice responses
It’s not just practical skills where practice makes perfect, it’s also valid for our coping responses and communication skills. This can be anything from saying no or setting boundaries, to skills that help you manage emotional overwhelm or anxiety. No one wants to find themselves in difficult times or managing difficult relationships, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who hasn’t gone through periods of challenge in their lives, so the sooner we get better at some of these responses the better we will manage when the bad times hit.
That said, you don’t want to be doing the self reflection or learning needed to identify what responses might help you when you are in the midst of things. It’s probably best to do your thinking in calmer times, and use the moments of trouble to practice applying them. I don’t want anyone to have enough of these moments to excel at the application piece, but the reality is you will hit difficult times and so having them as part of your toolbox can only help.
Helps you learn who your trusted friends are
I have a small number, and I mean below 10, of people in my life I trust with all of me. The people I trust to give me the difficult truth and help me through managing my response. The people I know who are always there to support and don’t have an agenda, or want anything from me for being in my life. When I was younger, like many of us, I thought it was nice to be popular, to have a long list of people I thought of as friends. It’s taken me time to realise that I have friends, and then I have the people I can call at the darkest and worst times in my life who would catch a flight to wherever I was and just give me a hug if that was what I needed. The people who would answer the phone if I needed them to at 3am and just listen to me cry it out. I am so grateful for these people, but you often only work out who’s who during the dark times.
Gives you an opportunity to review priorities
It is very easy to get into a vibe and just carry on down a pathway that you set your mind to without ever taking the time to review. This is especially true for healthcare careers, where you decide in your early 20’s the pathway of professional and educational development you will follow for the next 20 years. As you are going through difficult times and learning who you are however, it is also a good time to decide whether this is what you want any more? Is it worth the challenge? Is it worth the fight? Is it worth the energy you are putting in to keep going? Every time I’ve been through this exercise the answer has come back yes to the general sense of direction. I have come to a different conclusion about different components of the whole though. I’ve quit committees and other commitments, where the answer has come back as no. All to enable me to put more time and energy into the things have come back as yes. Not everything works at every phase, and so bad times give you an opportunity to drop those things that no longer serve your inner purpose.
Makes you focus on what is important
Dropping things leads me onto my next thought. Once you have reviewed yourself and your priorities the next question I ask myself is ‘what do I need to survive this?’. What are the important keystones of your life that you can focus on in order to ride out what is going on. Sometimes what you need are big things and big changes. Sometimes the thing you need is just something that will get you through the moment of struggle. For example, there are days where what I need more than anything in the world is to lie on my sofa with the lights out, the patios doors open, and to just listen and watch while the rain pours. It’s been something that calms my soul since childhood, where I would gather a duvet and sit on a swing wrapped up and warm while the rain fell all around me. It depends on the situation and the moment.
My responses to the hard moments have a tendency, in general, to be more insular. Some people, in these difficult circumstances, become extraverted and focus on spending time with people, be it for distraction or support. I tend to want to reduce my exposure to the outside world and outside stimulus, and retreat to my safe space, being at home in my castle with Mr Girlymicro. I want to pull up the drawbridge and immerse myself in things that will distract my mind, like movies and games, or calm my soul, until I’m forced to re-engage with the outside. There’s a lot to be said for understanding yourself enough to know what aids you when the world feels like it is crumbling around you. These moments can remind you of what you value, and the self care that you perhaps should have been doing more of.
Aids in future planning
I talked earlier about how being conscious of the decisions and things you prioritise during hard times in order to learn more about yourself, but I think it also goes beyond that. Bad times can provide moments where you can thoroughly review your life and start to refresh your thinking about who and where you want to be when you come out the other side. When the world is so shaken you lose your centre, it’s an opportunity to find a new balance that will enable you to strike out in a new direction when the clouds do eventually clear.
I often struggle to live in the moment. Even more so when I don’t like the moment that I am in. In order to escape the reality of where I’m at I will play with dreaming of different futures, like some people imagine outfits I imagine where I could be. If I find one that speaks to me I think ‘what do I need to find my route forward?’ ‘What could lead me there?’ Obviously a lot of this is just release via dreaming, but sometimes things stick and it can change how I plan my next steps. This is how I decided on writing a pathology murder mystery series when I retire, and how I’m even taking steps now to prepare for that aspiration as I pootle along in my everyday life. Using this method to review and map your ambitions can be a helpful use of your time, not just an escape.
Reminds you of what you are grateful for
As dear Taylor says ‘If you never bleed you’re never gonna grow.’ Growth is hard and sometimes unwelcome, but if we want to be better it is inevitably something that needs to happen. That said, we need something to get us through, and if I had to sum it up, that thing is gratitude. It’s remembering through the maelstrom who we are and what we value. Different people are grateful for different things but, for me, in terms of the big stuff, it always comes down to family. My family by blood, and my chosen family. Both of whom will be with me no matter what.
As for the smaller and everyday, during the pandemic friends of mine went out of their way to send me little gifts. A teacup to have my favourite tea in. A bottle of gin or champagne so I could enjoy what little down time I got. Many of those items sit on my dresser in the kitchen and remind me to be grateful. It’s often not the large gestures that stay with us, but the small things that remind us we are in peoples thoughts. The moments that remind us that we are seen by others, so we don’t succumb to feeling invisible in our gloom. Whatever you are grateful for though, make sure you pay it forward when you can, so your things can sit in someone else’s kitchen and remind them they matter.
Helps make you ready for what comes next
I wanted to finish with a reminder that getting through the hard times prepares us for the future. If you take on the learning, about yourself and others, you will walk out of that storm a better, more prepared person than when you entered it. There will be a future that will be brighter because of the darkness you’ve lived through it. That doesn’t make what you are experiencing right now better, it doesn’t make it fair, but sadly life is like that. What it enables you to end up being is a more defined version of yourself. A person who knows who you are and what you want. Hopefully a person who is able to go after those things. It can also help you to be a person who now knows what you don’t want, and what you are prepared to let go of carrying in order to improve your life. That too is a different kind of bonus.
When I’m deep in the darkness I tell myself if I can find my ‘second star to the right, and just keep on till morning’ I too will find my way out of the storm and end up where I want to be.
Being present on social media or even listening to the news right now can be hard and take me into a pretty dark head space. It’s easy to write negative posts as a result of this head space and to give energy to the people or situations that make life challenging, or who make us feel badly about ourselves. Those people get to spend enough free time in my mind, however, without me giving them more air time or more of my energy than they already have. So, in the spirit of active rebellion, let’s turn the world around and talk about the people who do deserve the energy and recognition. The ones who give liberally, support unconditionally, and act as the cheer leaders that we all need in our daily lives to just get through the week. Let’s focus on the good rather than being drawn into the dark.
Thank you to the people who catch us when we spiral
We all know that I have a strong tendency to spiral, especially linked to event triggered anxiety. I’ve written about it before. I wanted to take a moment to thank those people out there who recognise and actually help flag to me when I’m spiralling, as sometimes it can take me some time to even notice the deterioration in my thinking. Just recognising that you have fallen into that head space can be challenging, but recognition is the first step in managing and exiting the spiral.
The second reason having ‘spiral friends’ is super helpful is that I have a very very small list of friends who I can call (and they can call me) and say ‘I’m in a spiral’. We then support each other by talking through the source of the anxiety, the validity of the anxiety, and if there are any actions that are valid/required. People who take time out to talk through and validate responses when needed and dispel irrational thinking as required, give the greatest gift in terms of time and support.
To the people who listen to the repetitive statements until we’ve worked through our process
I not only have a tendency to spiral, but to sometimes get stuck in my thinking. When I’m fixated on something, I can be one of the most annoying people in the world to be around. Becoming hyper focussed is one of my greatest gifts, as it means that I can just sit down and write 5000 words or focus for hours at a time. It’s also one of my greatest curses, as when that fixation falls onto something that I have no control over or is more of an emotional block, it can be really challenging to stop that focus becoming an unhelpful fixation.
When I fixate on something I just can’t let it go. I have to process my way through it. Sadly for those around me that processing tends to take the form of a very repetitive conversation cycle, whilst I try to talk my way through the weeds I have gotten caught up by. This means, for Mr and mummy Girlymicro, and my besties, they get stuck also having to have these conversations with me. On repeat. I do eventually get to the point where I come out the other end, but I know it would be easier for everyone around me if I could just put it in a box and move on without the thorough exploration this process requires. So thank you for your patience and generosity with your time, I know you all have other things to do and I owe you a lot of champagne in return.
To those who love us, not grudgingly, but because they truly accept our imperfections
Having just read the last two paragraphs it should come as no shock at all that I am far from perfect. I annoy myself sometimes, let alone anyone else. The thing is, I have some people in my world that truly love me. They don’t love me despite my flaws. They love me because of them. They love all I am, despite how challenging that person can be. Knowing that is the most empowering thing I can wish for someone. It makes me feel safe enough to express and face my fears. It empowers me to share my failures, challenges and learning, through things like this blog. It is my greatest hope for all of you that you also find your people who make you feel this way, whether they are your family by blood or by choice. These people enable us to be the best versions of ourselves, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Shout out to those who truly embrace difference as a positive
Humanity is tribal. Most primates are. That means that we can have a tendency to like people who act like us and hold similar values. The thing is, our diversity and difference is what makes us stronger, and should be something that is embraced rather than suffered. As someone who holds a rather weird and wonderful mind, that may not process and see the world in the same way as others, I sometimes really feel how I am seen at ‘other’. I often just don’t fit in and, even more than that, I frequently want to walk a path that is not valued or trodden by others. There are people out there, who rather than being baffled or thrown by this approach, fully embrace it and what this difference offers. Instead of trying to make me fit into a box that doesn’t feel comfortable, they support and encourage the risk taking that is required to walk my own path. They do not find my difference a challenge or a threat, but an inspiration and a positive trait. They see value in me as me, and that is not so common. These people are the ones that have the ability to change the world by expanding acceptance and re-defining normal. We need to find them, honour them and celebrate their vision.
Thank you to those who remind of our strengths rather than focusing on our flaws
Part of learning and growing as an individual is having the self reflection to understand our flaws as well as our strengths. It’s easy to lose perspective, as our area of change is often linked to the things we want to fix, to the extent that out flaws loom large and we forget about the strength side of the equation. Many of us are perfectionists who struggle to come to terms with the fact that we are, and always will be, a work in progress. It is also easy, therefore, to lose sight of how far we’ve come and to just see how far we have yet to go. So, this one is a shout out to the people who help us re-focus, and bring back into perspective all that is positive about ourselves. The ones who help us bench mark that, actually, we’re doing OK.
To those people who will hold us while we cry it out
I wear my heart on my sleeve, I always have. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt judged for this and when I’ve received comments such as ‘you’re too emotional to be a leader’ or other judgements that indicate you cannot be emotionally expressive and be good at your job. Comments that indicate empathy or emotional intelligence may actually be a risk rather than something to be developed. For a long time this meant that I tried not to fully engage or bring that part of myself to my working life, to try to be more remote and not express how I was feeling. Now, I’m not saying we should scream and shout, but I do think that I am a rounded individual who is not a robot, and neither are the people I work with. Therefore, to be my authentic self I need to acknowledge that I come with feelings, beliefs and biases, which need to be noted and managed, but also make me a better human being if handled appropriately.
Outside of work especially, I’m such a crier. I weep at movies, I cry with both sadness and joy, and don’t get me started on my behaviour at weddings. I am so grateful to have friends and family who allow me to safely experience all the peaks and troughs of these emotions, and know that a box of tissues or three may be required if we are going to Les Misérables.
I am beyond grateful to those who give us courage to be the true versions of ourselves
Speaking of my emotional side brings me onto authenticity. When I started my job I wouldn’t talk about being a gamer. I wouldn’t talk about movies, or other things that interested me, as people would comment ‘geek’ and roll their eyes. Over the years since I’ve realised how important it is to fully show up, and to bring my whole self to spaces, especially when in a leadership role. If I don’t lead the way, how can I expect others to. It’s not always easy however. Sometimes the comments cut deeper when they are made at our authentic selves rather than at a protective shell. It can be easier for others to try and bring us down when we offer so much of ourselves as a target. There are definitely times when I just want to retreat into my shell and take the easy road.
Even when writing these blog posts, there are times when it would be easier to hide from some of the challenges, especially when there are comments made linked to my choices. I stand by those choices however, I stand by sharing the highs and the lows, and by showing my flaws as well as my strengths. It takes courage some days. Some days more than I have available. So I want to say how grateful I am to those of you who lend me courage on days when I lack it. I look back on the many of the positive comments on this blog when I start to doubt myself, and use them to give me clarity and strength to move forward when it might be easier not to.
No matter how hard it gets, if you can find these people in your life it’s worth fighting for
It took me a long time to feel (mostly) comfortable in my own skin, and so much of that progress has been due to me finding the people in my life who told me that it was OK to be me. I’m fortunate to have a great family by blood, but I also have key members who are my family by choice. No matter where you find them, treasure them. In these difficult times, when the world can feel like you could be swallowed by quick sand any second, use them to anchor you. Use them to reflect. Ask, will this matter in 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months or 6 years? Use them to help gain the perspective you need to pull yourself up and get out there to fight the good fight and stand up for what’s right. Just don’t forget to also thank them for the amazing role they have in your world and pay it forward so you can be that same person for others. The world is always darkest before the dawn, so lets get through this time together.
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 weekend I’m off to Torquay for the Agatha Christie Spring Literary Festival. It will involve talks, a statue unveiling and even a ball! Some of you will know that I’m a massive Agatha Christie fan and love a good murder mystery. It’s part of the reason my ambition for when I retire is to finally have time to write some of the pathology murder mysteries that I have drafted out. I’m planning a three book series called The Murder Manuals. Anyway, that’s some way off but I still love to indulge in a bit of Agatha joy.
Whilst thinking about it this weekend, when I should have really been packing instead, it occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons that I love my job so much is because, in many ways, working in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) is like working to solve real life mysteries and challenges on a daily basis. You come into work every day not really knowing what the future will hold and spend your days trying to uncover who the criminals (microorganisms) are and how to prevent future ‘crimes’, in the form of infections. This feels even more true having recently posted about how a forensic science lecture I went to looked at solving crimes. So, whilst my head is all linked to the detective process (I suspect I’m more Miss Marple than Hercule Poirot, although really I’d love Mr Girlymicro and I to be Tommy and Tuppence) I thought I would write about why I believe IPC professionals make the best healthcare detectives.
Beginning at the end
Like most good crime dramas, we in IPC, often make our entrance towards the end of a story when we things have already happened. We then have to work backwards to understand what’s happened as well as working forward to prevent any future risk (‘crimes’). Now, the point we get involved can range a bit. Just like in detective dramas, if the crime is obvious the police get involved early. Sometimes however, Miss Marple suspects a crime has occurred (think Sleeping Murder) but everyone else can be slow to get onboard.
In the world of IPC sometimes there are very clear events that need to be looked into. An outbreak for instance is traditionally described as 2 cases linked in person, place and time, or a single case of a significant infection, such as Ebola. This works pretty well most of the time but there are circumstances where using this definition can mean it takes you longer to identify an outbreak, or ‘crime’, has occurred. An example of this is when outbreaks are linked to an intermediate environmental source. This means that you may have low level numbers of cases which don’t appear to be linked in time, or even person, but are just linked to location. I’ve written about the importance of environmental IPC before, but this is one of the reasons it can be particularly tricky.
Need to understand the rules
In every detective story there are rules. If you’re in a Christie novel there will be a denouement, if you’re watching Columbo you will always see the murder at the start, and if the murderer is a female she will always be the person Morse tries to flirt with badly at least once. Infection Prevention and Control is no different. There are unwritten rules that you need to learn and which will help guide you on your way. Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci outbreaks will often have an environmental component. Norovirus outbreaks within staff often have a secret staff member who vomited in the toilet and told nobody. Pseudomonas aeruginosa outbreaks make people ask ‘have you checked your water?’ All of these things give you a way to start investigating and a set of questions to begin with.
Now, here comes the word of warning. Just like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd broke the rules, so do bacteria and other outbreak causes not always behave the way they are supposed to. Just like any good police drama with a rebellious detective, you need to know the rules but also know when to ignore them. Know when to switch tack and think that your MRSA outbreak may actually be linked to your ventilation system, not direct hand to patient transmission. Be neutral enough when looking at your data to not ignore the clues that are there. Red herrings will be present and distract you, so know when to call a fish a fish.
Start broad and narrow down
One of the best ways, with any investigation, is to start broad and narrow down. This enables you to avoid diving down rabbit holes and missing other pathways that should be investigated. Very rarely can you turn up to a country house murder and exclude most of those present, and as Hercule Poirot famously states “it is always wise to suspect everybody”, and the same is true with IPC investigations.
Ask yourself, why do I think that there’s something happening? How do I know that cases occurring at the same time are actually linked? How are my surveillance systems set up to support identification of low levels of cases over prolonged periods? How sure am I then that a ‘crime’ has actually been committed? Once the body as been found, in terms of looking for sources, where do I get my information from? Do I consider just other patients, or patients and families, or patients, families and the environment, or even patients, families, environment and staff. This, all before you even start to consider how different organisms behave in different types of patients. In a country house murder you need to consider those above stairs as well as those below, and in stories like the A.B.C. Murders, you even need to consider those who came and rang your doorbell.
There are so many moving parts within healthcare and we need to ensure that we are capturing as much of that landscape as possible when we start our investigations. Starting broad supports this, but you also then need to know the key moments to start excluding options so that you can eventually get to the depth needed to support interventions and change. Eventually you have to have the scene where you commit and name the murderer. Within IPC, events such as outbreak meetings can really help with this, as unlike our favourite detectives, we can’t keep all the information to ourselves right to the very end. These meetings bring people together to both help gathering information but also to decide on how to focus next steps.
A plethora of unreliable witnesses
In A Murder is AnnouncedMiss Marple states, ‘Please don’t be too prejudiced against the poor thing because she’s a liar. I do really believe that, like so many liars, there is a real substratum of truth behind her lies’. One of the things that is often quite difficult to pin down during IPC investigations is….what is the truth? Truth is often seen as definitive but in reality truth relates back to the lens through which the individual sees the world. For instance, if you asked me what I was doing at 7am last Wednesday I wouldn’t lie, but I would have to offer some form supposition as I can’t actually remember precisely. The other complication is that those directly involved may be even less able to recall their own roles. If I’m sick in hospital days can merge into one and I’m focussed on my physical reality rather than taking in my environment. This is all before we take into consideration the fact that we may be providing sedatives and other medications that could impact recall. Would I remember that one of my visitors mentioned my niece had diarrhoea……..probably not.
Within IPC investigations no one is likely to remember every physical action, which is why audit can be a helpful addition, in order to have an external person capture trends. In other scenarios the actual witnesses to the event can’t speak, for instance ventilation gauges that may have fluctuated or alarmed (is that a voice?) to an event that no one wrote down or reported. This is especially challenging when you are trying to get to the bottom of grumbling outbreaks that have been going for some time, but also is a particular challenge linked to infections with organisms that may not become apparent for months, such as some surgical site infections or infections with pathogens like Aspergillus. Memory can make individuals particularly poor witnesses in these scenarios and good record keeping and notes are essential to support look back investigations (investigations where you are looking back to capture risks and event detail).
Need to know which tools to use
If you only interview half of the witnesses in your case, you’ll be lucky to get even half of the story, as it will all depend on which people hold the information. On some occasions you will luck onto all the answers with the first witness, but is this a risk you want to take? The same can be true in IPC investigations if you don’t think about the tools or sampling methods you want to access from your toolkit. Is your main focus on using bacterial culture? Do you have a method that will work even if the patient is on antibiotics? If you are looking for a viral cause, what method is best? PCR is not PCR is not PCR. You can look for RNA, or DNA, you can extract from different volumes and different types of samples. The pros and cons of all of which need to be considered. Putting together a sampling strategy in response to an investigation is like choosing the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle whilst knowing that you are not going to have all of the bits. You want to choose pieces that give you the best chance of accurately guessing what the picture is.
In IPC there are various pieces of documentation that will help with thinking in this area. Documents like the UK Standards for Microbiology Investigations (UK SMIs) can help guide thinking linked to which samples might be useful to take. UKHSA also has various documentation linked to outbreak investigation with specific organisms and interpretation criteria, such as measles, C auris, and TB. At the end of the day however, just like your detective walking into a murder scene, you will need to work out how to apply that guidance to what you see in front of you.
It’s all about the clues
Once you have investigated and questioned your witnesses then you need to be able to work out from your clues which pieces are useful and which are your red herrings and may lead you astray. Like all investigations the most important thing is to be methodical but you then need to make time to be able to think and reflect. Poirot famously once solved a case without leaving his front room, just by being able to sit and question those involved. I’m not saying that this is something we should try in terms of IPC, but I do think it holds some lessons for us about the power of thinking time. Especially when you are in the midst of an outbreak there is often a real drive to be seen to be doing something, responding to everything, and constantly doing more. After 20 odd years in micro/IPC I think I’m beginning to think that Poirot may have been onto something.
If you are constantly changing or adding in responses it can be really difficult, even if you reach resolution, to know which thing you did made the difference. Early on in an outbreak it can be easy to rush into making recommendations prior to having gathered all the information you need. It sometimes feels good to call an exposure meeting the minute you get the information that an event has happened. For instance, you may have days to respond in the case of something like a chickenpox (incubation period 8 – 21 days), before those patients become a risk to anyone else. Therefore waiting to call a meeting until you have gathered all the clues, until you know everyone’s immune status, levels of exposure etc, can mean that your meeting is so much more effective in managing any risk. Waiting until you have a decent action plan for where you might search for clues, i.e. sample, may mean you find the answer so much more quickly then having to go in for multiple attempts. Taking a breath and putting thought before action may mean you get to the final result so much faster. So utilise those Little Grey Cells!
Not everyone takes kindly to be investigated
IPC should not be about blame, but just like the house guests in a country house murder may not take kindly to a visit from Inspector Japp, some occupants of your ward may be less than happy to see IPC walking up to the nurses station. Although I talk about the similarities between IPC and detectives, we should not be feared and act like police, or worse than that judiciary. Often the reason why Jessica Fletcher gets further faster in finding the murder than the police at the scene is because she is seen as just another friendly visitor rather than someone looking to find fault. Her focus is on building and utilising relationships in order to gather information. She is often seen by the other witnesses involved as being part of their team, and the outputs of her investigations are often linked to co-production of outcomes by sharing information, rather than going it alone.
In general, as in many areas of working life, relationship building is key. You see Jessica all the time in Cabot Cove, not just when there’s been a murder. That means that by the time she finds the body she already knows most of the players and has built up relationship capital with those involved. This enables her to sometimes ask the challenging questions. I believe the same needs to be true for IPC. If clinical teams only see us when things go wrong, they are automatically going to be somewhat defensive. If they see and work with us when times are going well, as well as less well, they are more likely to feel we’re in it together with shared ownership. All of which means we may also get to the source that much faster when we need to.
Sometimes there’s a twist in the tail
There are a number of famous Agatha Christie stories where the murder victim turns out to not actually be dead, I won’t spoil them here. The same can be true for IPC cases. There are certain organisms, of which Adenovirus is my personal favourite, that can both cause primary infection and then go latent and reactivate later. Often this reactivation is linked to immune status, and of course many patients in hospital have immune systems that are doing less well. These present challenges as you can look like you have a cluster of cases but, due to the type of patient, they can all be independent findings that happen to cluster together. So, without the right investigations you can call ‘murder’ when actually there is no corpse. Being happy to hold your hands up and step down when you have new information is an important trait, but knowing to get the testing done to enable you to do so is even more so.
The other scenario that can happen is, as Sherlock Holmes famously said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth“. There will be things that have been done, behaviour that has occured, that you would never imagine or predict. Over the years I’ve found a lizard in a bathtub, olive oil used as skin care by parents, and all kinds of things in fridges and freezers, just as the tip of this iceberg. Things that out in the real world would probably not be a risk, but in the healthcare world can lead to all kinds of issues, none of which would be on my primary list of questions when trying to identify a source. The world continues to surprise me, and therefore in the world of IPC keeping enough of an open mind to to respond to the unexpected is essential.
It’s a team sport
Poirot has Hastings. Morse has Lewis. Sherlock has Watson. Tuppence has Tommy, and Jessica has most of the population of Cabot Cove. Solving crimes benefits from teamwork and IPC is no different. I’ve spoken about the importance of relationship building but doing IPC investigations well benefits from more than even that. One of the key ways these partnerships work is by creating the space where the discussion and reflection we’ve already talked about can happen. In healthcare, which is far from a contained setting with only a handful of key players, being part of a team can also provide vastly more eyes and insight into what happens in reality.
The Hawthorne effect is a type of human behaviour reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behaviour in response to their awareness of being observed
One of the reasons that it’s important to undertake a team response within IPC is that if I turn up, a stranger or less frequent visitor on the ward, then those on the unit may behave differently because I’m there. If you see IPC hanging around a sink, for instance, then you may suddenly focus way more on your hand hygiene efficacy then you would otherwise. If I go to speak to a family, they may say different things to me than they would to the bed space nurse they see everyday. In order to get the full picture I may not always be the right person to ask the questions. Being fully integrated, being seen as part of the team, or having relationships with people that are, can make all the difference in terms of the success of your activity. Everyone benefits from having a Hastings to send in to ask questions from time to time.
No greater satisfaction than being part of the denouement
I don’t know about you but I just love the moment that everyone gathers at the end of a Christie novel and detective starts the process of walking everyone through all of the different clues, red herrings, and witness statements. The moment when you discover if you’ve picked up on everything that was on offer to you, and even more than that, the anticipating of waiting to hear if you’ve put it all together in a way that a) works and was b) actually correct.
I feel the same way when I finally have that moment when I crack the case, when I find the source, or even just get to the point where I understand a tricky result. The hallelujah moment when you look down at the jigsaw pieces you have and you can finally see the full picture. It’s the reason that some of our favourite investigative successes live on for years in teaching and case studies. I will talk about the case of the Norovirus and Biscuit Tin to anyone who will listen even now. The settings may be different but every detective, whether in a novel or in healthcare, loves to regale others with their exploits. We just can’t help ourselves. My excuse is that sharing the learning helps is all. That said I’m off to attend a talk called ‘How to kill people for profit’. I’m assuming it will give me all the tips I need to be the next cozy murder success and maybe even weave in the odd IPC detective drama moment into the mix.
There’s been a bit of a delay posting this one, as it was supposed to come out a couple of weeks ago, but I ended up needing to take a bit of a well-being break. Healthcare Science week was a brilliant blur but full on and, for once, when I went on leave I decided that all work, yes even this blog, needed to be put on hold so I could have a complete break. I hope absence has made the heart grow all the fonder……
Now, onto the science
At the start of Healthcare Science week, my family and I, because they love me, went for a night out to experience a different type of science…..forensic science. I wanted to go to see ‘Walking into a Murder Scene: an evening with Simon Fowler‘ by First Forensic Events for 3 reasons:
The first is that I think it is really helpful to engage with science beyond your discipline for inspiration and ideas. In this case, I’m not a big true crime fan or anything like that, but I was interested in how they deal with technical challenges we both share, such as low volume detection of targets by PCR amplification from human blood, as this could help with sepsis detection in clinical settings.
The second is that I have a long-term plan to write some pathology murder mysteries, by long term, I mean it’s my retirement plan, and so I also thought making some science notes could be helpful as success is mostly in the preparation.
Finally, I try to engage with science outreach wherever I can, no matter what the topic. I wrote a blog here last year about aviation outreach at a massive airshow known as RIAT and what learning that triggered for me. I really believe in seeking out and engaging with these opportunities, firstly because they do a lot to inspire me as to what more I can do. Secondly, because why reinvent the wheel? Learn from others about what works well and how I could switch up what I do. Last and by no means least, if we don’t support these people and these events, they may cease to happen. Finances are tight everywhere, and outreach is increasingly seen as a ‘nice to have’. Numbers talk, and so taking some time out of my day to be there to support others talking science is the least I can do.
The event was the first ones from a group known as First Forensic Events and was, in many ways, a trial run. The house was packed, though, and there was an obvious interest from those attending to just find out more about a world that most do not have access to. It got me thinking and as a result I thought I would focus this blog on what I took away in terms of how we, as scientists and Infection Prevention and Control professionals, could do more in terms of reaching out to a different audience and shedding some light on what we do to lift the veil in a similar way. I often think we don’t talk enough about the fascinating aspects of what it is we do for a living and this event made me realise that we are in position to share that with others and there are people out there who may want to learn more.
Location location location
The first thing I want to talk about is location. This event took place at the Royal Gunpowder Mills, which was objectively brilliant. One, it is not a place that is open that much to access, and so to be able to attend for an event already felt special. Two, it’s a place that’s interesting and quirky, and so even if people aren’t leaving and talking about how great your content is, they are likely to still be talking about what an interesting night they have had. I get pushed all the time to have events in cheaper and less interesting spaces because the costs need to be justified. The truth is, as much as we may dismiss them, locations can make or break events. Therefore, investing in them makes complete sense to me.
One of the reasons that location choice is so important is that it gives you the opportunity to really demonstrate that you have thought about the comfort and experience of your audience. Are there drinks available? What about food? How will people find their way to seats etc? Attendees will focus better on the content if they are not distracted by feeling hungry or thirsty or trying to understand where they need to be. They are also more likely to linger and talk to each other, which is key to both creating a buzz about the event and to permit natural network creation which will encourage future support.
A clear sense of identity
All things tend to be easier or work better if you have a clear sense of identity or what you want to achieve. This works for everything from advertising events and getting people into the room, to how people respond to the event itself. It is therefore worth investing a lot of time in both thought and planning in order to get this right, before diving deep into the practicalities and details.
When we spoke after the session it was clear that Simon’s focus was linked to training. His unique selling point (USP) for the session was to demonstrate not only some of the interesting cases he’d been involved in but also why and how he got into the work he did. He was also very clear that, in the same way we always want to focus on the patient, he wanted to make his sessions about the victims. Simon started off his session by talking about his core values and where he came from, in his case it was that he wanted a military career but that life turned out somewhat differently. He was diagnosed with Perthe’s disease which meant he was no longer eligible for military service, and so he then had to re-focus and choose a different life path. He built the start of his session up around his personal journey into science.
If we were to do something similar for health I think the need to be clear about our USP holds true, and for me, the things that seemed to engage the audience most were a focus on clear story telling with outcomes to show your role and it impacts i.e. what did you do and how did it change things? The other thing that seemed to really fascinate those present was discussion about prioritisation, outcomes and decision making. How do you decide what to do, in what order? How do you make decisions and how did those choices impact the end result? I suppose I’m talking about making thought processes an object of active discussion and raising awareness, rather than maintaining mystery or focusing purely on events. The stuff someone can’t find out by reading up about something on the internet and can only be got from a more intimate discussion based setting.
Back to the fundamentals
Keeping to the basics and planning, lets talk set up. Location is important but so is the staging. Everything from what you are planning to wear, to props and the tech that you will use. Is your outfit comfortable and accessible? Are you going super smart/business, that could be seen as hierarchical? Will you go branded or display your geek like tendencies with, for instance, a CSI T-shirt? All options are fine but they need to fit with your USP. Who are you selling up on that stage? Choose an outfit that fits with deliberation rather than as an accident.
Making the staging visually interesting is useful, especially if people are sitting for a while before everything kicks off. Offering an intriguing set up means that people will engage before you even start, as well as allowing people to speculate what might happen later. Having props that you will use draws your audience in.
It is important at the planning stage to also be considering accessibility. Too many people believe they have a loud enough voice that they don’t need mics etc. That works for some people but there will be people in the audience who you don’t reach and who will find it a barrier to engagement. Mics also allow nuance in terms of being able to go both loud and quiet as needed, rather than focusing constantly on projection. The same with slides if you are using them. Will they be accessible to people who are colour blind? What level of text is appropriate? What fonts may permit engagement? Should you be image heavy? In the case of something linked to criminal cases or health, how much do you show? Gore, surgery, infection etc can be triggering, so consider what level may be needed/appropriate. If you are recording (pictures, video etc) think how this might impact your staging and movement and if it will change your lighting requirements.
During the show itself, when we attended, there were some technical issues as the laptop running the slides stopped working. I think this is everyones worst nightmare, but has also happened to us all at some point. It reinforced for me that if you are relying on tech as part of your staging, you always need to have a plan B about how you will handle things if something happens to that tech. How you will you pivot? Having a plan means that you will be less flustered and therefore impact the experience less for those attending.
Selling credibility
Credibility is everything, whether we realise it or not. Setting up and selling your credentials is an important thing to do both before the event and early on during the establishment phase. Why should we listen? What do you know? What’s your experience….really? There are multiple ways that you can both do this and embed it. Thinking about how you are going to both establish and sell your credibility is something we don’t often consider and may take for granted, but if you are trying to speak to new people, especially outside of your field, it is something to really think about.
One of the great ways that it was done at the First Forensic Event was that someone else whom people may be familiar with, in this case Donal Macintyre, introduced Simon linked to both the event and by covering his skills and expertise. We all use testimonials in every day life and this setting was no different. I’d heard of Macintyre Investigates but as someone who doesn’t engage with a lot of true crime work the name didn’t mean much. It did however mean something to most others there, and he also talked about the TV work and others things Simon had been involved with in order to try to establish wider credentials. This is no different really to someone reading out your bio at a conference, but re-pitched to make it useful to a different crowd, and still well worth doing.
The other thing that Simon did was to acknowledge the other members of his crew. This was important for two reasons. One, because we should acknowledge that we are not single person armies and the work and support provided by others. It makes you not only more approachable but also acknowledges the work undertaken by other people to get us to where we are. In this particular case however there was another important purpose in acknowledging the other people who were involved, and that was to enhance the credibility of the event itself. The other people involved in First Forensic Events are other forensic scientists and police detectives, which aid to further establish credibility by inclusion in networks and experience. If others are willing to add their names to your events then it also demonstrates their backing and investment in your undertaking.
A story in three acts
We’ve reached the nitty gritty. How will you actually structure your event to achieve your outcomes? What are you trying to achieve? Simon was clear that it wasn’t just about factual presentation, but about him and his journey as a scientist. I think that was a really good decision and something that many of us as scientists should consider when working up our presentations. We are not science in isolation from ourselves, and so bringing your full self to these events is bound to be more impactful, and also helps to engage your audience more. For this purpose the session was structured around stories, stories about self, stories about action, and stories about impact. This kind of story based structure enabled the audience to really engage as the human ability to engage with oral tradition goes back to us sitting around campfires and learning through listening to tales.
The first third was based around learning who Simon was, what drove him and how he got into his work as a scientist. Fundamentally this section is about building of rapport as well credential building. It also enables the audience to settle in and for an expectation setting phase to be undertaken. The second third was a practical session. This is where Simon demonstrated some practical aspects of what a bludgeoning event could cause in terms of blood splatter, and scene investigation. This enabled a change in pace and energy, which breaks things up for people as they will have been sitting for some time at this point and changes it from being a didactic slide presentation. It also means people go into the break with a level of introduction of what may be discussed in more detail post break and therefore your audience can choose how much information they are comfortable with, and gives an exit opportunity if needed. This gives detail without inclusion of people or actual harm, and therefore allows engagement without emotional risk. The final section, post interval, was based on actual cases, still rooted in technical discussion, which supports focus on facts rather than emotion. This type of structure supports engagement and gradual submersion rather than attempting to shock.
Speaking to the room
This brings us onto the audience. How do we speak in a way that allows the audience to truly engage. I’ve talked about structure but there are other things that can help. The first thing we can do is do some scene setting. Making sure at the start of the session that everyone know how the event is going to work and what the rules are. This includes some basic things like telling people that there will be an interval, what time it will be and how long it will run for, so everyone can make sure they know how long they’ll need to engage. In the case of this particular event it also included scene setting around what might be shown and discussed, making clear the level of imagery etc in order to reassure and expectation manage. It also included being very clear that it was completely OK for people to leave and return at any point, as people may be triggered by different things, different memories, in order to reduce distraction by discomfort or concern about whether removing yourself would be acceptable. It also included the fact that there would be a Q and A, and that Simon and his team would be available for questions both within the event and during the breaks.
As with any science event it is worth doing what you can to avoid exclusion of your audience by thinking about how you will use technical terms and being weary of abbreviations. Many of us use abbreviations without even thinking about it as part of our engagement (I used the term PCR earlier) as it is part of our language. Those in the audience are less likely to have the same shared language however, especially if you are reaching out to a new audience. Making sure you allow time to explain any technical terms you are going to utilise is a key thing to practice. When you think you have explained enough you are likely to need to explain even further. As someone who doesn’t work in law enforcement some of the terms and abbreviations used in this event didn’t mean anything to me. That didn’t really impact my understanding or get in the way of the outcomes however, but made me remember how healthcare is filled with exactly the same barriers to full understanding, and that I need to be more careful about how I talk about my job also.
One way to make sure that you get feedback on how to improve and make tweaks on things like language is by making sure that the first time you do anything you add plenty of cheer leaders/critical friends into your audience. These people can flag and help you improve for future events, as well as providing some reassurance and friendly faces in the room to help alleviate your anxiety.
Maintaining accessibility
I’ve talked about accessibility already in terms of supporting your audience to logistically engage, but now I’m talking about connection. How do we make sure that we allow participants to connect with us, feel engaged with us, and fully share in the event. There are some key ways that I think this can be done, although sometimes it can be scary. I think the key one for me is allowing yourself to show vulnerability. Sharing enough of yourself that others can start to see you as a person. This includes sharing things such as values and drivers, but also sharing failure and things that did not go so well. Allowing people to see you as a person and not just a role.
The other part of this is being open and able to laugh at yourself, and allowing others to join you in that moment. All of this can be really shown in less structured moments. Moments where you make yourself available to engage 1:1 in breaks etc. Also, in a more open way by including moments where audience members can fully participate in things like Q and A’s. I always find it helpful to set parameters for these. Being open about the fact that there is nothing off limits, especially with kids. So they can ask what my favourite colour, is or how much I earn, or what I find the hardest, without restricting them to the science. Setting boundaries and expectations in general means that everyone knows what the rules are. Can you use your phone? Can people take pictures? Can people leave? All of which enables people to focus on engagement rather than attempting to predict what’s in or out of scope.
Pitching your future
How does it end? You’ve made it through, you’ve shown your full self. Hopefully you’ve felt that the audience engaged. You’ve made it through the Q and A. What do you do now? You need to make sure that you provide another opportunity to engage in the future whilst everyone is still paying attention. This is the moment to link to other opportunities, but this means you need to have those other opportunities set up and ready to share. What I’m saying is, as much as it’s crucial to focus on the right now, to make a real success out of events like these you need to be able to provide the next thing. So making sure you’ve planned ahead and have something else to sign post to is a key stepping stone to success.
Even if you don’t have another event planned you need to make sure you are thinking about marketing. What is your social media? Do you have a web page? Where can people go to find out more, either about you or about your future planning? Making sure that you have these things set up so that people can continue the engagement that they’ve started means that this is less likely to be a one off and more something that will be a stepping stone to future engagement. Having shown who you are and having brought people into your world, the logical thing is to make sure you have a plan for showing people what’s next.
So much that links us
So after all that, what did I think of forensic science. When I go to any of these things, what always strikes me is that we have so much that links us. Whether we are acting as detectives in finding an infection or a criminal linked to a crime scene, we are actually following very similar thinking and processes. We even use some similar techniques. I walked away thinking that I had been involved in a super cool event, but also struck by how brilliant it would be to do something similar for healthcare, and whether there would be anyone out there interested in setting something up. I left, as I almost always do, with my mind on fire with ideas and inspiration, and I wish to do so much more than I currently do. It reminded me how much we need to put ourselves out there and be brave. More than that even, it reminded me of how much the work we do is fascinating, and how interesting it would probably be to those that have never traveled in our footsteps. Perhaps even more so after the pandemic. So step up and step out, your audience awaits you!
I’ve been finding myself in a bit of a hole recently where my first response to anything, and the first words out of my mouth, are always an instinctive ‘I’m sorry’. Whether I have done something wrong or not, whether someone is accusing me of something or not, I just can’t get the words ‘I’m sorry’ not to be the first ones that immediately leap to my lips. Now, owning when you need to apologise is a really important thing. The thing is, that there are a lot of consequences to unnecessary and anxious apologising that I don’t think we necessarily recognise. After all, what does it matter if we say sorry too much? No one is hurt by the words ‘I’m sorry’. Is that true though? After a particularly anxious weekend last week I spent some time thinking about how apologising too much can actually be a leadership issue, and what steps you can take to reduce the downsides if this is something you are impacted by, like me.
It can make you come across as weak
Leadership can be challenging at the best of times, but in a resource limited setting with competing pressures, it can feel more challenging than ever. Those you are leading need to feel secure in your direction of travel and protected in your leadership.
Despite authenticity being important, being an anxious apologiser can come over as weakness and something that can be exploited by others. It can come over as not owning your time, boundaries, responsibilities, or actions. Worse than that, it can also make those you lead feel more uncertain, depending on the context of the apology. Owning up to mistakes and proportionate apologies are great, inappropriate ones, very much less so.
Makes setting boundaries more challenging
One of the things that I am super aware of is that my anxious apologies make boundary setting less easy. I am allowed to take time off sick or to be on holiday, I should not feel the need to apologise for it. Doing so makes others feel less able to also take the time they are owed. I am an emotional person. I wear my heart on my sleeve. In many ways, I believe that makes me a better leader. I, therefore, need to stop apologising for trying to be myself rather than attempting to fit some predetermined mould. If I don’t feel I can be authentic, it makes me a lesser leader and means others will also feel like they need to hide who they are.
You may accept culpability even when you don’t
Another thing about anxious apologise is that your immediate response can end up making it look like you are taking responsibility for something which you actually aren’t. A recurrent example of this one, for me, is when someone takes action and ignores advice/guidance, and I end up apologising for not providing sufficient clarity. In reality, it was up to the individual to seek additional clarity if required, not for me to be psychic and try to predict their actions. Just one example of an easy trap to fall into.
It can make genuine apologies feel less authentic
This is a big one for me. If you apologise all the time, as an auto response, it can make those moments when you choose to do so consciously feel like it has less impact for the person receiving it. Making sure those moments where you need to own your actions and learning are undertaken with sufficient thoroughness helps, but avoiding using apologies as punctuation is a longer-term change.
You may end being annoying to be around
Speaking as someone who does this a lot, I hear from many of my friends just how annoying it is. A favourite quote of Mr Girlymicro to me when I get in a particular space where I constantly need to be told it’s OK is ‘stop apologising, it’s a sign of weakness’ from the film Little Miss Sunshine. It makes me laugh every time and reminds me of how much the required back and forth is an energy drain on everyone involved. Take a deep breath and step away from the spiral, and acknowledge the costs you are placing in others.
May make your leadership confusing
Another way that anxious apologies can make your leadership confusing it that they can work to actively derail trains of thought. They can end up de-railing conversations, so they become all about a single thing rather than the original focus of the discussion. They can make your communication less clear and end up meaning that key points are obscured, or worst of all, forgotten by all involved. As clear communication is a key foundation of good leadership, this is good for no one.
Conversations that are not about you can pivot
I had a moment last week when I got hit from out of the blue with an emotional response to a conversation. This meant that a conversation that should have been about me offering support, guidance, and clarity, became all about the people involved comforting me. This is a disastrous thing to have happen. My immediate response is then to apologise more for letting it occur, but this then drives the cycle. Stepping away from it. Knowing you should do better and reflecting with yourself why it occurred is the only real remedy you can offer.
So, how can we do things differently?
Acknowledging that this is not a healthy habit or coping strategy is a start, but what we actually do about it in order to do it less or limit the impacts on our leadership?
Listen to your frequency
One of the primary actions is to be aware of the frequency of your anxious apologies. For me, at least, this isn’t an always-on/always-off thing. It comes in waves depending on other things that are happening and my general levels of anxiety or confidence dips. Knowing when you are going through a bad patch enables you to focus some resource on reduction, especially in risky or high stakes moments. Doing the constant apologising at home may be annoying. Doing it in the wrong situation at work could have much bigger consequences.
Be aware, especially during high stakes moments
There are moments, for both you and your leadership, where being perceived as weak or accepting ownership when you don’t, can have significant impacts. In these moments it’s crucial to be aware of where your head is at and your tendency to undertake this behaviour. These high stakes moments tend to also be high risk moments, so if you apologise as a stress response, you are even more likely to fall into an apology during these encounters.
In order to help with this, one of the main things I try to do is just take a beat before I open my mouth. Those of you who know me probably know this isn’t my strongest skill. Mouth open, should be shut. At times like these, though, it is so important. That breath allows me to sense check my response and remove the work ‘sorry’ from my automatic vocabulary. It allows me a moment to try and re-phrase my immediate thoughts or dialogue to make it more in line with my core meaning. It helps me avoid throwing myself and others into an unnecessary bear pit.
Don’t let others take advantage
It is also worth remembering that it is not just you that notices this behaviour. In the past I had a colleague, who was perhaps not my biggest fan, who I realise in hind sight would almost set me up in scenarios to take advantage of my tendency to accept responsibility readily. If your apologies do come across as a sign of weakness, and you work in a high competition environment, then this is a risk. Taking time to understand how others respond to your anxiety trait (irritated, sympathetic, exploitative, etc) is an important part of learning how to manage your own behaviour. Know when to bite your tongue and stay silent despite all of your instincts telling you otherwise.
Try to embed change
One of the easiest ways (although still far from easy) to manage this tendency is to try to find other ways to respond. Ways that still allow you to feel you have responded but that are less likely to be interpreted as you taking ownership all the time. Embedding these changes consistently, even if you are going through a particularly bad spell, can make it easier. Language is a learnt response, and much of it is based on habit. Getting into a space where you only apologise consciously for things that actually require it is a habit worth gaining.
I’m still not good at this. I think it’s an area of constant improvement. I have found it is easier to try and embed this shift in written communication first, and then it comes a little easier with verbal reinforcement later. Just take it one conversation at a time and see what works best for you.
Find trusted friends
For me, one of the best ways I have to manage this is to find my people, my trusted friends. There are two main reasons for this. One, Mr Girlymicro loves me enough to cope with me apologising, me talking about apologising, and me agonising about whether I need to apologise, for the hours it sometimes takes to get me to work through what is going on, and to then move past it. I also have some key people in my life who I know I can text and be ‘this happened, do I need to worry’, and who I 100% trust in their response to guide my actions. The second area where I find these people really useful in my life is that they will flag to me, when I lack the self awareness to notice, when I’m starting to increase my anxious apologising, so that I can be more aware of my own emotional state and the impact it is having. Knowing that others have your back, and can support you, even when you are not aware that you need support, is a real gift in this life and if you have access to those people make sure you hear what they have to say.
Be OK with not always getting it right
You are not going to get this right all the time. There are times in my life when I don’t manage to get it right even most of the time. Treat yourself with the grace that you would give to others. Anxious apologising is driven by, guess what, anxiety. Don’t drive your anxiety further by diving deeper into the rabbit hole and stressing about things you can’t control. It happened. You may be able to fix it, you may not. Nothing is to be gained by stressing about it, and the best cure for some of that anxiety is to take action if you calmly decide there is an action to be taken. The irony of me writing these words is in no way lost on me, as I can never stop the resulting panic, that doesn’t mean that the logical part of my brain does not acknowledge that it is the right move however. Try choosing grace over guilt whenever possible, as you will be a better person as a result.
Invest your energy based on circumstance
Having acknowledged that you won’t get it right all the time, a key thing is to know when you MUST get it right, or when to invest energy in order to bring your best self. We’ve talked about being aware of your high risk moments, and if you only have a certain level of energy resource to invest, then this is where to choose to spend what you have. When I’m working through a significant anxious period I can’t keep it together at all times, I just don’t have that level of cognitive resource. I have to have my safe people who I can spend time with, so I have periods where I can just let myself be and work through how I’m feeling. I also tend to stay away from people or situations who I don’t need to interact with at that time and tend to make me feel less safe/triggered, in order to not fuel the situation I find myself in. No matter what is going on, trying to be self aware enough that you make good decisions to help yourself through is definitely worth the resource requirement.
Don’t forget to deal with the underlying drivers
At the end of the day, however, it’s important to remember that anxious apologising is a symptom and not the cause. It’s really easy to focus on the symptom that is taking up you energy and cognitive space, when really we need to be stepping back and seeing what is driving the current situation. In my case, it’s often when I’ve not recognised that my health is not great and anxiety is often secondary to flares, lack of sleep and generalised discomfort. That said, I am also of an age where being peri-menopausal is definitely a thing, and my hormones are definitely writing their own story right now, with little input from me. Whatever the reason, making sure that you try to understand what is driving you means that you can start to focus on the root cause of the problem, not just react to the moment, giving you both actionable intel and hopefully a way out of the way you are feeling. None of this stuff is easy, but know that you are not alone in managing it or finding a way forward. If you need one, I’m always happy to be your safe space.
This blog post is late, which seems to be a bit of a theme recently. The truth is there’s a lot going on, from a colleague passing away and auto immune flares, to mummy Girlymicro being about to re-locate. All of which have meant that I’ve been struggling to get out of bed and do the day job, let alone find the time and head space needed to get words down on this blog.
2024 was always going to be hard going. There is a lot of change. There is a whole heap of challenge. There is not enough time, people, or resource to make any of those things easier. The reality is that there is little I can do about any of these things. There is only one way, and that way is forward, but knowing that and getting there are not always the same thing. So today’s post is about how to just keep going when all you really want to do it stop.
Decide what is important
I had to cancel meetings last week as, to be honest, I was so unwell I could barely manage emails, let alone speak. It amazed me when push came to shove how many meetings I could cancel and it not have any catastrophic effect. Many of them could easily be moved by a week, and some others could just be straight out cancelled. The world did not end. It struck me then that I need to be so much better at curating my diary so that I don’t spend 8 hours a day in meetings, meaning that all my other work has to be done on evenings and weekends.
The other thing I’ve had to think quite hard about in recent months is what things am I doing because they are important to me and which things I’m doing because I’ve a) always done them, or b) they are important to other people and I’ve just passively agreed. You’d be amazed at how much a and b there is. My career has progressed at a fair amount of pace, and I have failed to do any of the spring cleaning that should probably come with that. The things I need and want to do now that I’m a professor are understandably different to what was required as an early career scientist, and yet I have carried on bringing all of that workload with me into my current post. It’s frankly unsustainable and so a re-evaluation of task list was much needed.
Become a quitter
All of which brings me to spring cleaning. I hate to break it to you, but if you are like me, you need to learn to quit. You need to quit regularly and firmly. What I mean by that is, in order to keep your sanity, you need to review the things you do and decide what purpose they still serve. I’ve failed to do this. I’ve failed to do this over a period of years. I suspect partly due to a failure to recognise that I have changed and my needs are different. Partly just because I failed to recognise that my needs were even part of the equation. I feel very strongly about giving back to my profession and the community, and so, in general, I haven’t really included myself in any evaluation. This is how I’ve ended up working every weekend and 14-hour days, and sadly, my body just can’t sustain it. My mind is writing checks my body cannot cash. I’ve had to quit things that I never thought I would quit, committees I’ve sat over for over a decade, just to keep my head above water. The thing is, quitting will open up that opportunity to someone else. Someone who will benefit more than I was and open me up to new opportunities when life calms down. I’m convincing myself that it is a win-win.
Confront your FOMO
I’m a fear of missing out (FOMO) addict. I’m terrified when I say no to anything that it might be the wrong decision. That it might impact my career, or my future. Partly, this is because I spent the first 13 years of my career on temporary contracts, and that lack of security means you are always needing to have multiple plans in order to stay employed and pay the bills. Partly, this is because I’m too greedy to choose a single interest and stick to it. I want to maintain interests in my clinical work, research, and education. You can’t do everything in all areas, however. I couldn’t do that when things were going well, let alone now. Now, I’m having to ask myself ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’. If I don’t go to that event, if I don’t manage that networking, if I don’t manage to post that blog, what’s the worst that can happen? Most of the time, the answer is nothing permanent or, more frequently, nothing at all. I may miss out on the odd opportunity, but at the moment, I’m having to turn down a lot of those anyway. So hard conversations are being had with my brain where I have to challenge both my FOMO and associated anxiety.
Try to live in the moment
One of the reasons that I think I experience FOMO so badly is because I’m always looking to the future. I always have a plan. It’s how I’ve managed to survive the uncertainty of the Healthcare Science progression pathway. It’s how I’ve managed to end up in my dream job, that didn’t really previously exist. The problem with this is that when you remove things and impact the ability to plan then my stress levels go through the roof. Uncertainty and a lack of control, or ability to impact can make everything feel overwhelming, leading to me spiralling. It also means that I struggle to feel peace or achievement in the moment. Right now though, I need to deliberately move from staring at the horizon to spending more time looking at my feet. Getting through each day, each moment, for what it is, be that good or bad. Knowing that the next moment will be different and I will deal with it as it arrives. Accepting that the future is uncertain and concentrating on the concrete of the now.
Accept failure
A wise Consultant once told me that the best advice he was given when he got his first post was to become comfortable with failure. I cannot express how true I find this statement. Right now, keeping on top of everything is quite literally impossible. There are not enough hours in the day, even if I was in a position to just push through and work 20 hours a day. Failure is, in fact, my only option. This is an important realisation as it empowers you to make decisions about where those failures are going to occur, rather than letting them happen naturally by living in denial. After all, not all failures are equal. Needing to write and request a review extension on a paper is not the same as missing a clinical action. Failing to get a blog out on a Friday, and instead getting it out on a Wednesday, is not the same as missing a board report deadline. It feels horrible. I reproach myself for not being able to be more efficient and do more, but I accept it because in acceptance I regain a modicum of control and ability to manage risk.
Try being kinder to yourself
The acceptance of failure and the internal disdain for the fact that this is where I’ve landed brings me to the fact that the self judgement is not a helpful additional load to bear. I hold myself to pretty high standards and the fact that I’m not meeting those is pretty difficult to process. I keep coming back to what I would expect of a member of my team or a friend if they were going through the same set of circumstances. I would never tell them to ‘buck up and get on with it’ which is the self-talk I use. I would tell them that’s it’s OK, that they will be OK. I would tell them to give themselves a break and to deal with the things directly in front of them and ask if there was anything I could do. I would have a judgement free conversation focusing on ways forward. Those are the conversations I’m trying to learn to have with myself. Followed by some honesty about what is actually achievable and what it is that I actually need in order to keep going.
Learn to ask for help
One of the things I would immediately ask someone else if my conversations were external, rather than internal, would be ‘what can I do to help?’. Well, I’m learning to ask for help. I’m learning to use the amazing support I have around me to get meetings sorted and to remind me of what I have going on. I’m trying to ask people to cover some of those meetings that don’t specifically need me. I’m asking for some task related help or taking it up when offered. I am not a one woman army, and I need to stop acting like I am. There is no shame in asking others for support.
Forgive yourself for bad days
When I’m in a bad space, I become more demonstrably emotional, my fuse is shorter, my bandwidth is smaller, and my memory becomes pretty poor. All of these can combine to impact my performance and handling of individual scenarios. All in all, I probably become just less efficient at a time when I need to do more and be more efficient than I normally am. The combo is not great. It means the frequency with which I walk away from a day feeling like I’ve messed up increases, just what you need when struggling. Some days are just bad, whether it’s all self perception or not. This is a key point though. A lot of this is my perception and me measuring myself against my mental benchmarks. I don’t even know how much others see it. So, I’m giving myself some self-talk about putting the bad days behind me. Trying to use the ‘living in the moment’ approach and reminding myself that each new day is just that, new. It’s a fresh chance to try and do it better than the day before, and if some days work out better than others, that’s OK. I am doing what I can, and that needs to be enough.
Acknowledge there may be no alternative
The reason I have to be more forgiving of myself is that there is no alternative or better way forward right now. It takes years to train staff. You can’t just pluck them off a shelf. The built environment and its challenges take months or years to fix. A period of tight deadlines is just that, a period of time, which needs to be got through. My grief at losing a valued colleague will stabilise. All things will pass. Until they do this, this is the reality, and everything needs to continue moving forward. Acceptance of this reality is the first step in finding a way to just get through it. We all have periods in our lives and careers where there is no ‘fixing it’. It’s just about getting through it. That’s the real world, and it’s OK.
Plan for a better future
I’ve talked about being a planner, and that one of the things I’ve needed to realise is that broadly planning doesn’t help me right now. The one area in which it still does however, is planning for when life returns to normal. Planning for what I will be able to use my annual leave for. Planning for what fun things Mr Girlymicro and I will do with mummy Girlymicro whilst she’s living with us. Planning for nice things when I have the mental space to enjoy them. Non work things that have nothing to do with pressure or deadlines. Engaging in frivolous daydreaming. When the moment becomes too much, I give my brain permission to dream of a better future. My nickname is Dream after all.
I’m painfully aware that this post is all about me rather than tips and tricks, which was the original intention. I guess it was the post I needed to write right now. I hope that despite the rather ‘me’ focus, it is still useful. I also hope that if there is anyone out there who is having a hard time right now, you will read this and feel less alone. I hope you will read this and know that’s it’s OK to have hard days. I hope that you will read this and know that good times are coming and that we just need to hang on in there. Finally, I hope that we remember, when those good times arrive, to shed our fears, stress and worries, and fully deep dive in and embrace them for all the joy they will bring. Until then, be kind to yourself and dream!
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.
Today, girlymicrobiologist.com hits a pretty big mile stone. Todays post is my 200th Girlymicro blog post! So far this year, Girlymicro has had ~8000 reads from more than 6000 users in 178 different countries. Those numbers kind of blow my mind. I know that in the scheme of things, it probably isn’t that many, but to me, it’s huge. Even so, looking at the stats page isn’t the thing that makes me want to continue. The thing that keeps me doing this week on week, despite being pretty exhausted and up to my neck in it clinically, is you.
You guys are everything, and I feel so lucky to feel like I have a real connection with those of you who give your time to read my, oft rambling, words. Every now and again, someone talks about how much they enjoy reading a post or how they have found the blog useful. Those are the comments that fuel me. They give the energy to write this on my super early commute instead of watching Bridgerton (I’m living for Penelope right now) or on my sofa after a long day. So, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for liking and subscribing. Thank you for your kind comments. Thank you for taking the time when you have so much going on in your lives. You fill my heart and keep me going in the dark times.
Now, Girlymicro is all about sharing, and so many of you are being asked to write blogs yourselves, for your Trusts, universities, professional bodies, or even deciding to start writing ones yourselves. Having now written a few, I thought it might be useful to share some of the things I think I’ve learnt in case any of it is helpful to you as you engage in your own communication journey.
Titles matter
When I first started writing this blog the main flow to the site I got was by Twitter, and mostly through followers where they was a relationship as they’d already chosen to connect. Sadly, as most of us know, Twitter is no longer what it once was, although I still post there. Now, the majority of my readership comes through google searches, rather than where I share. This means that using titles that represent the content of the blog posts is increasingly important, as are associated key words. It’s always been the case that you need to use a title that means that someone wants to read more, but that it is not just click bait and represents what is actually discussed. Now, in the world of increasing challenges for social media circulation, titles are even more important than they once were, as they need to come up when someone is searching the entire internet, not just your name.
Try to be consistent
This one is slightly ironic at the moment, as I’m struggling to post at the same time every week because of work load. The truth is though, that being consistent matters. Try to post at a similar time, so that readers know when to look out for your content, especially when there are 1000s of posts on each platform everyday and it’s easy to get missed. It is also worth trying to be consistent with how you write and what you write about. Building a readership is mostly about consistency, setting expectations and then making sure you deliver on them. It is far easier to lose readers than to find them, and so you have to respect the social contract you’ve made.
Don’t get too hung up on the details
One of the reasons I posted once and then didn’t post again for years was that I was so worried about whether I could do something that was ‘good enough’. I though that writing as a scientist meant that I needed to write blogs in the same way I would write journal articles, that I would need write heavily referenced blogs from a completely scientific perspective. What I realised is that I didn’t need to write like someone else, or to meet others expectations. I needed to write like me, and the best blog that I could write. It was never going to be perfect, because I’m not perfect. My blogs are snap shots in time, and if each one is not the ‘best thing ever’ or ‘super impactful’ that’s OK because they represent only a single moment and are no more or less than that.
You’ll develop your own style
I was putting together a new blog page yesterday where my posts are all listed by theme. This meant I had to go back through my posts, and there is definitely a change over time. I think this is OK, in fact it’s probably important. I’ve now written over 200,000 words on this blog, and I’d hope that I would have also grown and changed as a person in the 4 years I’ve been regularly posting. One of the big changes is that over this time I have become comfortable with doing this right here, i.e. blog writing. I have my own way of writing these blogs, of sharing my thoughts and experiences, which I would guess are probably fairly distinctly me. When I started I didn’t really know what that style was or what kind of content I would cover. There is a certain amount of discovering as you go along, no matter how much thought you have put into it ahead of time. I have learnt there is no point in trying to write like you are someone else, or to pretend to be anything other than who I am, and my writing style now supports that. It’s important therefore to give yourself space and permission to just try things out and see how they go in order to develop who you are as a writer.
Seek advice not limits
One of the reasons that the style of these blogs has changed somewhat, is that I used to obey the rules. When I started writing blogs, when you read around, the general rule was that blogs should be 500 – 900 words with three images or sub-headers. You’re reading this, and you may feel I should have stuck with those rules and be about to stop 🙂 The reality is that I no longer limit myself to what I ‘should’ be writing. There are a few reasons for this. The first one is that newer research shows that actually readers want to engage with longer content, to feel like they are reaping a reward for engaging. The other reason is, frankly, I tend to have quite a lot to say, and I’d rather follow a complete chain of thought than split individual posts into multiple blogs, in order to comply with someone else’s thoughts of how it should be done. My advice on this one therefore is – you do you!
Find a platform that works for you
Shock news, I am not super technical. Don’t get me wrong, I can use most windows programmes in a way that isn’t horrible, but I am never going to a) have time, or b) inclination, to learn to code in HTML to set up a blog page. Time is one of my biggest limiting factors, and so any time I have, I want to spend it writing not formatting/coding. One of the reasons I’ve been able to set up this blog is because I found a platform (WordPress) that works for me. It works for my skill level. It works for the way I think, so I find it intuitive. There are lots of different platforms out there, and the same one that works for me may not work for you. It’s hard to move once you’ve started posting, and so it’s worth spending some time doing your research before you get things set up, so that you are ready to go with something that works from the start.
Decide how much of yourself you want to share
I share quite a lot of myself through these blogs. I like to think I’m pretty honest about the good, the bad and the ugly. I also share about things that impact my loved ones, Mr Girlymicro and mummy Girlymicro, but always with their permission and consent. You don’t have to do this to write a blog though. There are plenty of amazing blogs out there that focus on science and science content, without having a focus on the author. How much you share when you write is really up to you. This is also likely to change over time. My early posts have less of me in them, but as we built trust (me and all you lovely readers) I felt like it was acceptable and helpful to share more. It is always worth just double checking with yourself that you are comfortable with the response you might get to that sharing, because not all of it will be positive. Be intentional about your decisions, as once it is out there in the wild on the internet it is no longer under your control.
Know what’s your unique selling point (USP)
One of the reasons I share so much of myself in these blogs is that I wanted to create a space and content that would be honest about what it is like to work as a scientist and to be a scientific leader. For me, that means that you have to share the lows with the highs. I’ve always been pretty isolated at work. No one has been in quite the same job as me. Often I am the only person from my professional background in the room. Mix that up with working as a clinical academic in a very male orientated space, it means that I haven’t always had a lot of people in similar circumstances to reach out to. That said, a lot of the experiences I’ve had have not been unique, and a lot of the lessons I’ve learnt are applicable to others. I very much wanted to create a safe space to explore all of these things in the hope that anyone interacting with this blog will know a little more about what a scientific life is like, and potentially feel less isolated in any challenges they are facing. These are my reasons and this is what I try to ground any content created in, to make sure it always aligns with these values and the associated rationale. No matter why you decide to start creating content, you need to understand your why and how your content will deliver on it, and attempt not to get drawn too far away from your core rationale.
Writing is not enough, you need to share
When I first started out, I thought that writing the content was going to me the main part of the work. The thing is, content without readers is an aspiration unfulfilled. You have to put in, probably, an equal amount of effort in order to share what it is that you’ve produced. You need to build networks that you can then use to share what you write. This takes time, especially because the social media platforms keep changing. It’s a chunk of work. I’ve been fortunate enough a few times to be asked to come and talk about this blog, and that is the ultimately reward. To be able to move from just putting content out there, to being able to directly interact with people about it, there is no better experience and I’m always so grateful for the opportunity. At the start however, it’s all about putting in the work so people at least see what you’ve made.
You will never have enough time
You will never have enough time. This is a basic fact. I’m on annual leave and this is the way I have carved out enough time to sort out some of the things that have been on my blog to do list for forever. I think there are 2 main things that I have learnt to accept as a result of this basic fact. One, I have to be realistic in my expectation setting, which I find challenging. There is no point in saying you will post every day if you are not going to be able to deliver that. Frequency doesn’t matter, numbers of pages or edits don’t matter, as long as they are achievable. Two, I have to find ways to maximise my use of time. I usually try and write blogs on my commute, which could otherwise be dead time. I’m not good at doing one thing at a time, and I have a husband who is usually pretty patient with me, and so I will often write on the sofa whilst watching movies or video games. You have to choose what matters to you, and choose how much you are prepared to allocate to it, and then make it work. It’s as simple as that. This blog matters to me, you matter to me, and therefore I make it work somehow.
Ideas are not the problem
When I started writing this blog I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough ideas, that I would struggle to find things to write about. This is my 200th post and as of today I have 261 posts in some stage of draft. Not all of them will make it to become full blogs, but trust me, ideas are not the problem. I find things inspire me all the time. I will see things that trigger thought processes on social media. I find experiences at work or with my students that make me think they deserve further exploration. All that even before you consider events, such as scientific conferences, where you are surrounded by inspiring science and people, that provide more ideas than you can reliably capture. I discovered early on that I would start new posts even if they just contained a title, in order to jog my memory. I also store memes and pictures, I current have 8GBs, so that I can add them into posts when I have ideas. Some of these will sit around for years, some will be so strong in my mind that they will get written immediately over whatever else I had planned to write that week. Some of the best posts are the ones you didn’t expect to write. So don’t worry about whether there is enough, just make sure you have a method to capture those fleeting thoughts, so that they can become more than that when the time is right.
Reach out to your community
I very much started writing this blog in order to build community and to raise awareness of, and support, the wonderful professional, clinical and scientific communities I am a part of. One of the things I’ve been really lucky with is the number of guest blogs that have been written for me. Everyone gets sick, or needs down time now and again. Guest blogs enable me to still be publishing content when I’m not in a position to produce it myself. It also enables this blog to better represent the community as a whole, so it isn’t just my voice. On occasion, I’ve also been lucky enough to share guest blogs that have been able to raise awareness of great pieces of work or particular issues, which is a special honour. No one works or functions in true isolation and being able to give back is so important. It is also really valuable to hear what readers and the community are interested in. Sometimes, writing blogs can feel like you are just sending things out into the void. Hearing back from the audience you are writing for can really make all the time and effort feel worth it, as well as giving you feedback in order to make it better. So take the time to reach out and ask the questions
Decide what success looks like
Success really does mean different things to different people at different times. When I started writing this blog I really was thrilled if 20 people read something I wrote. Time moves on and success criteria change as things develop. I still try to be kind to myself and mainly aim for growth year on year. In 2023 for instance I had ~14000 reads, this year after 5 months I already have over 8000. That level of growth feels pretty good. I’m also still hoping to turn this blog into a book in the next 12 months, but some of that will depend on clinical work load. The numbers are great, but if I’m honest, it’s the feedback that actually ticks my success boxes. It’s the people who come up to me, or message and comment, to say that they have found what I’ve done helpful. One comment is worth 1000 facts, despite the fact that, as a scientist, I should be numbers driven. You need to know enough about who you are to decide what success looks like for you, and use that as your benchmark to motivate you to carry on.
Know that things change
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that change is a fixture of life. Undertaking any project over a period of months, let alone years, means that things will change whilst it’s ongoing. I am not the same person I was in 2020, the things I want to and am comfortable to write about have also changed. The way I share my blogs has changed and so have my networks. All of these things are OK, in fact they are positively beneficial. It does mean that it important to not cling too tightly to anything, be that numbers, content, or structure. You can only do your best. You will write something one week that will land and have huge readership. You will write something else the next week and you’ll get less than 10 takers. A really good example is a blog I wrote in 2022 on the fact that you can’t please everyone. When it was published in 2022 it had 121 reads. In 2023 it had 27. In 2024, for a reason I don’t understand, it has 534 reads so far. I’m sure there is logic and structure behind some of these things, but I have yet to figure it out. The important thing is learn and improve where you can, but not to become too obsessed where you don’t have the information available to you.
Practice makes perfect
There is no such thing as perfection, all there is in learning. I think it’s probably clear that writing this blog is an exercise in continuous striving to do better, to be better, to serve my community better. I don’t think I will ever be ‘the best’ at anything, but I strive to do my best, and that is all I can do. You will never become a better writer if you don’t write. So my final advice is this, just try it. Do your research. Read blogs and the writing of people and sites that inspire you, but don’t try to become them. Always aim to be you, you are always going to be the best at that. By writing and seeing how people respond you will do it better the next time. By writing and finding what makes you feel good, or was easiest for you, you will develop your own style. By writing down ideas and things you see that spark concepts, then you will build a library that enables you to develop you USP. Just start, one word, one sentence at a time, and before you know it you too will be writing blog number 200!
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 woke up at 5 this morning, the alarm wasn’t set to go off until 6:15. I am desperately tired and in need of more sleep. Instead of allowing me this simple luxury my brain decided to a) run through an experimental protocol, b) draft a paper I need to write, and c) plan a conference presentation. Sadly, my body wasn’t in alignment with this and so none of it has been written down or recorded anywhere. I am therefore exhausted still and have no concrete outputs to balance it out. I’d like to state this was a one off, but it is in fact my life and daily existence.
People often ask me how I manage to ‘do’ so much. The sad fact is that I really don’t think I manage to ‘do’ very much at all. I’m always a chapter behind on my ‘to do’ list. That combined with the fact that I only manage to get as much done as I do because Mr Girlymicro keeps our lives together by making everything happen at home, means that I thought I’d write something that talks openly about what the reality of having a mind that just doesn’t stop looks like.
I only have 2 speeds
I think those people who think I achieve a lot only see me in ‘doing’ phase. Running around spinning multiple plates at the same time and being totally ‘eyes on the prize’ focused. The other side to this is that when this Duracell bunny phase is over, I become the sloth girl who inhabits the sofa and doesn’t contribute to house work or the want to leave the house. The challenge is that work generally gets the Duracell bunny which means there is very little left over for real life. Hence Mr Girlymicro deserving the husband of the year award 15 years running, and the fact that I need to find a way to split my energy better.
My mind can’t switch off
One of the reasons for the enormous to do list, is that although my body switches off, my mind really doesn’t. I would really love it if it did. Today is Easter Monday, it’s before 9am, and I would really love to be able to sit and chill out. Instead I’m writing this blog as my mind is so full of stuff that this is my equivalent of relaxing as it enables me to focus, and thus relax a little. I don’t know if this is how everyone lives? I really don’t. I have so many thoughts, I remember so many things I should have done, things I should be doing. My mind can make my life a less than relaxing existence. Lovely Mr Girlymicro has brought me some Lego for later though so that I can use it to help, as the process of doing something whilst watching a movie or listening to an audio book, is basically my relaxed happy place. It’s important to have a strategy when my head is spinning out of control.
I find it very uncomfortable to only do 1 thing at a time
This leads me onto another thing. I need to be doing at least 2 things at once to feel comfortable. I’m writing this blog whilst watching CSI on Netflix, later I’ll be putting together Lego whilst enjoying a movie, I even need an audio book to sleep. One of the reasons I’m so happy to have my little bathroom office is that I find it really challenging to work in silence and so it means I can have music or a book running as background audio. I really find it helps me focus. The advantage to this way of living life is that does it enable me to plan talks in my head whilst doing other things, or to plan a text book or blog outline whilst writing a policy. This adds to my ‘to do’ list but also helps keep my head above water when I’ve made too many commitments.
I’m physically lazy and don’t pull my weight
For all that my mind is active I am physically lazy. I always joke that I was born to lounge on a chaise lounge with a book in my hand surrounded by my library with someone to bring me Darjeeling on request. I know that I must be challenging to live with. I get so focused on things, that without adult supervision, I have a tendency to forget to eat or drink, one reason that I am much healthier when I work from home. When I work on-site I tend to come home in a ball of flames, exhausted by my working life and physically broken, and therefore contribute negligibly to doing any form of physical chores. I’m working on it, but saying that, whilst Mr Girlymicro is working upstairs here I am writing this blog instead of tidying the kitchen. I did say he deserves awards, and I am a work in progress.
My mind doesn’t let me rest
One of the other factors that contributes to my physical laziness is that I am so tired all the time. I rarely get a decent nights sleep. If I wake up between one and three to go to the bathroom, my brain kicks in as I’ve had just enough sleep. It’s then fully engaged, whilst my body remains sleepy, with things I should be doing or random thoughts. The same is true even if I get back to sleep, I rarely if ever manage to sleep to the alarm. I do all the tips that everyone talks about, I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, I make notes into this blog so get things out of my mind, but I find switching off really hard. Some of this is because I should probably just take some painkillers/antihistamines, to manage other things, but some of it is definitely the fact that my brain just doesn’t want to play normal.
I am a starter not a finisher
Another side effect of having a mind that is constantly full of ideas, is that it can be challenging to bring any of them to completion. I am very much a starter not a finisher. Finishing anything requires a lot of active effort, otherwise I have a tendency to get distracted by the next good idea that comes along. I think it’s one of the reasons that over the years I’ve become slightly obsessed about keeping my promises and deadlines if I’m given them, even if it means I work weekends and evenings, as I’m hyper aware of my natural tendency to drift. If I make a commitment I can be pretty over the top and harsh with myself about delivering on time. As a people pleaser, this has gotten me into trouble in the past due to over committing to too many things. There have been a lot of very late nights and lost weekends. These days I’m trying to not over commit, whilst using this particular fear of failure to ensure that I still finish things on occasion.
I find focusing on being in the moment incredibly challenging
I am aware that some people are able to really ‘be’ in the moment. When they achieve something, when they have successes, they are able to really be fully present in the moment and enjoy the depth of emotions that that presence achieves. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the moment, but my brain is always onto the next thing. I’m always planning and looking forward. In many ways this is a really useful trait, but it means that I’m pretty rubbish at stopping and smelling the roses. I think this is another contributor to why I find it so hard to relax, as even when I’m having a lovely time I’m planning for the next thing. When I’m on holiday, I find it hard not to be planning for how I need to address work when I get back. When I’m at work, it’s always about how to keep us moving forward, and what needs to happen next. I need to make more run for tea 🙂
I spend my day being reactive when I would love to be visionary
My tendency to plan is one of the reasons that I find the current state of the NHS and my role within it so stressful. I want to be planning how to make us better, but because we are still recovering from the pandemic, even if the outside world has moved on, I spend a lot of my time still in reaction mode. It’s one of the reasons that research is so very important to me. In that aspect of my role, as well as in education, I feel like I can be focused on how to make things better and move things forward, whereas that can be more challenging clinically. It is why I love and value the different aspects of my role, education, research and clinical, as they balance each other off for the different needs that I have personality wise. It’s why my role is perfect for me and I’m so grateful that I have been able to develop it the way I have.
I feel I should be doing so so much more
All of this leaves me with a continuous general underlying feeling that I should be doing so much more, that there is so much more to do, and that I need to be better. There’s a lot about this which is good, especially when I was training and it could be channeled into ticking off the necessary boxes. Frankly, it was also easier to work full force and recover when I was in my 20’s and 30’s. I don’t think I had the self awareness, or self reflection skills I have now to understand my drivers in the same way back then. I also don’t think I had the self forgiveness to handle my lack of perfection and therefore be open to change. Now, although looking in the mirror and seeing my flaws can be challenging, it also inspires me to be better and I try to treat myself with the kindness I would offer to others. All traits have a light side and a dark side. My brain means that I am more physically broken and can make the lives of those around me harder by not contributing as much as I should. It also enables me to create change and make the lives of others better. It has been the enabler and the driver to allow me to reach where I am today, and to do things like start this blog. Although peculiar, it is of more benefit than it is harm, and after 44 years in each others company, we have finally reached an en tant cordial, where we still strive for improvement but also live in acceptance of the reality of what the day to day looks like. So my advice, learn to love yourself for who you, whilst striving to be better.
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
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