BUMC Postdocs Blog

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

What is a postdoc supposed to do?

Research? Career development? Supervision? Job hunting?

Research whatever the PI wants? Develop your own project? Write papers? Read papers? Think outside the box? Finish old projects? Start new projects? Find collaborations? Do what you want?

Go to Seminars? Attend workshops? Network? Tweet? Join linkedIn? Researchgate? Lablife? Get an MBA online?

Supervise PhD students? Interns? Technicians? Develop their projects? Listen to their stories? Dry their tears after committee meetings? Give everybody advice and chocolate? Order things? Make the cleaning roster? Organize lab meetings?

Apply for jobs? Find your own funding? Apply for grants? For your PI? With your PI? By yourself? Apply for fellowships?

It is confusing to become a postdoc, all of a sudden you are alone and nobody cares about you; no committee to meet, no supervisor to please, no student office demanding money and to know when you graduate.

But now here we are: new challenges and new chances.

That’s what we want to write about on this blog.

There are many topics postdocs care about and we hope to cover some of them here. Since this is only the beginning we are very open to suggestions from all postdocs around BU. But here are some topics we will cover as soon as possible:

With science being the most important topic for postdocs in science, we will try to blog about generally interesting stories from across the spectrum of scientific research.

Postdocs are of an age where the prospect of family and children becomes increasingly real and the achievement of a good work/life balance becomes important, as well as topics such as parental leave and childcare.

Career advice comes in many different forms, career seminars from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, interesting links on linkedIn, and counseling with Lauren Celano, but hopefully also articles on this blog.

According to the national postdoc association, 60% of postdocs in the US are international. This adds another layer of complication to the already complicated challenge of finding your way to a happy and successful postdoc.

If you have any suggestions or comments, or want to contribute to the BU postdoc blog, please leave a comment or email (julianeh@bu.edu).