I’ve been here at Wash U for over 6 months now and we submitted my first paper (from here) to Molecular Pharmacology this morning. Granted, there’s no guarantee they’ll publish it or anything (in which case we’ll just send it elsewhere), but the fact that I was able to pull together enough data for a journal article in the relatively short time I’ve been here, while also learning electrophysiology, is pretty good. The work we’re hoping to publish in Mol Pharm is what I’ll be presenting at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting this coming October in New Orleans (!!!!), so it’s kinda nice to know I’ve already got all the figures done: I’ll just have to arrange them on a poster-size sheet of paper and remind myself what I did almost a year earlier.
It was very helpful to hop onto a project we knew would pan out. At the time I started, I don’t think we intended to go as far with it as we have (my boss initially told me that I could have all the data done by the end of last year…HAH!), but it went in some interesting directions and lead to a stronger paper, in the end. I definitely learned quite a bit during the course of the research, though there’s still a ways to go before I would consider myself an “expert” in these techniques and concepts.
Honestly, I’m pretty pleased we got this paper out. My boss here is very focused on productivity, which is a good thing as I’d like to get a few papers out in my remaining time here. Once this one’s published, that’ll be three “first-authored” papers (i.e. your name is first on the list of authors, indicating that you did the bulk of the work and the writing) in total. I’d like at least one more, if not two, before I get out of here.
My plan is still to begin applying for teaching positions this Fall, preferably for liberal arts colleges in Missouri, Iowa or Southern Illinois. Having 3 papers complete is helpful, but having a good deal of data toward a fourth one would be even better. There’s something of a “quality vs quantity” game you play in this field, where it’s good to have your name on a bunch of papers (i.e. having a lengthy list of papers you’ve contributed to on your C.V. when you’re applying for a job), but at the same time, it’s arguably just as good to have your name first on fewer papers, making it clear what your contribution was to the work in question. I guess we’ll see which one’s more important in a few months.
Regardless, I haven’t posted much about how things are going in the lab, largely because there’s not much to tell. I’m learning more and more each week, I’ve presented data to the lab a few times, and I’m gaining more confidence that I’m not a complete idiot (though I still feel like it at times). This environment is definitely different from my experience at SLU and Iowa, though: a far more “Ivy League” mentality about productivity, the quality of other people’s science, and the need to get more funding in order to do high quality work. It certainly isn’t making me want to go into academic research as a career, but it’s nice to get to see it first-hand as I interact with other postdocs and students from around here.
So, now that this paper’s complete, I’m moving on to different techniques and different concepts. I think this new project is a bit more interesting to me, from a physiological perspective, but is by no means easier to study. In many ways, it’s addressing the kinds of things that other people have avoided because they’re such a pain to address, but we’re hoping the skills our lab has will give us an advantage that others may not have.
After all that work, though, I think it’s time for a three-day weekend. Or maybe a vacation.
Or maybe both. 🙂