Editor’s Note: The weekend is here and you are either driving back home or planning to come back to the lab after finishing some chores. Does working over the weekend make your two workweeks appear as a 14-day week? Or does taking a break over the weekend makes you all-refreshed to resume the new week with all creativity guns blazing? In academic research parlance, the popular opinions traditionally expect you to work tirelessly until you achieve your elixir. In the modern world, there is a term called “burnout” which can throw your long term well-being into disarray and the repercussions can be felt long after you find your elixir. Venu Thatikonda pens his reflections on this topic for ClubSciWri. We hope your week gives you ample time for your family and for yourself. Stay unburnt and stay altruistic! –Abhinav Dey
Last week science community on twitter was discussing about working extra hours and weekends in research. The main conclusion of several conversations is to have a good “work-life balance!”, if not perfect. As a new graduate student, I have observed some of my colleagues saying “Success in science is about sacrificing”. Well, this is true in some cases but might not be applicable for the case “dedicating every waking hour doing science”. The following tweet from Dr. Terry McGlynn, an associate professor of biology at California state University Dominguez Hills perfectly explains the scenario
If you're a PhD student who thinks you're supposed to work evenings and weekends all the time to succeed, you're being gaslighted.
— Terry McGlynn (@hormiga) February 19, 2017
I used to spend my weekends in the lab when I started my PhD, there were several reasons for this. As I was new in the country, I didn’t have friends to hangout with. I like travelling but I needed to save some money in order make plans for two-day trips etc. Now, I made some friends and I often catch up with them on weekends. Nowadays, most of my weekends are filled with some semi-scientific activities.
However, I work some extra hours on many of the weekdays. Here are some of the reasons which I and most grad students explain themselves to convince
Know-it state
This is especially applicable for new grad students. The initial days of a grad student’s life are very confusing. Students need to feed a lot of information to the brain in order to get an overall idea of what’s happening in the field. Countless questions and a feeling of “in the middle of nowhere”. Along with this one needs to familiarise with the methods frequently used in the lab and develop the fundamental skill-set required for main thesis work.
In this process, working some extra hours on weekdays and saturdays feels fine.
Side-Project business state
Grad students often commit to do some small side-projects for co-authorship publications. Knowing how to handle and how much time to be dedicated to side projects is very crucial for a PhD student. Generally speaking, these tasks are very small but occasionally require long duration of time. It’s not unusual to have a feeling to complete them ASAP. I usually dedicate some time for these tasks after my working hours. Unlike me, there are students who manage to integrate this work into their usual working hours.
Insecure about future state
Experiments often fail, debugging scripts takes a lifetime. Dedicating a huge amount of time on a method and realizing it didn’t work well kicks you into the trap of thinking about the future. The failed experiment totally changes the picture we have about our future. In order to feel confident again and to have an attitude “I-am-not-giving-up”, some extra hours need to be burnt on those failed experiments and methods.
There is no consensus in research whether to work extra hours. For grad students doing science is more exciting (also mandatory) but having life outside the lab is equally important. Engaging in social service organizations, participating in meetup events will develop networking skills which are highly important for during and after-PhD life. Spending time with family is the best way to cope up with the whole week’s stress and to regain maximum energy for the next week, which abroad PhD students often miss. Reading novels, cycling, pubbing, cooking, travelling are few of many possible ways for a researcher staying abroad to look at the other side of the life.
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Author’s Bio: My name is Venu Thatikonda. I am a Computational Biology PhD student at German Cancer Research Center, Germany. I love to play with biological big data to infer the underlying meaning in the context of Brain cancer. Other than research, I am passionate about writing, public speaking, sketching and travelling.
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