Survival guide for your PhD, to be continued in infinity!!!
(It is a never ending subject)
After the previous post a few days ago on the subject – lets continue on this theme. And my subject for today is:
FLOW
Feel the word.
Taste it.
You will need it.
What is then flow? It’s hard to define… but anyone who’s felt it know it. And it is one of the things that keeps you going in science.
We always hear how important it is to put in the hours. To work long, to work late.
“A true PhD lives in their lab. They work day and night, weekend and not alike! “
We’ve all heard this phrase, or variations of it. No?
The thing is… I agree… but not for the obvious reason. Working 24/7 is generally not advisable. Even though for some time periods it is needed. One often overlooked aspect of working when no one else does, is it allows you to enter this flow state. I used to choose to work a lot on weekends. Until my need for a social life took over and I stopped. But having worked late, and on several weekends, this last few weeks; I’ve rediscovered the feeling of flow you can get these days. When you’re working alone, with no distractions – no one to interrupt and nothing to hold you back.
So let’s go back now to defining the word “flow”. I still can’t, but I’ll use some examples.
When you dance around in the lab (cause being alone allows you to listen to any music, as loud as you wish), smiling while pipeting PCR products* you know you’re in the flow-zone.
Also when you feel like you getting somewhere, even though maybe the data is not there yet, or the experiment is not finished yet. Then you’ve got flow…
Maybe I’m romanticizing this feeling of flow. There will be moments like that in all jobs. But for me – who is in laboratory intensive science (and let’s face it, whose main job during long stretches of time is to be the monkey who flips’ the switch) flow is one of the feelings that keeps me going.
*Enter: Picking transformed bacterial colonies, counting cells, setting up PCR’s, proofreading code – any drone-like tedious job that applies to you.
P.S. This was a infinetely more optimistic post than this day deserves… but what goes up – has to go down! Let’s leave the down for another day though… or maybe for no day at all… we’ll see if it’s worthy being called into words.