r/labrats • u/AutoModerator • 27d ago

open discussion Monthly Rant Thread: December, 2024 edition

Welcome to our revamped month long vent thread! Feel free to post your fails or other quirks related to lab work here!

Vent and troubleshoot on our discord! https://discord.gg/385mCqr

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/BlackBrantScare 27d ago

First time switching from industry to academia, Im kinda scared and don’t know what to expect

3

u/General_Bumblebee_75 16d ago

A lot will depend on whether or not you are in a field that is well funded. I was a lab rat for 30 years in a well funded diabetes lab and we never wanted for anything. I was never a grad student, but a lab manager, institutional radiation safety officer, and research tech all rolled into one. I now work as a health physicist at a major research university and can see clearly that some departments/labs are much less well funded than others. If I were a grad student, post doc, or staff scientist, I would look for a lab that has enough funding for a lab manager. Otherwise you will be stuck doing management tasks in addition to your research. It can be a good learning experience, but makes it more difficult to get your work done. I love academic research, but few PIs teach their students proper documentation.. This will be a problem if you ever want to try to patent something.You will not have adequate documentation to patent. If you are a post doc, you want to be in a lab that prides itself on getting its graduates into solid positions, not labs that will want glorified techs who are working below their ability. Some folks with PhDs simply do not want to teach and may opt to stay in a lab indefintely, whch is fine, but if you want to move up, you want a mentor who will support your career development which includes a lot more than knowing how to do research.