My work is not exactly Nobel Prize-worthy, but it is interesting and hopefully useful in the medium term. And since I'm not ready to publish it yet, that means I can't give an oral presentation on it, just a poster and a flash talk.
But of course this is good enough to give it my best shot, so this week I am in full presentation mode. Getting all the materials ready, printing out guides, modifying my poster, and endlessly practicing what I am going to say to fill my allotted time with useful things about my work without unnecessary details.
One point of difficulty is that most people will be presenting (and interested in) a quite different area of research, so I really need to present my work from a very basic perspective in order to be clear. Nevertheless, most of my old work was in that different field, so at least I have the experience of knowing what kind of things (from vocabulary to techniques) are new to the audience, so I hope I will be able to adapt my talk to them.
It is also a lot of fun because I am really interested in what everyone else is presenting, even if it is not even remotely related to my current work, it is a little bit like going back a few years and going to these kinds of scientific meetings all the time.
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Recently I got invited to go drinking with a couple of very old friends, and I usually enjoy doing this kind of things (specially since I have a hard time making new friends so I have to take care of the old ones), but this time it was a little bit complicated since one of those friends usually likes to talk about a person that I really don't want to remember as soon as she gets a little bit drunk.
But I really wanted to release some stress of the recent workload so I made plans... Prepared a few topics that I know she would pick up and be interested immediately, also kept in mind a few excuses in case she insisted in talking about the toxic person and finally prepared myself to have a serious talk with my friend about how I don't appreciate that topic.
Fortunately the evening went much better than usual, not for nothing we know each other for many years, 8 or 9 times I clearly saw the talk being slowly being directed toward dark parts of my history and with a little bit of effort I managed to completely avoid the topic without spoiling the mood. We all got to enjoy a nice outing and the talk was fun and productive. I never imagined that all that was necessary was to pay attention to the "flow" of the conversation and have something prepared to get the attention towards positive things instead of bad memories.
I feel proud I got better at driving the conversation, even if it is only between good friends, maybe soon I will be able to do the same with strangers.
Since last week I have been juggling lab work and preparing for some presentations at scientific meetings.
On the one hand this is a bit frustrating because the lab work inevitably gets delayed and I would really like to have more data at this point (especially for the presentations), but on the other hand it is a nice change to spend more time organizing and polishing the work of the last few months in order to have a good presentation.
One advantage is that the academic meetings I will be presenting at can everything can be done in English, which means I can at least relax from trying to memorize the correct way to say things in Japanese and instead just present things in a flexible way.
The only disadvantage is that this is still a relatively new field for me, so I am much more prepared to answer questions related to the techniques and the molecular aspects of my work, but not so much about the intricacies related to the purpose of it (for example how it compares with other approaches used), so I also have to spend more time studying other people's presentations and trying to guess what kind of things would interest the audience enough to be included in the questions.
Well, I still have a few weeks, so I hope I can do well, and if not, there is always the next meeting.
I have been getting to know some new people from the lab lately, and this week we went out for dinner and a few drinks at a nearby restaurant, with the added bonus of being able to choose the location. One of the nice things about Tokyo is that you can find a lot of different cuisines, and I was able to try food from my birthplace without having to go too far.
I have never been very sociable, so it is quite difficult for me to meet people outside of my own lab or department, but after last year I made a firm promise to try to open up a little more and meet other people for fun.
So I have been accepting invitations and even making a few of my own, and thanks to that I have met a few other people, as I have mostly been invited to things related to my work, most of these new acquaintances are related to research work close to mine, but going out to eat and drink also means that the conversation can be completely unrelated to work, and about 30 to 40% of the time it ends up being about completely different things, which is a lot of fun.
This time it was mostly like that, and since we were all guys and our ages varied a lot, the conversation ended up being about a lot of different topics. The food was very nice and they also had a lot of drinks from my birthplace, so I took full advantage of the "all you can drink" option we were using.
One thing I was surprised to find out from the conversation was that one member of our group is married to someone who works close to one of my coworkers at my old job, and another member knew another member's wife from college.
It was fun to find out these coincidences, but it also made me think about how small Tokyo (or Japan) can be, so I should be careful how much I talk about old times or people from my past, I might get into trouble if it ends up there is some unexpected relationship with the people I talk to, so I should use names only when the story is positive and keep the bad talk only about anonymous people.
A short entry because I haven't written for a while and I don't want to lose the habit.
Later I will write more about the business trip, but for now I can say that it was a great success and a nice experience that I hope will help me a lot.
But because of it, a lot of work piled up during the week I was away, so I had to work twice as hard the last two weeks to finally get things in order.
Still, a lot of new things are coming up from now on, and I need to make sure I have time for everything, so I need to get some "result savings" so that I can stop doing my main research work while I devote some time and effort to the extra things that are coming up.
Also, (un?)fortunately, my last boss is still interested in publishing one of the things I did while in the lab, so I have to spend a lot of time writing just in case that can be done, even though it will be a short paper with shared authorship, but in my situation every little thing counts, so I will try to get it done...
All preparations completed
Lab work completed and at a point where I can stop for a while without affecting new results.
All paperwork done, so there are no surprises after coming back (very important at the end of the fiscal year)
A few extra preparations done so things will run smoothly even if a minor disaster happens.
All contact information at destination confirmed and two extra expenses arranged so I can guarantee to be in communication.
Now to enjoy and learn a lot and hopefully this can be another step to a nice position in the future!
Not really a lot, but things are going along, I still have to repeat a few things, but now I am confident I can do everything that I am supposed to do in the lab without problems, from running the machines to taking the minutes from the meetings (not a small feat for a foreigner since the whole thing is in Japanese). So even if I have to work extra to get better data I no longer get stuck asking around for help.
Then again, this week I have a few extra things to do because of my business trip, so I will have to push around my schedule to avoid getting behind on my work. I already have my visa and reservations, and the plan well studied, the experiments planned to be around the time I will be away, etc. Even the considerations about the end of the fiscal year have been considered.
And after coming back important changes in the lab, hopefully for the better. Thinking about it there is still a couple of things I should be asking around in the main office of the university about a new member of the lab, I worry paperwork may be going on too slowly and that can complicate things for the newbie.
Things are going relatively smoothly, but that means the work is getting more and more complicated and difficult, which is ok up to a point.
My current main project is getting good data, the mouse experiments went relatively well even if the results were not that interesting, now I have to repeat some things and include other variables, but at least it looks like a paper can be published from the results, depending on how the new experiments go it might even be a good paper.
Then I am planning a working trip to attend an interesting workshop, which means a lot of preparations (including preparing the visa application) that will eat up my time very quickly.
Then my side project suddenly got unstuck, so I have to make time for that as well, and a dead project from my old job suddenly got wings and now I have to consider it as well.
Then a new employee may join the lab and I will take care of the necessary things to make the process as easy as possible.
So far there hasn't been a big problem, so I can juggle everything, but if something big comes out, I'll have to drop something, so I have to be very careful because I don't have the luxury of just letting things go.
Then, as soon as I have some time, I have to finish my studies to become a better bioinformatician, see if I can take the national exam to get my medical license, and prepare for my permanent residency (maybe need the JLPT?).
Anything, as long as there are no sudden obstacles.
Today (Tuesday the 13th) is considered an unlucky day in the culture of my birth country, I usually don't pay too much attention to this kind of superstition, but last night I had a recurring nightmare (for the first time in many months), so I had a lousy sleep. Probably because of this, I have had a lot of small problems during the day, careless mistakes, having to repeat things, being in a bad mood, etc.
This may just be a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and the stress of the day is what made me have the nightmare, but it is quite inconvenient, especially since it comes right after a long weekend where work is piling up.
Anyway, as far as "bad luck" days go, this one is relatively mild, so I guess I should not complain, after all, there are many things that could go horribly wrong, but fortunately still go well. I just hope things get back to normal tomorrow.
Some minor hiccups, but the last month has been quite productive. It feels good to develop something almost from scratch in a relatively short amount of time.
Apart from 2 other projects that are stuck, my work last month focused on a research proposal of my own, using an in-house tool, I designed a research plan that was approved so I could get the resources to start it, prepared and ordered everything necessary (from reagents to plasmids and cells), then did some preliminary testing that confirmed the feasibility of the plan, solved a few unexpected problems, and then just tested everything I could think of in vitro until I got results solid enough to convince my P.I. that the idea had merit.
February will be even busier as I start my own animal experiments in mice (small scale at first), while writing two more papers (hopefully getting them out of the way), exploring a collaboration with another lab (which unfortunately is having some problems right now, so I don't know how well that will go), and also helping with a big in vivo work from another collaborator.
This is what I imagined my work would be when I started my Ph.D., and it has taken long years to get to this point, but I can proudly say that it came from my own efforts, so I am really happy about it.
Of course there are many sources of stress, but getting a good day's work can work wonders as an anti-stress measure, even if things don't go smoothly, having some progress does a lot of good for my mental health.