Nano, by Saad

Grad student scientists want to become their advisor’s go-to investigator.  This position makes you privy to the advisor’s more closely held thoughts and often spares you from working on trivial/crappy projects.  (Within reason: you don’t want to be so trusted that they end up overburdening you with every task they deem important—since we know profs believe everything they work on is of the utmost importance.)  A post on Keith Ferrazzi’s blog lists ten tips for becoming indispensable at work.  Some of his ideas strongly resonated with me, in the context of doing research.

1. Get out in front and analyze cutting-edge trends and opportunities.

I want to get better at this practice.  As grad students we become occupied with our particular project and how to get it done.  But the big-time scientists out there seemingly predict what next year’s Nature-level hyped topic will be, and get to work on it this year.  I don’t have a ready idea for what to try on this topic, because the “cutting edge” of science that you read is something that was submitted up to 12 months prior to publication.

5. Stay healthy.

I could not agree more strongly.  Two years ago I caught the flu in December, as I was trying to wrap up some measurements for my first first-author manuscript, and it put me out of commission for a whole week.  (Ridiculous detail: I ignored a fever on the first morning to get an AFM measurement done for the manuscript; midway through it I was shaking so badly I stopped out of fear that I might wreck the instrument’s sensitive scanning part and I went to the clinic, where they gave me Tylenol and cold apple juice to start countering my 103-degree fever.)

7. Don’t get discouraged.

This is so important.  Exploring the unknown is the essence of what we do.  Inevitably, you can’t lay down every brick in perfect harmony when you don’t even know where the path leads.

9. Develop a niche.

Common sense says that the more difficult something is, the fewer people there will be who know how to do it—and do it well.  I certainly did not set out to achieve this, but after 100+ hours of tinkering on it, I am pretty much the AFM guy at Vanderbilt.  This one skill has put me on the author list of two articles and, more recently, opened the door to collaborate with an amazing research mentor.  So, become good at something, damn it!

Read all ten tips with Mr. Ferrazzi’s thoughts here.  And continue the conversation using the Comments section!

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