Government Research
Eric
Wong
Career Commentary #1: The Person Behind the Desk - An Often Overlooked Key to Success
April 21st, 2010. Did this day have any significance for you? My guess is that unless you were brought into this world or blissfully wed on that day (in which case belated "Happy Birthday" or "Happy Anniversary" wishes go to you), it probably didn't have any real importance, but April 21st, 2010 was...
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Wenny
Lin
March Madness in the government
We are now a few weeks into the “NCAA March Madness” of the college basketball championships. In my past experience outside of the government, filling in the tournament brackets and following the events served to build community among co-workers, encouraging friendly competition and camaraderie....
Wenny
Lin
Evidence-based life coaching
I remember reading a very interesting article in The New Yorker by Dr. Atul Gawande entitled “Personal Best,” in which he emphasizes that even highly skilled and trained surgeons can improve their techniques with a coach.He asked a coach to watch him in surgery and point out potential improvemen...
Jason
Sherwin
Knowing when to punt
Knowing when to punt is an important part of creativity. Sometimes, some ideas don’t work out how you expect them to and knowing when to let them go can be the difference between going stale and going forward.
Wenny
Lin
Emergency child/dependent care – benefits for everyone
Recently, I consoled a fellow postdoc during her latest crisis. Her problem was not that her PCR primers didn’t work or that her paper just got rejected for the 5th time. No, her problem was that she was a single mother of two adorable girls, and one of them was sick with a fever. Therefore, baby ...
Nathan
Fisher
Creativity versus Stability
That choice wasn't anything that I thought about when leaving academia for government research. Perhaps because my first government post, with the US Army, actually involved a whole lot of creativity. Probably even more than I got to use during my dissertation work.
Wenny
Lin
No swag in the government
In the anxious era of government budget cutbacks, everything is on the table: federal employee salaries have been frozen; postdoctoral fellow contracts have not been renewed; research projects have been scaled back; and my travel funds have been cut by 33%. Yet, at the NIH, we persevere, doing the b...
Wenny
Lin
Aggressive Asian
As an undergraduate, I was once interviewed by a female (Caucasian) professor who exclaimed mid-interview that she’d never before “met such an aggressive Asian woman!” I was flabbergasted by her comment and was not sure how to interpret it.Had I impressed or disappointed her with my goals and ...
Wenny
Lin
Gifts and parties at the government
My roommate recently regaled me with tales from her pharmaceutical company’s holiday party, complete with lots of food and booze and entertainment. I was rather envious at the time because I was busy making baked goods for my office’s potluck holiday party.
Mandy
Kendrick
Done with the Bench?
Done with the bench…or do you just need a change of scenery instead?