Regardless of your career stage, you need mentorship. Here’s what you can reasonably expect.
Every scientist and professional benefits from having someone to show them the ropes — the catch is that some mentors are more skilled at giving thoughtful guidance than others.
As an undergraduate, graduate, or postdoctoral trainee…
You’re in the midst (mist?) of your PhD. People tell you that there is life beyond this, but it is hazy at best. You’d like to somehow start preparing for the next stage of your career evolution but how, exactly?
There are a few things you can start doing now…
TL;DR talk to current students & trust your instincts
Recruitment season is finally over, and you have a couple of weeks to decide where you’d like to spend the next chunk of your life. …
When I was born, my grandfather was 73 years old. Most of my memories about him are from when he was in his 80s, 90s, and even 100s. He lived 103 years — an absolutely unfathomable amount of time to spend inhaling and exhaling air on this planet. …
His autobiography will make you laugh, cry, and appreciate the underdogs of the brain
We need to get past the essentialist mindset about coding
When our summer intern Daniel first joined the lab, he seemed terrified of MATLAB.
And I can’t blame him — encountering a programming language in the wild is intimidating, especially when you sign up for a summer research program and they ask you to declare upfront whether you’re “computational” or…
You don’t need a neuroscience background, and it might even help if you don’t. You do, however, need research experience.
You’ve given it some thought, and a neuroscience PhD could be in your future. So, what do you need to get there?
Undergraduate degrees before the PhD
In theory, you could come from almost any academic background before coming into neuroscience, as long as you also have research experience (see below). According to a recent…
What to consider when you’re considering
Perhaps at some point during your childhood your partially-developed (and frankly, self-absorbed) brain thought to itself, “I wonder how brains work.”
Or perhaps you’ve been doing neuroscience research and although you’d never admit this — you kinda like poking brains. …
Authorship can be a difficult topic for many researchers, especially when it is their first publication in a lab. Fortunately for you, dear friend*, I’ve devised four useful rules when it comes to deciding authorship on a paper:
- You should talk about authorship before you think you need to talk…
Ashley Juavinett
Neuroscientist, educator, and author of “So you want to be a neuroscientist?” https://cup.columbia.edu/book/so-you-want-to-be-a-neuroscientist/9780231190893
