Thirteen points to bear in mind when choosing a postdoc

Active blogger, former postdoc and (currently) full-time Mom Anna Carnini weighs in on the dos and don'ts of finding your next postdoc position. (This post was also published on Anna's blog Western Wind) Over to Anna:

Although I have enjoyed my time in science, I feel I have made a few career mistakes here and there that led me to where I am today (no maternity leave, no employment insurance, unemployed). Well, there is no point in crying over spilt milk. I think I have learnt something from my mistakes. Here is a list of things one should bear in mind when choosing a postdoc. I wish I'd figured it out earlier, but sometime one has to leave and learn.

1. Have a clear idea of what you want from a postdoctoral experience. Do you want it to be a good spring board to an academic position? Or a position in industry? Do you want/ need lots of papers coming out?
2. Communicate these expectations clearly to the postdoc supervisor you may be interested in working for and assess if you can achieve your goals in your lab. If the answer is no, turn down the offer and move on.

A bloody problem: to clot or not to clot!*

The passion of my current postdoc-hood is blood, or to be more precise, the proteins that reside in this vital fluid. So, let me tell you what my research is all about.

I guess everyone has experienced bleeding from big or small wounds. And surely a lot of you must  have wondered how the bleeding stops. Wounds stop bleeding because of blood-clotting; the formation of clumps of blood cells at the wound-site.

But clotting can also be dangerous. For example, blood clots in the arteries connected to the heart can block blood flow causing a heart attack. To prevent this, heart patients use medication that reduces clotting.

So, here is the bloody problem

Medication that stops dangerous clotting can also prevent normal clotting. So, even small wounds may not stop bleeding. What we ideally need is a drug that stops dangerous clotting without affecting the normal clotting.

A postdoc is made

Its true - post docs arent born, they're made. Talk to a high school student and if you can find me one kid who says that he/she wants to become a postdoc, I'll show you a flying crocodile! For those not in the know, its very hard to even understand what or who a postdoc is. The dictionary definition of a postdoc as "a postdoctoral researcher or scholar" isnt very enlightening, either. I usually end up telling my non-academic friends that a postdoc is one who has completed a doctoral program but is still doing the same kind of work, for similar pay, and exploring job options!

So what made me a postdoc? That age-old human instinct - curiosity. It all began when I first looked down a microscope and marveled at the perfection of a single cell. It had a body of a few tens of microns, and yet it  performed all the functions of a living organism. It ate and drank, breathed and excreted, reproduced, and responded to its environment - almost like you and I would! I had found a fascinating enigma that I just had to know more about. And from that day, I was hooked on biology.

About The Postdoc Times

The Postdoc Times is a forum for postdocs, a place where current and former postdocs can share and discuss anything and everything that concerns postdoc life. Want to talk about a stubborn experiment, a strange day at work, the cool new paper you saw in Nature? Eager to let off steam about how university policy affects your postdoc life? Need to think out aloud about your career plans? Curious about what other postdocs are doing and how they're coping with postdoc life today? Well, you've come to the right place. We will discuss all this, and more, on this blog.