Chronicling the mid-career life
New decade, new blog!! 🎊
I had been debating on what to do about The New PI's blog about starting a biomedical laboratory in academia now that I'm becoming more established. I did start a lab twice and the mid-career experience is very different from that of a newly minted PI. It didn't make sense to continue talking about setting up a lab and I wasn't sure what would be most helpful. When I started I really didn't expect this would go as far as it did (see the last post of the old blog), so I asked the Tweeps.
It looks like my readers still want a blog and the majority want it to focus on being a mid-career academic. I was looking back at the blogs I followed and the senior academics like @drugmonkeyblog are discussing grant strategies and policies and many younger bloggers stopped writing. Why did they stop writing? I can tell you why...because at some point it gets so crazy you need your limited free time to unwind and sleep, and your work time is split between mostly dreadful meetings and unnumerable deadlines for which you're constantly late. The mid-career life is spent optimizing your effort and deciding which task has the highest priority deserving your next ten minutes.
This is job is ever-changing and often surprising, so it's worth to keep writing about it, but you will forgive me if I only manage one post a month. I may experiment with the format a little to make it more interactive in order to focus on what's most helpful for the readers. As I plod my way towards R01 renewals, more committes and more responsibilities, I will also spend some time writing about leadership and how to empower ourselves to affect change as senior investigators.
I had been debating on what to do about The New PI's blog about starting a biomedical laboratory in academia now that I'm becoming more established. I did start a lab twice and the mid-career experience is very different from that of a newly minted PI. It didn't make sense to continue talking about setting up a lab and I wasn't sure what would be most helpful. When I started I really didn't expect this would go as far as it did (see the last post of the old blog), so I asked the Tweeps.
If Yes, what would my followers find most interesting and useful at this time?— The Newish PI 🐣 (@TheNewPI) December 14, 2019
It looks like my readers still want a blog and the majority want it to focus on being a mid-career academic. I was looking back at the blogs I followed and the senior academics like @drugmonkeyblog are discussing grant strategies and policies and many younger bloggers stopped writing. Why did they stop writing? I can tell you why...because at some point it gets so crazy you need your limited free time to unwind and sleep, and your work time is split between mostly dreadful meetings and unnumerable deadlines for which you're constantly late. The mid-career life is spent optimizing your effort and deciding which task has the highest priority deserving your next ten minutes.
This is job is ever-changing and often surprising, so it's worth to keep writing about it, but you will forgive me if I only manage one post a month. I may experiment with the format a little to make it more interactive in order to focus on what's most helpful for the readers. As I plod my way towards R01 renewals, more committes and more responsibilities, I will also spend some time writing about leadership and how to empower ourselves to affect change as senior investigators.
Thank you for staying with me and thanks to the new readers. Stay tuned and follow me at @TheNewPI for updates (at least on Twitter I'll remain forever young 😂).
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