I had planned on blogging at least once a week. Then I realized that settling in a new country and at a new job makes for busy days and nights. So here I am again around two months after my last post, oops.
Anyway, here’s a quick summary of what has been going on over the past couple of months:
Number of manuscripts accepted (out of the 3 finished/nearly finished pieces of work from previous academic lab): zero
Number times I’ve thought about how nice it would be to go back to academia: a zillion
Number of times I’ve thought about how nice it is to have left academia: a zillion
I guess you could say that, apart from the manuscripts business, things are pretty balanced.
After 7 months in industry I’m beginning to get an appreciation of the pros and cons of working at a small- to medium-sized biotech. So far, the biggest pro would have to be the incredible learning experience it’s turning out to be. The chance to work so closely with all the different people involved in the drug discovery process, from other scientists, to clinicians, to business analysts, is not something that is easily come across in acadmia or in even in “big pharma”. Working in drug discovery has also widened my scientific interests (and, I hope, knowledge)… I guess that’s the upside of not being able to dictate your own line of research. It also has to be said that the pay is a lot better, although the hours can be equally long.
The biggest con would have to be that it can get very stressful. In academia, experiments not working out the way I hoped or expected was anything ranging from exasperating to interesting and exciting, but never stressful. Here, experiments not working out as expected can mean big problems for a project… which means a bunch of very stressed people. Still, I’m pretty lucky to have a nice area about 3 minutes from home to walk the dog and unwind after a stressful day at work:
