Things Nobody Told Me about Being a PI - Part 3
Welcome back to the blog series “Things Nobody Told me About Being a PI”. In part 1, we covered financial/administrative management. Part 2 dealt with personnel/team management. In the final installment, I would like to touch on an issue which was a big personal adjustment for me.
Something that was completely unexpected for me as a new PI was a sense of loneliness. As a post-doc, you are probably used to working in a busy lab, maybe in a bay of 2-3 other trainees all bustling around doing experiments. This builds a sense of comradery as you bond over failed experiments, talk about exciting new papers, and maybe plan what beers you are going to try at happy hour that afternoon. As a new PI, you often spend a lot of time alone in your office - writing grants / papers, attending to the masses of incoming email, and handling all your regulatory protocols. Even though you might be surrounded by people running around in the lab, and even other PIs down the hall, the relative silence …
Something that was completely unexpected for me as a new PI was a sense of loneliness. As a post-doc, you are probably used to working in a busy lab, maybe in a bay of 2-3 other trainees all bustling around doing experiments. This builds a sense of comradery as you bond over failed experiments, talk about exciting new papers, and maybe plan what beers you are going to try at happy hour that afternoon. As a new PI, you often spend a lot of time alone in your office - writing grants / papers, attending to the masses of incoming email, and handling all your regulatory protocols. Even though you might be surrounded by people running around in the lab, and even other PIs down the hall, the relative silence …
