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 P...