After a disappointing first attempt at a PhD, one grad student gets a new start.
My first PhD attempt was not the experience I had imagined. Although I made great friends both in and outside the department, I was in the wrong lab. I had my own funding but felt like a slave: I could do only experiments I was told to do and could not choose my own course of research. I was forbidden to take a class in evolution because it wasn't “related enough”. I founded a graduate students' association but was told to spend more time at the bench. Feeling demoralized and insignificant, I quit last year, six months after starting my PhD.
At first I was sent reeling: was this the end of my career? Was I a terrible scientist? Should I study something different? Genetic counselling, medicine, even philosophy? After a short stint as a waitress back home in Scotland, I went to Montreal to work as a research assistant in a small lab on the evolution of sex. I got to read as much as I wanted, design experiments and talk to my supervisor whenever I liked. No, I wasn't a bad scientist, and yes, science still excited me. I realized that I wanted to give a PhD another try.
I got married and returned to Britain, but the lessons I'd learnt were not forgotten. When deciding on a new lab, I made sure that both the department and supervisor were flexible, encouraging and accessible.
Here I am six months into my new PhD. This time last year I was desolate. Now I am full of hope. What will this year bring? Watch this space.
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Mhairi Dupré is a first-year PhD student in evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Oxford, UK
- Mhairi Dupre
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Dupre, M. PhD, take two. Nature 439, 1028 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7079-1028c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7079-1028c