Comment on "Science PhD Career Preferences: Levels, Changes, and Advisor Encouragement"

Recently an article was published by Saeurmann and Roach in PLoS ONE, entitled, "Science PhD Career Preferences: Levels, Changes, and Advisor Encouragement." Here's the link to their article:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036307

This article examined how many PhD students in the sciences become less enthused over the course of their PhDs about staying in academia after graduate school. It seems that there are more and more PhD students who want to pursue "alternative careers," like working in industry or government instead of doing academic research.

As a biology PhD student, I agree with the authors that there should be additional "mechanisms" to prepare PhD students for pursuing these alternative careers that can complement the advice given by a thesis advisor to stay in academia. However, I would also like to point out that not all professors assume that PhD students will also want to become professors, and that academic researchers can also be knowledgeable about alternative careers outside of the "university ivory tower," such as if they start a biotech company or the like.

Additionally, I do not think it is necessarily "bad" that PhD students are exploring careers in different settings outside of academia; I think that we acquire many skills during our graduate education that would be extremely useful for working in government, industry, law, publishing, or other kinds of careers. What needs to change is how PhD students can identify these essential skills that can be transferred outside of the laboratory, and how these skills can be properly marketed.

For example, here is a list of some of the major skills any PhD student will have acquired by the end of his/her graduate education, which could be a great skill set for many different types of careers:

1. Teaching courses at the undergraduate, graduate, or other levels (like mentoring a younger student): developing assessments, grading assessments, organizing lesson plans, lecturing, leading discussions, etc.
2. Writing and revising manuscripts and designing figures for publication in peer-reviewed journals: primary research (summarizing your new contributions to the field) or reviews (summarizing everyone's research and the history, current status, and future directions of the field).
3. Presenting data in a variety of different settings: group meetings, departmental meetings, PhD committee meetings, traveling to small or large conferences - each presentation needs to be tailored for these different types of audiences.
4. Applying for grants or fellowships: this also involves tailoring your research description and plans for future research depending on the types of funding that are available.
5. In addition to presenting and writing about their work, graduate students also spend a great deal of time critiquing and examining others' work, either in their field of study or in a completely different field; it's extremely important to be knowledgeable and the most up-to-date in a particular topic, as well as to be wary of any competitors.
6. Working in a laboratory on a daily basis involves creating an independent schedule, planning ahead by the hour, day, week, or month (each type of experiment may require a different length of time), analyzing data, interpreting data, envisioning possible outcomes or potential explanations for unexpected outcomes, and constantly re-organizing your schedule to adjust for these outcomes.
7. Time management for dealing with 1-6 above, all of which is usually done on a daily basis.

It's All Greek to Me!

As a Greek-American, I found that it was easier for me to learn "scientific jargon" that may have been intimidating for my fellow classmates because so many scientific words are derived from the Greek language! As Toula's father in my favorite movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," would say, "Give me a word, any word, and I will show you that the root of that word is Greek." He even managed to explain how the word "kimono" is actually a Greek word! (It was a clever attempt.)

I should also mention that while many scientific words have Greek roots, there are also many that have Latin roots (including the word "science" itself). However, the benefit of knowing Greek roots of scientific words is that Greek is still a language spoken today! At the same time, if you are familiar with a Romance language like Spanish, then sometimes you can still understand Latin roots of words without knowing Latin: one of my favorite examples is that the word "vaccine" is derived from the fact that the first actual vaccine that was administered was to give people cowpox, in order to create an immunity for the much more severe smallpox; in Spanish, the word for "cow" is "vaca", so that's how you can understand the origin of "vaccine"!

Below I have listed some of my favorite examples for Greek roots of scientific words. It's interesting to note that some of these words have Ancient Greek origins and are not based on the Modern Greek translation; also, the pronunciation in Greek is usually quite different than how we say the word in English:

1. "eco-": This comes from the Ancient Greek word "oikos," which means "home" (the modern Greek word is "spiti").
2. "-logy"": This is derived from the word "logos," which means "word"; so when you think about "ecology," this really means that we are studying the "home" of all living things, which is the natural world around us.
3. "chrome-" or "chromato-": These are derived from "xroma" and "xromata," which mean "color" and "colors."
4. "proto-" and "deutero-": These words come from "protos" and "defteros," which mean "first" and "second." My favorite words in developmental biology are "protostome" and "deuterstome," which refer to animals where the mouth develops either first or second; since "stome" comes from "stoma," which means "mouth," this is a pretty easy translation from Greek!
5. "heme-": This comes from "aima", which means "blood."
6. "helio-": This comes from "ilios", which is "sun" (nuclear fusion occurs on the Sun, which is when 2 hydrogen atoms are combined to form helium, so that's how "helium" got its name; "hydrogen" got its name because "hydra" means "water" - modern Greek word is "nero" - and there are 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in a molecule of water).
7. "atom-": This is an interesting one: it is derived from "a" and "tomos," which basically means "uncuttable." Also, these words are the basis for another Greek word, "atomo," which means "individual." Now it makes sense why an "atom" was described as the smallest unit of matter!
8. "erythro-" and "leuko-": "erythro-" comes from "erythros," which means "red" (modern Greek word is "kokkinos"), and "leuko-" comes from "levkos," which means "white" ("aspros" in modern Greek"); now it makes sense that erythrocytes are red blood cells and leukocytes are white blood cells, right?
9. "telo-": This word is derived from "telos," which means "end"; it's no wonder that "telomeres" are the segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes ("chromosome" comes from "chroma" and "soma", meaning "colored body," which is how chromosomes were described when doing karyotypes, and "karyotype" has the root "karidi", which means "nut" because the nucleus was thought to look like a nut - see, this can go on and on forever!) , and also "telophase" is the final part of mitosis ("mitosis" comes from the word "thread," referring to the thread-like spindle that forms to separate the chromosomes to either side of the cell; interestingly, "meoisis" comes from the word "subtract" because you end up with half as many chromosomes - again, this can go on forever!)
10. "-graph": This comes from "grafo," which means "to write" (although today we make graphs on the computer!).
... and many, many more!