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Welcome to the Arnosti laboratory. 6/06 
Welcome! Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or undergraduate researcher, I would like to make you feel at home in your new surroundings. I outline below recommendations, guidelines, and laws that should make our life together more productive and enjoyable, and allow everyone here to focus on SCIENCE, which is our laboratory’s raison d’etre. Remember the two guiding principles of this lab! 1) Science is FUN. 2) If you are frustrated, see principle #1. I have worked in a number of labs and known many P.I.’s, students and postdocs, so I try to bring the distilled wisdom of many to bear on this matter. Nevertheless, I don’t pretend that this outline is complete; if you have a good idea about how we can improve things, we’ll give it a try. Laboratory chores. We have assigned duties for people to carry out on a regular basis. Please do them. And as far as day-to-day use of common equipment, please do not be a slob. A reasonably neat lab is more efficient and more harmonious. Do not mistake a neat bench with an unused one, however. Monday’s the assigned Kleenmeister will put up a sheet with clean up suggestions – please pick one and do it before you get launched with the day’s activities. Notebooks. Be organized, and write things down in your notebook so you can figure out what you did weeks or months from now. Always title your notebook pages (special notebook paper is available), date it, and mark it with your initials. When you generate microfuge tubes, reagents, or flies, cross-date them so that you can go back to the notebook. The notebooks stay in the lab; don’t take them home. Cooperation. Please do try to take advantage of other people’s expertise so that you can profit from their experience, and don’t hesitate to act as a mentor to someone who needs assistance. It will help you grow as a scientist, save you time, and prepare you for a future job in academia, industry, or practically any other area of science. I have generally enjoyed such mutually supportive environments, and they are a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
If you are not going to be in, please give the lab a call and ask someone to make a note on the chalkboard by my office. I don’t want people to feel that they have to justify every trip to the lavatory (this really happened to me!); just be responsible and act as you would if you were an important part of the business. You are. What "counts" - your courses, going to select seminars, group meetings, journal club, looking up protocols or references, and other activities that contribute to your professional education. What "doesn’t count" - running errands, computer surfing, going out for coffee or lunch. Of course we all have do some of these activities sometimes - just be reasonable and remember your priorities! (Undergraduates, ignore this tirade! You have carved out time in your schedules, and I’ll see you then.) Interactions with the P.I. Don’t be afraid to ask me a question. I won’t bite. As far are experimental details, Postdocs - talk to me when you have a result. Graduate students, especially at the start, make sure you check in on a daily basis, or more frequently if you need advice. Undergraduates - let me see your results at each step of a protocol, unless we agree otherwise. We should be talking about ideas, new procedures, related papers etc. all the time, whenever someone comes up with something. I meet with everyone at least once a week, usually on Mondays. Sign up for a time slot on the sheet I post on the bulletin board. What to call me. Graduate students and postdocs are on a first-name basis, i.e. "David", and undergraduates will have to stick with "Dr. Arnosti"; I don’t want your classmates whom I may have in a course to feel that they are on a lesser footing.
Radio. I brought in the radio to enhance the work environment. Please keep the volume down during our core hours (you may blast it if you are alone at some late hour, of course). Be polite about asking others if they mind if you put on something, and don’t hesitate to ask to shut it off if you need to concentrate. If we really can’t stand your taste in music, you’ll hear about it - don’t play 9 Inch Nails over and over! Computer use. You can use use your own desktop on the iMac to surf the web or store data; please don’t download anything onto them from the web except pdf files. For the other lab computers, keep email checking to a reasonable level, and save the computer games for home. Please check with me before you add stuff; I don’t want viruses. Please do not use file-sharing programs like Gnutella to download tunes – MSU doesn’t need the lawsuits from Sony, and it takes up bandwidth. Calendar. Note when you will be gone on the calendar by the phone. You don’t have to be embarrassed about being out of town for your cousin’s wedding, but let us know so that we can plan ahead. I’ll indicate when I expect to be gone so you know in advance. Group meetings. These represent an important part of your scientific training. If you are presenting, view them as practice sessions for your prelim, your thesis defense, your talk at a conference, or your job interview. That means prepare well, and be clear. If you are the audience, be an active participant, with brain in "on" position, and try to come up with whatever insightful comments you can. Or ask about something that’s not clear. Languages. I love ‘em. However, English is the current international
lingua franca, so it is important that you be fluent in it. If you are
not, I’d like you to practice it until you are. You will benefit yourself
and your fellow non-native speaker by using English in the lab to achieve
fluency. |
Hours.
The first thing that graduate students (and postdocs) ask is "How
many hours am I supposed to work?" The answer is "A lot".
I don’t like to say a magic number, because this leads to the temptation
to think of sitting around the lab as "working"; some people
are able to use their time more efficiently than others. As a rule of
thumb, don’t put off ‘till tomorrow what you can squeeze in today. This
translates into late hours, or getting an early start to get a long procedure
done on the same day, or both. I do want all people to be working during
"core hours" roughly 9-6 M-F, while on weekends you can be more
flexible; lately, I have been working half of Saturday and a few hours
on Sunday. Junior people will have to work harder than that. Why am I
such a grind? 1) I have a vested interest in your success! I want you
to blow the field wide open, get those first-author articles in Nature
and Science, and take off on a meteoric career. Those high-profile labs
with the golden touch are staffed by mere mortals, too; and you will find
that no matter where you are or where you come from, a hard-working scientist
with good ideas can achieve recognition and success. You can’t do it without
putting in the hours, though. A block of free time to do experiments should
be (or become) a pleasure to you - there aren’t too many people who get
paid to be creative and do what they like, so you’re one of a select few.
I’ll try to do everything to make the laboratory atmosphere conducive
to spending so much time there. 2) As a graduate student, you are in an
apprenticeship program, which involves learning by doing. The more experience
you get, the more solid a scientist you will be. 3) Laboratory working
habits generally resemble autoregulatory genetic circuits. If you know
that your peers will be there to help you out and keep you company, you
will be more likely to want to be working long hours.
Reading.
I want you to read scientific literature as part of your training; it
is a necessary component of becoming a scientist, rather than a technician.
In the lab, scientific journals, books, articles, and protocols are a
part of the scenery. Each postdoc and student is assigned certain journals
to track and update us on at group meeting. Do not bring novels, newspapers,
or magazines, because this isn’t a doctor’s waiting office. If you need
to take a break, recognize it as such, and do it outside the lab.