Well blog friends, a lot has happened these last few months. In a strange backwards approach to growing up, having bought our first home a few months ago, and getting married a number of weeks back, I'm now a student again! Aged 31 and two months, I am a full time PhD student. Hurrah!
And it really is hurrah. I'm really excited about being back in the lab, and two weeks in, it's like learning a new sport, only it's one involving only my brain. My PhD is looking at stem cell-ness in brain cancer. It's quite a different area of research to what I've done before (the common theme being 'cancer'), which was very much intentional, but I'm hoping that my various previous research experiences are going to be useful platforms for the years ahead!
What of saying goodbye to clinical life for the most part (and just for now)? Hmm... I'm probably coming at it from a slightly negative angle, which is hard to avoid when your last little spell of clinical work was Extremely Stressful. I've been a doctor for 7 years now, and training to be a specialist in cancer for the last 18 months of that. There's a graph of confidence (y axis) versus competence (x axis) and they say that after an early peak in confidence, it's quite natural for your confidence to stack it even while your competence continues to grow. The problem is, where patients i.e. human life is involved, it's quite hard to ride that low confidence wave and remain objective about your competence. Inevitably, with greater seniority comes more responsibility, and a degree of taking one for the team. Generally I feel like I manage that pressure quite well, and even start to think I'm a good doctor.
But I worry that I've worn down my resilience. I think I'm a good clinician and good with my patients. I care a very great deal and I learn so much from not just my clinical colleagues and seniors but everyone around me. But the gremlins are lurking and I'm happy to step into the sunshine and away from them for a while.
The first thing I'm learning, and in some ways relearning, at the start of my PhD is how to chop out and plug in important bits of DNA into very precise areas of a cancer cell's existing DNA. This was something I learned to do when I was in the USA, only now we're applying it to different important areas of brain cancer cells to understand what impact it will have. It's an exciting time, and I know a PhD is a big mountain to climb. But damn, it feels good to have my hiking shoes on again.
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| Teeny tiny married people |
And it really is hurrah. I'm really excited about being back in the lab, and two weeks in, it's like learning a new sport, only it's one involving only my brain. My PhD is looking at stem cell-ness in brain cancer. It's quite a different area of research to what I've done before (the common theme being 'cancer'), which was very much intentional, but I'm hoping that my various previous research experiences are going to be useful platforms for the years ahead!
What of saying goodbye to clinical life for the most part (and just for now)? Hmm... I'm probably coming at it from a slightly negative angle, which is hard to avoid when your last little spell of clinical work was Extremely Stressful. I've been a doctor for 7 years now, and training to be a specialist in cancer for the last 18 months of that. There's a graph of confidence (y axis) versus competence (x axis) and they say that after an early peak in confidence, it's quite natural for your confidence to stack it even while your competence continues to grow. The problem is, where patients i.e. human life is involved, it's quite hard to ride that low confidence wave and remain objective about your competence. Inevitably, with greater seniority comes more responsibility, and a degree of taking one for the team. Generally I feel like I manage that pressure quite well, and even start to think I'm a good doctor.
But I worry that I've worn down my resilience. I think I'm a good clinician and good with my patients. I care a very great deal and I learn so much from not just my clinical colleagues and seniors but everyone around me. But the gremlins are lurking and I'm happy to step into the sunshine and away from them for a while.
The first thing I'm learning, and in some ways relearning, at the start of my PhD is how to chop out and plug in important bits of DNA into very precise areas of a cancer cell's existing DNA. This was something I learned to do when I was in the USA, only now we're applying it to different important areas of brain cancer cells to understand what impact it will have. It's an exciting time, and I know a PhD is a big mountain to climb. But damn, it feels good to have my hiking shoes on again.
