Academia is an
unpredictable profession at best; for the most part, one never knows from year
to year how much funding one will have to design and implement research
projects, how many students one will have responsibility for, how many grant
proposals one will write, or even how many papers one will write and send for
publication. The unpredictability of the profession stems from the
unpredictability associated with grant funding: is a researcher’s proposal good
enough; will it get into the top ten percent; will it get funded, and if so,
how much will the researcher get; will he or she get support for students and
lab consumables or just consumables; and what happens if he or she doesn’t get
funding. The list of worries is potentially a long one.
December and June are
always busy and hectic months in academia, mostly because researchers rush to
finish experiments and to send out their articles before the Christmas holidays
and summer vacation, respectively. They are stressful months that have to be
confronted and tackled before one can take vacation in good conscience. The odd
thing is that the pace of academia is so erratic; during the other months,
there are often lulls when one wishes one was busier. Personally, I would
prefer if the pace was more even and thus less stressful during the entire
academic year, such that the amount of work was spread out more evenly.
So what did I do from mid-May until now, before my summer vacation? I am co-adviser for a PhD student who has to
deliver her thesis by the end of July, plus send her last article for
publication so that she can write in her thesis that it has been submitted for
publication. I am senior author on that paper, so I have read through and
edited the paper several times during the month of June. Additionally, I have read
through and edited her thesis for both scientific and grammatical accuracy
several times. Most Norwegian students write their theses in English. I believe
it is now a requirement, whereas their defense can be in Norwegian, although
many choose to defend in English. Most Norwegians speak English well,
especially the younger ones who have grown up watching American TV programs and
movies, surfing the internet/social media, and listening to music. So it is not
a major problem to edit a thesis for correct English usage; it just takes time.
But this is what a senior scientist does—it’s part of the job.
I also wrote a grant proposal that I submitted to the Cancer Society in
early June. I spent more than a month reading background articles and writing
the proposal, which had to do with treating gastrointestinal cancers with drugs
that drive them into a senescent (non-proliferating) state. I was a peer reviewer for an article about treating colorectal
cancer with a combination of natural compounds that led to effective tumor kill
without killing normal cells, a win-win situation for patients. I was also an external
grant reviewer for another country; this is often done—that granting agencies
send out grant proposals for external review outside their own country. In this
case, I learned a lot about treatment of colorectal cancer with adoptive cell transfer
using tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. This is a field I knew only a bit about,
but about which I know quite a lot more at this point after having read the
proposal and a number of review articles that helped me to understand it so
that I could review it properly. I also read and edited an article written by
two of my colleagues who asked me to check their review article for correct English
usage and grammar. I also read some background articles about ionizing radiation
and how it is used in cancer treatment; this was information I found on the
American Cancer Society website. I am impressed with the information that is
available there to patients and their families, and impressed with the writers
who create these articles and brochures. Finally, I printed out a number of
review articles about mass spectrometry imaging of tissue samples; this is a
cutting-edge technology that has a bright future not only in cancer research,
but in pathology generally, as well as in disease treatment, pharmacology and
toxicology. I need to learn as much about it as possible in case I travel to
visit a medical center in the States that uses this technology successfully in
their research projects.
It occurred
to me today that I could work as an editor of a scientific journal, as a senior
adviser for any number of scientific/political organizations, and as a scientific writer.
I do all these things in my job as an academic research scientist, in addition
to planning research projects and figuring out how to implement them. One must
also figure out how to do all these things on a limited budget if such is the
case. Academia is really a creative profession, in more ways than one.
