Workshop Reflection

The Career Development 101 workshop was pretty helpful. It talked a lot about obvious aspects to networking that I never really thought about. Every chance I'm with people is a chance to meet new people and build connections, whether professional or personal. It feels kind of awkward to meet people with the intent of networking, but I guess the workshop made the point that networking is a necessity that people need to develop their own career goals. The workshop also helped push the idea of getting a business card in order to have an easy way for other people to get a hold of you. This is an example of a simple idea that I never really thought about.

The Getting Published workshop was informative in the fact that it gave a personal account on the publication process from a researcher who has been published. The description of the process emphasized the tediousness and effort required in publishing just one paper. To me, it seems like getting published requires substantial effort, and is the most stressful part of the research career: it determines the fate of my personal career and that of my lab (in terms of getting grants). However, knowing that researchers daily submit papers to get published is comforting because it assures me that the process is not impossible.