Author Archives: beykex

How to postdoc grant and not die in the process

The scientific career seems to follow a pattern of slight variations, from the feeling of senseless wandering (at first overwhelmed by a sea of knowledge as an undergrad or phd student, but later as skepticism and solipsism based on first-hand experience), to the uncertainty of what comes after our current stage (postdoc? Young PI? Faculty?). As many say, it doesn’t get easier -but it can get better and more rewarding. And to spark a bit of hope in the steps following the completion of the PhD, today I am drawing from my experience of applying to five postdoctoral fellowships in the past few months of 2021, to summarise what I have learned, what can be improved, and whatever might be of help.

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Adiós, Evangelion

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Ha pasado lo impensable. Después de catorce años desde las películas, y de veinticinco años desde la serie original, ha terminado Evangelion. Anno lo ha vuelto a hacer: nos ha dejado con la boca abierta. Porque contra todo pronóstico, increíblemente, Evangelion explica la mayor parte de las cosas y acaba en un buen final.

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Making a workflow

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This is my first kind of serious project in bioinformatics. I had to prepare some de novo transcriptome assemblies from weird organisms using publicly available data, and I took the chance to learn a little bit how to automate processes using bash scripting, virtual environments, a a lot of variables and flags.

I have named this pristine, and it can be found in my github repository.

I will keep working on it as I learn how to code and make new things. I recently saw a way to download and transfer fastq data into other softwares on-the-go as it is downloaded using UNIX pipes. I will try to check if something like this could be done, how cool.

Cheers!

(and no, I did not forget about the last post of the multicellularity story. I just need free time and energies to sit down and finish it :’) )

Characters, Plot, People, Aspirations

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I turn 28 today.

It is difficult for me to try and think the way I did when I started posting here more seriously, nearly ten years ago. I have been in many places, going through different things and doing many other different things, and I want to take today’s opportunity to talk a little bit about one of the biggest changes in my life: I focus a lot on characters now.

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On the imposter syndrome of mine (as of 2020)

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This long rambling originated from a coaching session of the ‘Kintsugi’ method that I attended back in 2020. I did not really care about the branding and identity of the method, but it is true that more often than not I get something of net value out of these activities.

One of the things I acknowledge every time I look back at my trajectory is, I really grew and developed not only by doing a PhD, but by seeking the opportunity to do a PhD. I managed to move quite outside of my environment to do the PhD. I found a really great lab and I had a very good time there. I managed to learn a bunch of things career-wise but it is true that things would have been very different if I had gone there some years later when the financial situation of the lab was very different. One thing that has not changed since then, however, is the imposter syndrome.

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