Opinion: Back to the lab

In 2005, after 6 years of solid work in a research laboratory, I finally received my doctorate (PhD) in microbiology and molecular genetics from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). Since then, I have been working as a writer, and have spent zero time in a laboratory. That is, until this past summer. I was told it couldn't be done -- a writer could never return to the lab after a five year hiatus, some said. Part of me wanted to prove them wrong -- and I have -- but my return to the lab has not been easy.

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My new career was born out of a desire to live the life of a college professor, without having to obtain a fulltime faculty position. I wanted to perform life science research without having to write grants. I wanted to teach college courses but not on a full time basis. And I wanted to spend the lion's share of my time writing articles, books, essays, songs, etc. So that's where I started, dedicating nearly all of my time writing articles for, and pitching article ideas to, magazines. But for the last year, I've started to look for teaching and lab work opportunities that would not interfere with my writing business, and would provide additional income when I was between writing assignments. One of the networking catalysts I explored was linkurl:The Science Advisory Board Web site.;http://www.scienceboard.net/ In May 2010, I posted a comment on the site: PhD-level science writer wants to return the lab after a 5-year hiatus...any advice? The response I received was overwhelmingly negative. Some said: "Why would you want to return to the lab after five years? ...Continue working on science writing, it's more lucrative!" They also said a lot had changed in life science in the last five years and that I would struggle to learn the new technologies. But among the deluge of negativity, there were two positive replies: One was for book writing project, which I am currently pursuing, and the other was a request to send my contact info to a Professor at Rutgers University who was interested in hiring a part-time molecular biologist for summer 2010. His name is linkurl:William Ward,;http://lifesci.rutgers.edu/%7Emolbiosci/faculty/ward_w.html and he is both a professor at Rutgers and the president of linkurl:Brighter Ideas Inc.,;http://www.brighterideasinc.com/ a small biotechnology company that specializes in the production of antibodies against green fluorescent protein. Long story short, I was hired as a visiting scientist for Brighter Ideas Inc., and joined the lab in June. I was excited to have landed a research job that afforded me the flexibility I needed to continue my writing pursuits, by allowing me to work three days a week, five hours a day. But I quickly realized that I was not fully prepared for life back in the lab. I was, for example, unfamiliar with some of their methods. I had one way of doing things; they had another; and I found myself occasionally wanting to revert back to the methods with which I felt most comfortable.After a little more time in the lab, I stumbled upon another inconsistency between this lab and my previous experiences -- a difference that was, it turns out, causing the failure of an experiment in which I was preparing E. coli cells for transformation with recombinant DNA. After a few weeks of frustrating trial and error, I finally realized that source of the problem was the water I was using. Apparently the water in the carboy I had drawn from for my study was deionized water, which still contains low levels of ions that could upset the highly sensitive experiment. Instead, I should have used milliQ water, which was all I had ever found in the carboy in my graduate lab.The issue highlighted an important difference between my graduate alma mater -- UMDNJ, a large medical school -- and my new lab. At UMDNJ, I did not have to worry about the source of my deionized water or other routine lab tasks. Those services were performed by the maintenance staff, so that researchers and graduate students could just concentrate on their research. In contrast, in the Rutgers academic lab, I was on my own to figure out how things worked. And this lack of knowledge seriously hampered my progress for the entire summer. I also found out that 15 hours a week was not enough time to dedicate to a project, especially at the beginning when nothing is working. But I have retained my position, now extended to at least the end of November, and having learned from my experience in the lab this summer, I am prepared to commit more time to my research project and hopefully complete it. Returning to the lab is possible; it just takes a little adjusting. linkurl:James Netterwald;http://www.nasw.org/users/netterjr/ is a freelance science writer and editor based in New Jersey.
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