I'll pick your nits, mate!

With Thanksgiving upon us, I thought I'd talk about one of many things I appreciate about my current lab. You may recall that I do most of my research at the non-university research institution where Research Advisor works. There are hardly any students there full time, so the staff is an assortment of PIs, post docs, and technicians. It has a much more collaborative culture since lab groups aren't comprised of several students who are all responsible for different projects. We are more or less focused on the same goals and since the techs are paid to do the work they are assigned, there aren't the territorial conflicts that can crop up in university labs. One of the benefits of this structure is that everyone is interested in what you're doing.

It can be very isolating to be in a lab where your project is a little different from the principle themes of the group. Or to be in a department where the faculty research interests are diverse so no other labs are doing work similar to your lab. It can limit collaboration and hamper enthusiasm if no one ever wants to talk shop with you because they work in a different shop. Sure, exposure to different ideas can be great, but if the ideas are so different that no one wants to explain them to you, it doesn't do much good to be in a diverse department. And it can really suck if most other people are doing similar work but yours is very different. Then you just feel left out. You suffer a little when there's no one to pick your nits.

I am thankful that I can talk to Awesome Technician about any little issue and she'll both know what I'm talking about and be interested. I like that everyone faces similar practical problems so we can all tackle them together, or at least get decent advice because other people have thought about the problem too. I also like that since we don't operate in separate little domains, we team up when work really needs to get done (e.g. it's pretty easy to assemble a crew for field work). Money is allocated from several different projects, so there is some level of assigning effort to particular grants, but overall we operate as a unit.

There are downsides to anything, however, and this is no exception. For example, I think we are prone to isolation. And we all get along pretty well, but I could imagine that one bad egg could really hinder productivity in a situation like ours. Also, it takes strong leadership to direct people who don't take ownership of their work like grad students do. Scientists aren't trained to be managers. I think professors can get away with poor management skills because their staff -- grad students and post docs, mainly -- really want to accomplish things and meet goals. Technicians, on the other hand, typically don't have that same motivation. That it how it should be, but it changes what the PI needs to do to keep the lab rolling.

In summary, I like my lab because we share common interests. Happy Thanksgiving.