Career advice from an associate university professor

I met Todd Nolan through my old college roommate, whom I’ve already interviewed From professor to entrepreneur.  If you are curious about my other scientist interviews see these: The business side of science, Life as a postdoctoral researcher, Working in the science industry, Balancing work and family life as a part-time college instructor, The important work of a science policy director, Leaving…

Living with constant anxiety and learning how to control it

I am taking a break from writing my interview a scientist series while I wait for more interviews from colleagues.  So I am choosing to write about a topic that I know many of my close friends and acquaintances deal with: living with anxiety.  It’s been too long that mental health has been pushed under the rug and hidden like a dirty secret, so I think more of us should be talking about it…

The ins and outs of being an associate college professor

Welcome to my next installment of interviewing a scientist series!  If you are curious about my previous interviews they are here: Leaving academia to teach young scientists, The important work of a science policy director, Balancing work and family life as a part-time college instructor, Working in the science industry, Life as a postdoctoral researcher, The business side of science, From…

Leaving academia to teach young scientists

Welcome to the next installment of my interview a scientist series! If you are interested in reading my previous interviews, they are here:  The important work of a science policy director, Balancing work and family life as a part-time college instructor, Working in the science industry, Life as a postdoctoral researcher, The business side of science, From professor to entrepreneur.  

I met Sean…

The important work of a science policy director

Kyla Bennett was referred to me through Kerri Mullen because of her unique role as a Science Policy Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an environmental whistleblower group.  I wanted to get some interviews with scientists that have unconventional careers so that young students in the sciences get a sense of what they can do with their degrees.  If you would like…

Balancing work and family life as a part-time college instructor

I met Kerri while I was attending graduate school at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA and we were both lab instructors for the same course.  We have kept in touch since then and I also gave two lectures to her environmental science course when she taught at Stonehill College in Easton, MA.

Kerri received her bachelor’s of science in biology from Simmons College and then a master’s degree from…

I met Emily while we were both doing our postdocs at Brown University, but in two different labs.  We’d frequently talk about applying for grant funding and what we were planning to do after our postdocs.

Emily received a bachelors degree at Wheaton College where she majored in biology and minored in chemistry.  She received her PhD in biomedical sciences at UMass Medical School and then went to…

Welcome to the third installment of my interviewing a scientist series!  If you want to read my previous interviews, here are the links:The business side of science and a professor turned entrepreneur. 

This weeks interview is about a previous graduate student in the lab of Jennifer Swann at Lehigh University, who was also my PhD advisor!  He started in her lab after I had already graduated and…

I am continuing my interview a scientist series! Previously I wrote about a woman that went From professor to entrepreneur.  This week I chatted with a woman that I attended graduate school with who had familial and cultural expectations to become a physician, but instead is now in a scientific business career.

I attended graduate school with Rikhi Kaushal at Lehigh University, while we were both…

From professor to entrepreneur

Here is the first blog in my interviewing a scientist series!  If you know a budding scientist that would love to learn more about various scientific careers and the ins and outs of being ins, please send them the link to the blog.  Happy reading!

  Education and training:

Dr. Rebecca Nolan Harris was my former roommate and classmate during our undergraduate studies.  She originally was an…

Interview a scientist series

The more I think about my career, the more I realize there is a lot I wish I had known as a high school, college, and graduate student.

It would have been so helpful to get advice from current scientists about their fields of study, the training and education they had, what they like about their careers, etc. 

Therefore, I decided to start a series specifically for those thinking about careers in…

I’ve thought a lot about the best ways to stand out in my career and to get ahead in life.    I’m not perfect though and sometimes need to remind myself of this list! Always strive to be better but be ok with not being perfect.  These are things that I have learned work for me.

  plan your days – if you have a busy day, planning is key.  My work varies so much because I’m running experiments,…

I’ve always been interested in where I “came from” since I was very young.  My parents always told me that as far as they knew, we were mostly German and since I was a young kid, I was interested in German culture and language.   In middle and high school, I took German language classes and when I was 17 went on a 10 day trip to Germany, Austria and Switzerland as part of my class.  That was my…

1)Losing friends to parenthood.  I found out the other day that another one of my friends is pregnant for the first time.  I am totally happy for her, but I know that when my friends have had kids, I usually rarely see them after that.  They tend to hang out more with their couple friends that have kids and go to kid centered events. So, in a way, I feel like I am losing another friend.  My husband and I don’t plan on having any of our own kids, so it’s almost like a death of a friendship when more of our friends have children.

2) My career.   I feel stagnant in my career at the moment.  Yes, I am accomplishing things like writing up a research paper and a review article, and planning a work conference to Vegas, but I still feel like i’m not far enough ahead to where I thought I would be right now.  

3) Has my life peaked already?  This thought is so damaging to the psyche.  I remember my lust for life that I used to have when I was younger and I don’t feel that way anymore.  I’ve already accomplished a lot in my life and I’ve traveled a lot, so I always wonder, have I already been through the best times of my life?

4) How will I feel, health wise, as I get older?  You may have already read my posts about having chronic pain.  It impacts my day to day life and gets in the way of many things I used to enjoy.  I wonder if my health will continue to deteriorate as I get older. I ordered 23 and me kits for my husband and I this Christmas and I’ll am curious to find out if I am a carrier of any of the genetic disorders that they test for.  

So, those are my biggest concerns at the moment.  I am trying to think of ways to stay positive before I go down the rabbit hole of sadness and depression. Here are some things that I hope will help myself and maybe some of my readers.

Thinking this will be a great year, my best year yet.  Mindset is everything. I plan to set clear goals and give myself timelines to reach them.  Then, in reaching these goals, there is a confidence and drive that comes from accomplishments and that will in turn create more motivation.   

a) Write the manuscript and review article – when I finish these, I think I will have more motivation at work

b) Meet some new scientists at the conference in Vegas – meeting new scientists with new ideas usually gives me a renewed energy about my research and helps me to come up with new ideas for my own scientific interests.

c) Write at least 24 new blog posts – this will help me pursue my bigger goal of writing my own book.  I hope to gain more followers and interact more with my readers.

d) Remodel the bathrooms in my house – My plan is to create a spa-like atmosphere in our master bathroom.  Feeling relaxed and zen is always a mood booster.

e) Connect more with my friends that I haven’t seen in a long time.  I have old friends in PA that I haven’t seen in months/ years. They were some of my closest and dearest friends.  There is a hole in my heart from moving away from them. So, I plan to travel back to see many of them in the spring so that we can reconnect.  

  2. I will focus on becoming healthier than I am.  My husband and I recently started following the paleo diet.  I would say we follow it about 80% of the time and I have felt a major change in my energy levels and how I feel from eating more fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean protein.  We cut out unhealthy snacks and cut way back on sugar. My biggest goal from this diet was to just feel better and have more energy. If I lose a few pounds along the way even better.  

  3.  I will plan at least two things that I haven’t done before.  Did you ever have an event or trip coming up that made you so excited and you looked forward to it for weeks or months?  There are many different things I’ve been wanting to try and I haven’t yet. I am thinking along the lines of:

a) Seeing the ice castles in New Hampshire and staying there for a weekend getaway.

b) Trying a new art class like glass blowing or pottery making.

c) Selling my works at a farmer’s market type of event.  My husband and I made these crazy fun desserts over Christmas and I am thinking of attending a weekly farmer’s market to sell some of them with my Mother in law.

pigs in a hot tub cake!

red velvet cake pops

  What about you? Has the new year or a birthday spurred you to set some new goals for the year ahead? If so, what are they?

If you’ve never traveled to a resort or it’s been a while, I am giving some tips for before and during your stay!

Use a travel agent – Many people are under the assumption that it costs more money to use a travel agent.  This is not true. The agents get a commission from the services/hotels that are used for your trip. Our travel agent got us a much better deal than if we had booked the resort and transfers ourselves.  

Join a Facebook group for that particular resort – I found a very useful Facebook group for our resort!  I got some very helpful suggestions on drinks to try, food to eat, how much cash to bring for tips, and other info about the resort.

Scour through trip advisor – Trip Advisor was also super helpful for me.  The website gives you the option to narrow down reviews based upon time of travel, travel as a couple or a group, and type of vacation (relaxing, adventurous, etc)

Club upgrade not necessary – The Excellence resorts, like other resorts have options to upgrade for ‘premium services’.  While nice, I found at Excellence, it was completely not necessary to upgrade to the Club option. The upgrade would have given us an extra restaurant to use, premium alcohol in our room (all rooms have a minibar free to use), and a different section of the beach in which chairs could be reserved.   For us, the upgrades weren’t worth the extra money. However, each resort is different and everyone has different needs for their vacation.

Bring lots of $1s and $5s for tipping –  Even though our resort was all-inclusive, we still brought $1s and $5s for tipping.  We tipped everyone, the barista, our servers, the bell-hop, our driver to/from airport, bartenders, etc.  I learned that many of the resort workers actually lived many hours away from the resort (the longest we heard of was 7 hours!).  The workers stayed at the resort (shared apartment style housing) and worked around a week straight (many of them up to 15 hours a day).  They deserved to be tipped. To them, a few $s goes a long way and is a nice gesture.

Book private transfer – The last thing we wanted to do after arriving to the island was to wait around for other passengers to share a ride to several different resorts.  I wanted to get there asap! Same goes for going from the resort back to the airport. Yes it’s a bit more costly, but totally worth it for me.

Use mobile passport if it’s available through your airport – There are several airports now that use mobile passport functionality.  The apps are available on your smartphone. You’ll have to set it up before you leave, but you’ll scan your passport, fill out info about yourself and take a selfie.  It makes going through the immigration lines much quicker.

Bring pens in your carry on – This is so you can fill out customs/immigration forms before you get to the line, if mobile passport isn’t available.  

Use the spa! – The Excellence resorts have the Miile spa on property.  Oh, it’s incredible. They always include hydrotherapy before your massage session, which in itself is a blissful experience (you’ll move between the sauna, steam room, various hot tub type of pools, hot and cold showers, and a body scrub).  We got our massages on the beach instead of inside. There was a beautiful breeze with the sounds of the ocean, it was nirvana.

Bring pool floats – After reading reviews on TripAdvisor and on the Facebook group, I realized this particular resort didn’t have any pool floats.  So, we ended up buying cheap ones on Amazon and then leaving them at the resort for another couple.

Early dinner – Some resorts take reservations for dinner.  The excellence resorts do not. There were a few nights that we got to the restaurant after 7pm and ended up waiting over an hour to get seated.  If you want to avoid this, go early, before 7pm and you’ll get seated right away. One night we were so hungry, we went to the sports bar to get mozzarella sticks and pizza as apps before our dinner.  

Take part of the group dinners – The resorts hosts big group buffet dinners several nights a week in the main “plaza” outside.  They have entertainment during dinner as well. This is where we met some other couples and an amazing server, that hooked us up with mamajuana shots all night!  

Take part in activities – There is all kinds of fun games to play during your stay, we played corn hole one day and won some Dominican coffee to take home!  There’s also water and sand vball, bingo, and other fun games hosted by the entertainment staff. It’s a good way to break up your day.

Meet some new people – People travel to the Caribbean from all over the world.  We met Canadians, a couple from Chicago, one from NY, one from Tennessee. It was interesting to hear about their travels and time at the resort.

Write a review when you return! I think it’s helpful to read reviews, so I always write reviews on places that I’ve stayed.  You can read my review here on TripAdvisor.