(FYI this is less about what I actually did day to day and more about my experience with PIPS (my PhD internship) as a whole. I know the NHS/SLDTRL aren’t secret societies but I don’t know how much they’d want me sharing so I’d rather just be incredibly general!! I’d very much like to stay friends with them!)
PIPS
So, as you probably already know, I’m a PhD student and I am part of a doctoral training programme funded by EASTBIO. As part of that training deal I had to do a 3-month internship that had nothing to do with my PhD. This, by the way, is called PIPS (Professional Internships for PhD Students).
I guess I should start by saying that my feelings around PIPS underwent peaks and troughs…but don’t worry we definitely end on a peak. Everybody’s experiences and opinions are different, and actually, often quite polarised! To some extent I think it’s what you make of it but also, I think it depends on luck and your past experiences.
When I first heard about PIPS I was super enthusiastic about the opportunity to spend 3 months exploring my options and doing something different. In the early days I sang the praises of PIPS to prospective EASTBIO students, had tonnes of ideas that I chatted to my supervisors about and thought by the time it came around I’d appreciate the ‘break’.
But after this initial bout of positivity I went to the PIPS meeting where the rules of PIPS were actually explained. This is when the trough started! Firstly, PIPS has to be PhD level. This was super blurry to me. What does it even mean? I still don’t know! I have a few problems with this. For a start how many jobs do you actually ‘need’ a PhD for? Jobs have worth regardless of the training level required to do them and have we failed if we leave our 4-year programmes as doctors but get a non-PhD level job? Secondly, we had to be in control of a project and we couldn’t be left to do ‘menial’ tasks. I understand that this is probably there as a rule to protect us so that we don’t end up making tea for 3 months, but, to me, it felt a bit rich to swan into a role that I’ve no experience of and not start at/or near the bottom. Thirdly, funding options were limited. There is funding but you’re only eligible if you get a PIPS far enough away from your city or home base. Okay, we’re still receiving our full stipend during that time but the money that is available is in no way enough to cover rent and travel for 3 months. Am I supposed to rent my flat for 3 months? Move out of the little flat I love and then find somewhere else to live when I return? In that case where do I put my stuff? Do I dip into my savings and pay double rent? Or do I stay within city and limit myself to positions I find there? After the meeting I felt pretty dejected, essentially none of the things I’d hoped I might do fit into the criteria which meant a huge rethink.
There are companies all over the country that advertise for PhD students specifically for internships of this nature but I can tell you now, there were very few (as in none that I saw) in Aberdeen, which is my city. Plus, these positions are obviously competitive so there’s no guarantee you’ll get it. Outside of these advertised roles you can organise your own project with a company of your choice…as long as it’s PhD level of course. You’re advised to ask the company to help pay for your internship which I found deeply uncomfortable. “Hi, you don’t know me, can I come and project lead something in your company for just 3 months and can you pay me for it”? Oof. Me being a negative nelly aside, the freedom to explore options within a company you like, does have the potential to be both rewarding and exciting.
I think overall I was just so disappointed that after all my enthusiasm and all of my ideas it boiled down to who are my contacts and who will make sure I’m not out of pocket for this? It just became a stressful hoop I had to jump through. Because of that it didn’t feel like a break from my PhD at all. I actively dreaded it. I’d swung into a position where it felt like a waste of time, I guess partly because I felt that at this point in my life (after 16 years of working in various roles) I didn’t need to do work experience for the sake of work experience.
I also think one of the trials of this situation was also the fact that I’m a student rep for my year, and whilst I was struggling to engage with the process, I was also trying to be encouraging and enthusiastic in front of students earlier in their PhDs. Ultimately, I didn’t want to influence their opinions but I didn’t want to lie about how I was feeling either. It was a razor fine line to tread and I generally said as little as possible!
Having said all that, I think I was incredibly lucky that my PhD supervisor was still in touch with one of his ex-students and they were in a position to take me on as part of a project just North of Aberdeen in Inverness. They were able to provide super cheap accommodation and because it was 50 miles from my home city, I could get EASTBIO funding. Yay! They promised me I wouldn’t be left out of pocket which was a huge relief. Not only this, but perhaps most importantly it was something I was interested in doing. The project plan took a bit of tweaking and I have to say that the PIPS co-ordinator in EASTBIO was really helpful with this. She very quickly advised me on exactly what would make my project PIPS appropriate and guided me until the deal was signed. Happily, at this point, I was coming out of my grump!
As you can probably ascertain from the title of this blog my PIPS was in the Scottish Lyme Disease and Tick Borne Infections Reference Laboratory (SLDTRL) which is situated within the microbiology lab in the Raigmore hospital in Inverness. The SLDTRL is THE reference laboratory for all tick related things in Scotland. “The aim of SLDTRL is to provide more comprehensive and standardised testing for Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections and to improve the epidemiological data provided to Health Protection Scotland (HPS)”. Which is very cool.
Okay, so with the moany downer bit out of the way I can tell you about some of my experiences in the PIPS I actually ended up doing!
Where did I live?
Anyway, I guess one of the most natural places to start is accommodation.
When I first arrived in Inverness I stayed in a little Airbnb in the city because there were a few days I wasn’t able to squeeze into hospital student accommodation, which was great. It meant the first part of my PIPS felt like a holiday and I like Inverness, so I enjoyed being in the city. On that first weekend my partner travelled up from Aberdeen to see me (obviously!) and help move me and my stuff up to the hospital. I collected the keys from a security guard who pointed me to an area of uniform grey buildings and I skipped off to find out where I’d be living for 3 months. We walked through the vast hospital carpark towards my block of flats, which resembled something from the series Chernobyl, albeit before the disaster! It didn’t get too much better inside the building which was brutally reminiscent of a Soviet Bloc stereotype. The pictures actually make it look better. It was so bad it was actually quite funny. I don’t think my partner knew what to say…other than that he didn’t want to have to leave me there!
Flats accommodated four people with all facilities shared…definitely not something I’m used to anymore. I rarely ran into the people I shared with which may have had something to do with the fact that I’d wait in my room until I could hear there wasn’t anyone else around! But, meeting people occasionally was unavoidable. Everyone was very nice and I was told that the accommodation was actually better, if not the best, that those people had experienced within the NHS. I totally get that the NHS have better things to spend their money on than staff/student accommodation and it’s not a priority butttt it’s still pretty grim! It did however eventually become ‘home’ and I got very used to it. It also encouraged me to spend all of my weekends away and explore the area whilst staying in nice hotels and airbnbs! Which was great.
People
Outside of the accommodation and inside the hospital I think the first thing I want to talk about is the people. Everyone was so friendly. I’ve never felt so welcome, so quickly, in a new place of work. I was introduced to everyone in the microbiology lab at one of their daily ‘pause’ meetings and regardless of the fact I was only around for 3 months people were actively interested in chatting to me and made a real effort to invite me to things. Perhaps it’s because they’re used to having locums around or perhaps they’re just a delightful team of people. But either way, it was hugely appreciated and made my transition to a new environment considerably easier. Outside of the lab, the cleaners, the people that worked in the cafes, the admin staff and the security folk were all lovely.
I shared an office with the director of the ref lab, Dr Roger Evans (who is now on a super cool sabbatical with the WHO for a year), the deputy director, Dr Sally Mavin (who is now the director) and specialist biomedical scientist, Rachel Milner. It was a great opportunity to share an office with my bosses. They took lots of time to make sure I was getting what I wanted out of my PIPS, they included me in meetings so I got a broader idea of what happened within the microbiology lab and were just generally open and available to answering any questions I had. They also made sure I got my free Hep B vaccines despite the fact I wasn’t directly handling human samples. Winner! From a women in STEM perspective, both Sally and Rachel were inspiring role models on a number of levels and I’d say the majority of staff in the department (in a number of varying positions) were female.
Attitude
The attitude towards work, for me, was one of the most glaring differences between the SLDTRL/microbiology lab and academia.
For a start, they take breaks, actual planned breaks! This revolutionised my life and I now take those same breaks whilst I work from home during lockdown. I started at 9 and I finished at half 5 every day. There is a coffee break at half 10/11ish, a whole hours lunch break at 1ish and another, optional, tea break at about 4ish. As a PhD student I have coffee at my desk, I normally eat at my desk and a break is me scrolling through Twitter or doing a quick bit of online shopping. I found that in taking breaks I actually organised and broke down my workload better and actually worked harder and more efficiently. It was also just nice to have a change of scenery from my office for a bit. It’s not that my supervisors don’t give me the freedom to take breaks, of course they do, I think it’s more that overworking is just an insidious part of academic culture. On the theme of breaks one of the first things Sally asked me was whether I had any holiday due as part of the PIPS, this definitely struck me as something very non-academic to ask! I, along with everyone else was actively encouraged to take all holiday owed.
On top of the breaks Roger, Sally and Rachel were all firm that I should leave close to half 5, or earlier! I never felt the need to work longer. As a PhD student I often find myself taking work home with me. The hours I’m in the zoology office don’t necessarily reflect the hours that I work and there’s generally a feeling that whatever I am not doing isn’t ‘enough’. There can also be this weird posturing between students sometimes about the amount of hours they’re putting in. This has definitely changed since I’ve got back. Sharing an office with the people in charge of me meant they knew what I was up to pretty much all the time and I knew they were happy with my progress. Since returning I’ve sent my supervisors an email every Friday with the work I’ve done and this has both kept me feeling accountable during lockdown, and created an air of transparency in that if my supervisors didn’t think I was doing enough work week to week they could tell me. Of course, they haven’t said anything!
I also found that in the Raigmore they just generally stopped more frequently and reflected on things before proceeding further. I often feel the pressure in zoology to just get on with things and think about it later. If it was just a bad day in the microbiology lab, as in machines were being fickle or I (or whoever else) was making mistakes, the general attitude was to stop. Tomorrow is a new day. As a PhD student my attitude would have more likely been to keep working until I got it right, even if that means working very late.
People at the Raigmore worked really hard but there was just a much better balance. Okay, people skipped breaks sometimes, worked extra hours, took work home with them occasionally but the weighting of that was totally different. I feel like in academia those things are expected on the regular and quite frankly I have craft projects to finish!
Teaching
So, academic labs and biomedical labs are very different in what they do and as a result of this training is also very different. It’s not unusual to be handed a protocol and told to just have a go, to design a protocol yourself, tweak somebody else’s or be quickly taught by someone how to do something whilst you’re furiously trying to scribble down everything they’re saying. Learning how to do this as well as learning how to troubleshoot your problems with protocols is a huge skill and sometimes pretty fun. I’m not knocking that…but, I found the handholding approach in a biomedical lab to be incredibly comforting. I can’t remember the exact timing and process so don’t quote me but people are shown how to do something a number of times, then they are watched as they do that thing themselves a number of times and only then can they start running tests without direct supervision.
Biomedical labs do the same tests over and over again on very important samples and therefore they have standard operating procedures (SOPs) and a tonne of quality control measures. Just knowing that everyone did everything the same way, being able to compare quality results to other peoples and having everything be traceable was just fab! I thought I might find it all a bit restrictive but actually it gave me ideas of how I would like to plan, document and run my PhD experiments in the future.
This blog is already too long so well done if you made it all the way to the end! I guess the takeaway was that I’m glad I remained somewhat open-minded despite being very grumpy about the PIPS journey at one stage. I think we’re often made to do things that we’re not totally thrilled about and okay, it’s alright to have moan and it’s okay to be unenthusiastic about something…nobody’s perfect! But, I think it’s equally important to admit when you were somewhat wrong and that you found an experience more valuable than you ever would have imagined.
I’m just hugely grateful to the SLDTRL, the microbiology lab and the Raigmore in general.
In A Kingdom By The Sea 