PostdocPartum #2: Viral voices
{250 words, 1 figure, 2 minutes}
One of the best discoveries on the internet is finding something that speaks to you and for you, when you can't find the words and/or pictures yourself. PhD Comics is well known for providing a comedic voice for the frustrations of graduate students. Rapid-fire tumblr blogs with memetic GIFs have also done that to viral effect, the best one I've found being What Should We Call Grad School. It's comforting for lonely graduate students, who remain a group that is frequently unspoken for and relatively unknown to the general public, to find that there are other people who understand their experience. I also really enjoy TOCROFL, which highlights ridiculous and occasionally phallic figures in graphical abstracts of scholarly articles.
The latest tumblr I've found is Lego Grad Student, which is a little darker in its humor but creatively made and cleverly photographed. A recent post hit a chord with me from my new perspective as a postdoc:
I used to think like this and despair. Now my attitude is this: if there is no literature on your work, you either haven't searched hard enough or you're actually doing something new. If there is already literature on your work, then it means it is not impossible. I partly have to thank my project manager for conferring this optimistic attitude and the positive environment that I now do research in. It is an uplifting difference in mentality that inspires me to work harder and look eagerly to the future.
