Lab Notebook (III) - What makes a good PhD student?

According to an article in Nature (Nature 441, 252 (May 2006) | doi:10.1038/nj7090-252b), some suggestions for prospective Ph.D. students have been listed by Georgia Chenevix-Trench. The followings are the original suggestions and the translations:


* Choose a supervisor whose work you admire and who is well supported by grants and departmental infrastructure.

Translation: Find a supervisor who is definitely rich!

* Take responsibility for your project.
Translation: Make sure you're the first author in the papers.

* Work hard — long days all week and part of most weekends. If research is your passion this should be easy, and if it isn't, you are probably in the wrong field. Note who goes home with a full briefcase to work on at the end of the day. This is a cause of success, not a consequence.
Translation: Be prepared to be a slave!

* Take some weekends off, and decent holidays, so you don't burn out.
Translation: Vacations sometimes are good for you, but only sometimes......

* Read the literature in your immediate area, both current and past, and around it. You can't possibly make an original contribution to the literature unless you know what is already there.
Translation: Know how others did the experiments by that you can try to replicate them.

* Plan your days and weeks carefully to dovetail experiments so that you have a minimum amount of downtime.
Translation: You'll be assigned more jobs to do if you don't look busy anyway......

* Keep a good lab book and write it up every day.
Translation: Don't ever trust your goddamn memories!

* Be creative. Think about what you are doing and why, and look for better ways to go. Don't see your PhD as just a road map laid out by your supervisor.
Translation: At least try not to look stupid!

* Develop good writing skills: they will make your scientific career immeasurably easier.
Translation: Writing proposals and papers sucks! But you'll be forced to write some by your boss anyway......

* To be successful you must be at least four of the following: smart, motivated, creative, hard-working, skilful and lucky. You can't depend on luck, so you had better focus on the others!
Translation: If you're really lucky, you wouldn't sit here and read this stupid article!