Guten Rutsch*

New Year comes with new resolution. One of mine was a direct result of heart-to-heart talk (or heart-to-head, to be more precise :-)) with my supervisor on my last working day, just before holiday.

Last year had been an exhausting year for me. Besides personal problem and the usual work demand, I had been feeling more and more like a misplaced person in the institute. Perhaps it was a culmination of all the pressure together, of starting in a new place, of being a foreigner (whose differences amazed the never-going-out-of-the-country colleagues), of being a lone ranger in terms of my subject in the institute. Added on top of that, my own evaluation of my PhD study.

I have always considered my field to be (or should be) in the area of chemistry. After all, you need chemistry to understand what is going on during processing and analysing your sample. Then, since you are using analytical instrument, you need a bit (or a lot) of physics also, depending on how far you are playing with your instrument. Biology comes later, when you are moving away from experimenting with the hardware of your instrument and getting closer to more application.

I have never been in doubt of my preference; i.e. more into application, closer to patients; and that's why I landed in this institute. Of course, pharmaceutical sciences is just at the intersection of many natural sciences' displicines. You always need a bit of everything to understand everything.
But problem comes as you are moving deeper into your own spesialized subject. The question is then, how broad is enough? Broadness has inverse operation to deepness, just like a manager functions differently than a technical specialist.

In this institute, I am the only one doing analytical chemistry, while everybody else doing anything related to molecular or cell biology and on purposely (I mean, they have said clearly to me that they don't care) oblivious to even the most basic knowledge of my subject. I felt then like a stranger, lack of scientific input from others and lack of my own contribution to others. Worse was when the big boss of the institute wanted us, the PhD students from different research areas, to integrate more by having regular scientific discussion to broaden ourselves. But since the big boss and the staff members themselves don't know where our overlapping technical interest is, why don't we all discuss history instead? ;-) That is also broadening, isn't it? (by agreed definition, broadening is discussing topic different than our daily project). At least, it is fair to everybody :-)

My supervisor of course understood my problem very well. She is actually at the same place like me, only we have different position :-) Good supervisor, she promised to find another PhD student and postdoc soon :-) so I could scientifically benefit from my surrounding also in this institute. (Of course there have been already projects that needs another PhD and postdoc. But I like the way she consoled me :-)).

But back to my new resolution, as she and I agreed, I would integrate myself more to the research group of my doctoral-father; which is no biology at all and actually a lot of physics, but still it could be a good balance for my research.

So there I was, during my first two working days in this new year, attending two totally different group seminars. The second one on Friday was the one from the institute. Again, it made me think if I have made a good choice by coming to this group for my PhD. And again, of course, I re-evaluated what I really want and like to do, for now and for the future.

Nowadays, most people do not talk about only a single discipline - chemistry, biology, physics, or even pharmaceutical sciences. In this area, they like to use the term "life sciences". There have been more and more joint-initiatives among different specialized areas in natural sciences. As mentioned in the joint-program of ETHZ and University of Zurich, "The life sciences encompas the experimental natural sciences, biology, chemistry, and physics, including the integrated methods from mathematics and information technology, as well as clinical medicine". It includes also enviromental sciences, agriculture, nutrition sciences, etc. The sense of globalization has been also in the development of natural sciences. Although, when it boldly states, "The life sciences... exhibit broad inter-disciplinarity with no boundaries"; well, I don't agree. The boundary do exist, and it is a meeting point for the same purpose, not always an integration (where different areas truly find an overlap, hence create a new branch of branches of science).

I think, I hope, that my awkward position here, would eventually be a blessing in disguise. From where else I can have a chance to discuss and evaluate the results of a molecular biology experiement, for example, without actually having to do the lab-work myself (which can take at least days, providing you don't have to grow something first beforehand). Although I almost cry whenever I have to read their papers - it's like reading in foreign language - and it takes many hours of my precious time. I will also stand any "strange" question or reaction whenever we have to do "integration", I get a chance to learn the different ways of thinking from different specialized people anyway. It is a useful experience, I think, for my future, especially if I go back to Indonesia where money-and-other-things prevent technical specialization, where I think inter-collaboration very much needs to be developed and I also wouldn't want to be limited only in a single discipline.
And as for getting scientific input from my surrounding, hmm... this is more difficult to be solved. But it is not a dead-end yet, as I can still try to find it outside the institute. It could be then at the same time broadening my network.

So I am not quitting yet :-) Although finding another place has been in the back of my mind. No, not now. Not this year at least :-) As an old friend of mine always said whenever we were in unfavourable condition, "Try to make the best out of it". I agree. I will turn all of these into blessing.

So, although a bit late, but still:

Wünsche einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr!









* Literally translated: good sliding.