Blogs
Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2022
With the success of Bench, Biz & Beyond: Fall 2021, the Entrepreneurship Hub is thrilled to announce the return of BBB, in a new form! While the goal of the program remains the same, to introduce topics related to commercializing health innovations, the format will change to a monthly lunch & learn, hosted by the University of Ottawa and Invest Ottawa, in-person at RGN campus. The sessions will be recorded.
Bench, Biz & Beyond is a monthly speaker series brought to you by the Entrepreneurship Hub in collaboration with partners across campus and Invest Ottawa. The program tailored for students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, researchers and community members who want to understand and appreciate how a discovery in the lab or the concept of a health innovation becomes a drug, device or mobile application to help patients.
In this session, Health Tech Innovators: Lessons Learned, you will hear directly from founders who are the midst of selling and raising capital and will share their experience navigating starting a health-based company.
When: Tuesday, March 29 from 12-1pm
Where: Roger Guindon Hall at the Hospital Campus (TOH – General)
Learn more and Register
Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2022
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies along with the Graduate Student Associations are pleased to announce the activities planned for Career Week 2022. Career Week aims to develop career-building skills in TMM and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows through workshops and panel discussions.While the sessions will once again be held virtually, this year’s line-up promises to be one not to miss! Learn about career paths open to you, how to sell yourself to future employers, how to create a social media presence that promotes your skills and how to land jobs in industry.
See the uOCal for all the details! Coming soon.
Exploring Careers in Industry
Date: Monday, March 14th, 2022
Time: 2-3pm, virtual via Zoom
Speaker: Dr. François Leblond, Manager of Scientific Research, Liminal Biosciences
Interested in careers as a scientist in industry? Wondering what skills industry is looking for in graduates? Join François Leblond, Manager of Scientific Research at Liminal Biosciences, for a session all about industry. François will share his career path from academia to industry and answer all of your questions about being competitive on the job market.
Science Careers: How and Individual Development Plan can help you choose
Date: Tuesday, March 15th, 2022
Time: 9-10am, virtual via Zoom
Speaker: Dr. Nadine Wiper-Bergeron, Assistant Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Dr. Nadine Wiper-Bergeron, Assistant Dean for Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and coordinator of the Professionalism and Professional Skills class invites you to join her to discuss the benefits of assessing your skills, interests and personal values when choosing a career path. Many options are available to you and your ideal career will leverage your strengths and interests and will allow you to live a lifestyle in line with your values. Using Science magazine’s myIDP (Individual Development Plan), Dr. Wiper-Bergeron will help you consider 20 different career paths and help you set strategic goals to get there.
Social Media and Media Relations Training
Date: Wednesday, March 15, 2022
Time: 10 am - 11am
Location: Virtual via MS Teams
Speakers: Chonglu Huang and David McFadden, Marketing and Communications Office
Learn how to sell yourself and build a social media presence that highlights your accomplishment and skills to increase visibility to future employers. Presented by the Faculty of Medicine's Marketing and Communications Team.
Your Online Reputation
Date: Wednesday, March 15, 2022
Time: 12 p.m. - 1 p.m.
Location: MS Teams
Language: English
Join the uOttawa Career Development Centre to learn about how to use LinkedIn and a social media presence in your pursuit of a career.
Student-Organized Career Panel
Date: Thursday, March 17, 2022
Time: 8:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m via Zoom
Language: English
Target audience: TMM students, Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows
Moderated by Cynthia Allen, Career Counsellor
A Career panel featuring industry scientists, academics, government recruiting experts and many more. Learn about their career paths, the skills necessary to get there and take advantage of the open question and answer period to learn about job options that may be right for you!
For session links please check your email or contact the Grad Office.
Posted on Tuesday, March 8, 2022
If you are anything like me, the feeling that I did not accomplish enough by the end of the work week is a constant companion. Despite objectively accomplishing many things, I nonetheless am always left with the feeling that I could have, or perhaps should have, done more. I grew up with the mentality that you get what you put in, and so my effort has always seemed like my only measure of effectiveness. With age and experience, I have come to realize that some tasks require more brain power than others, and my ability to assess how long something should take is miserably prone to error. The days that I struggle to write three words for a grant proposal appear wasted, and yet I know that in the background, somewhere deep in my brain, the plan is coming together. Nonetheless, the impression of being chronically under-accomplished underlies the feeling that, when I am particularly overwhelmed, I am simply not cut out for this work. The dreaded imposter syndrome. When I discuss this feeling with others, they are quick to point out all of the tasks that actually do accomplish in a day and I cannot help but agree that despite feeling like I lazed about all week, I was objectively very productive. Why could I cognitively see my accomplishments yet somehow still feel unproductive?
It took an email newsletter from Lifehacker1 to give a name to my dilemma: productivity dysmorphia. Originally coined by Anna Codrea-Rado in a post for Refinery292, productivity dysmorphia is defined as
“the disconnect between what you objectively achieved and your feelings about it”. In the strictest of terms, even if you are wildly productive and achieve great success, productivity dysmorphia will rob you of the sense of accomplishment2,3. According to Codrea-Rado, productivity dysmorphia “sits at the intersection of burnout, imposter syndrome and anxiety”, pushing is to perform without ever feeling like it is enough. Being unable to relish in your accomplishments may signal impending burnout and should not be taken lightly. Fundamentally, it is a dissonance between what you achieve and the feeling of achievement (I prefer productivity dissonance to describe this phenomenon, but I digress).
So how does one fight productivity dysmorphia? According to Lifehacker1, bringing awareness to what you accomplish in a day is key. Writing down a to-do list every day and check off tasks as you accomplish them. Even if the list is long or you fail to complete them all, it will be a concrete reminder of the work you did accomplish. Lifehacker also recommends actually listening to positive feedback about your work. I read somewhere that humans have a weird cognitive bias that overemphasizes negative feedback and consequences and underplays the positive. If this is true, you have to take measures to actively bring awareness to the signs of your good work and progress, to counteract your productivity dysmorphia. Finally, Lifehacker urges us to redefine success and productivity, a message that is particularly important for the high-performance learners at the Faculty of Medicine. Graduate Student and Postdoc alike can set extremely high expectations for themselves and their performance, without recognizing that not all that success is in their control. Failure does not come from not accomplishing everything on your to do list or needing a break away from the work. The real danger is burnout and a loss of curiosity and passion for your work. Be careful not to associate your version of productive with experiments “working”. Experiments, including those that do not work out as planned teach us a lot, and as scientists, we need to learn to love the detours, chasing the data and the new knowledge. Being more flexible in your definition of accomplishment will help you see everything that you have achieved without the arbitrary endpoint of a thesis or a first author manuscript.
Graduate school is hard work and you do have to invest a lot of time and effort to be successful. The key is to now realize how much effort you put in as an accomplishment. Celebrate your successes!
References: