{"id":278,"date":"2020-07-16T15:12:37","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T14:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/?p=278"},"modified":"2020-07-16T15:49:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T14:49:30","slug":"from-pipettes-to-project-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/2020\/07\/from-pipettes-to-project-management\/","title":{"rendered":"From Pipettes to Project Management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My First Year as a Graduate Consultant<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Natalie Talbot, PhD Graduate Consultant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, just one year into my four-year PhD programme, I had\nthe inconvenient realisation that I didn\u2019t want to do science as a career in\nany shape or form, but the prospect of finding an alternative seemed impossible.\nSo, I took the classic \u2018bury those problems and think about them later\u2019\napproach and persevered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Before I knew it though, it was 2019, my thesis deadline was approaching, and the overwhelming challenge of finding a non-science job was staring me in the face. However, having spent the last four years up to my elbows in Chinese hamster ovary cells <\/a>begging them to produce enough drug for my experiments, it was hard to see what I could offer outside of the lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get some inspiration, I trawled through what felt like\nevery job advert on the planet and came to the surprising conclusion that I had\ngained more than just lab skills as a scientist, and that these were perfectly\nmatched to project management. Teaching undergraduates, publishing papers,\nwriting protocols, and planning time-critical experiments had secretly equipped\nme with everything I needed to be an effective communicator, and to work with\nclients to deliver outputs on time and to budget. Unknowingly, I had\nessentially managed my own project for four years straight \u2013 it just happened\nto be that my stakeholders were my supervisors, my budget was grant money, and\nmy milestones were seeing the right sorts of blobs under a microscope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n