Moms, Mats and Manuscripts
Moms, Mats and Manuscripts is a podcast hosted by Ivna, a PhD student in biomedicine, a yoga teacher and a mom, and Ksenia a former molecular biologist, a yoga teacher for scientists and a mom, too. This is a space to talk about all things academia, motherhood and yoga with humour and vulnerability.
We chat about mental health in academia, mindful productivity, and surviving and enjoying early motherhood while bringing yoga wisdom into our lives, share our stories and offer tips on navigating life's chaotic adventures.
Moms, Mats and Manuscripts
S3E13 - Becoming the mentor you needed: a conversation with Dr Liz Berry about mental health, mentorship and changing academic culture
What makes a great mentor, and how can we create a healthier, more compassionate academic culture?
In this episode of Moms, Mats, and Manuscripts, we talk with Dr Liz Berry, assistant professor at New York Medical College and creator behind @dr.lizberry on Instagram and TikTok. Liz shares her honest experiences moving from PhD student to educator, how burnout shaped her approach to mentorship, and why she believes rest and compassion belong in every lab and lecture hall.
We explore:
- The difference between supportive and harmful mentorship (and how mentorship can make or break one's experience)
- How academic culture often rewards overwork (and what needs to change)
- Why rest, boundaries, and vulnerability make us better teachers and scientists
- How Liz models sustainable success for her students and teaches with compassion - without lowering standards
If you’ve ever struggled with burnout, imposter syndrome, or the pressure to “do it all,” this conversation will remind you that you’re not alone, and that change in academia starts with how we care for ourselves and each other.
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Dr Liz Berry links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.lizberry/
Website: https://razberryscience.my.canva.site/dr-lizberry?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAacrlKL1MrpxJTEdEKyr3R8s9ylEAfShvD_cE2UNsvp9tYkz1FWUjnOwKlfz-w_aem_iqHk0JglI6ZBO24h96kF7Q
Come hang with us! 🎙️ Follow Moms, Mats, and Manuscripts for more conversations on academia, motherhood, and mindful living. And if this episode sparked something in you, don't forget to like and share our podcast so that more people can join our coffee-fueled chats!
We'd also love to hear your thoughts and questions, and if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line.
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@moms.mats.manuscripts
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Reach out: moms.mats.manuscripts@gmail.com
Hello, welcome to this next episode of Mom's Maths and Manuscripts. This episode is an interview with Dr. Liz Berry. Maybe some of you have seen her as Nature and Neuroscience PhD on Instagram or currently at Dr. Liz Berry. As you will hear in just a moment, Dr. Liz is an assistant professor and she wants to be part of this new generation of mentors who focus rather on inspiring and uplifting and supporting their students, maintaining their passion instead of scaring and pressuring them to produce more and more and more and more, work more, more, more, more, more, and eventually maybe grinding them to the ground and leading them to burnout. And we talk a lot about her PhD story, which is wait till you hear it, it's completely nuts. We talked about mental health and burnout and red flags that we shouldn't ignore, and support systems and support pillars that we shouldn't abandon, and also about mentorship in general, the kind of mentor, the kind of role model that she wants to be for her students, and whether or not you are going to experience mentoring, managing people, whether you are in science or not, I think there is something in this episode for everybody because we are all having relationships with other people, and I think this uh this conversation is and can be inspiring for all of us. I really enjoyed having this interview, I really enjoyed talking to Dr. Liz, and I'm sure that it's going to be a treat of an episode for you to listen to as well. Let's dive right in without further ado, Dr. Liz. All right, there we go. Welcome. So, welcome to this next episode. I'm losing count of months, months, months, maths, and manuscripts, and I'm very excited so it comes across like that. Today I'm here with Dr. Liz Berry. Or Dr. Liz. I am super excited to welcome you here. Thank you for joining me. And let me introduce you first and then we can continue with our conversation. So Liz is an assistant professor working at New York Medical College. She was hired on the tenure educator track in July 2024 after completing her PhD also at New York Medical College in May 2023. Her main focus at work is instructing biochemistry content to master's PhD in medical students. And on the side, she also communicates science and academic life via her Instagram and TikTok accounts at Dr. Liz Berry. So welcome once again. And I would wanted to talk to you about certain pieces of content actually that I saw on your platforms because this was kind of the last the last push that I needed to um DM you and invite you to this uh to this interview, to this podcast, where you talked about how you had so much work as a professor, as a young professor, and it was bleeding through into every hour of your day, into your weekend, and it was just a lot, and you still chose to kind of ignore all of that and focus on resting and actually relaxing during your weekend. And it was like a breath of fresh air for me, and I was so excited to see that. So I wanted to talk about um being a role model, being an inspiration, and being this new generation of professors or PIs, maybe eventually, if if you are going to have your own lab at some point. Um that model something different from what we might have had during our PhD experience. And I wanted to also learn more about your story, how you arrived to this, how you arrived to social media and sharing your struggles and wins and breakthroughs and everything so vulnerably, so openly on Instagram. And so everything and anything in between. I have some questions, but it's gonna be.
Speaker 1:I'm happy to start wherever you want me to. I can start from why I started the account or you know, why I'm focusing on portraying myself as a work-life balance person. So, which which one would you like?
Speaker:Maybe let's start from the very beginning. Like, let's start from the spark, the initial inspiration behind you studying science. Why did you decide to pursue that track?
Speaker 1:So, why I decided to pursue science, I as a child was very obsessed with watching like Nature and Novi documentaries. And I would collect all these papers that came in the mail with the pamphlets going over different animals, different ecosystems. And so I originally thought I wanted to be like Jane Goodall, may she rest in peace. She was my role model, like my full role model as a little girl. And I wanted to be, I thought, you know, an ecologist or someone who works in the environment, out in the field, something like that. So that's really what sparked me to science itself. Um but then it turns out I went to my college, University of Rhode Island for my undergraduate degree. I entered as a biology major because I knew I wanted to be a scientist, right? And I took an ecology class. And I absolutely hated it. It was terrible. It was not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to study population statistics of, you know, migrating animals, when they were coming out. I was like, this is this is not it. This is not it, absolutely not. But thankfully, at the same time, I was in a plant science course. And I was obsessed with this professor. Um, she was fantastic. Her name was Dr. Roberts, and I was doing very well in the course. I took an exam, I did really well. I had the courage to go up to her because I knew she had a lab. And I was like, would you be willing to meet with me to talk to see if you would let me join your laboratory? And this was the fall of my second year at the school. So as an early sophomore, I walked up to her and thankfully she let me in the lab, and I worked with her for three years working on plant science and biofuel applications for a moss that no one can say, but I've learned how to. It's called Fiscomitrella Patents. And um thankfully that was my first laboratory experience. And so that's really what locked it in that I loved science, I loved research, I loved learning new things, and you know, the constant, I don't know, working in the lab and working with others and coming up with new ideas on how to analyze results and you know, papers that come out and what that means, what the next steps are for different pieces of the field. And so that's really what jump started my trajectory. And obviously, I did not end up staying in plant science. I made the jump again to biomedical science because I felt a little disconnected in the plant science world and I wanted to have a human impact, and so I made the jump again into a PhD program. Thankfully, I was able to go right from undergrad right into my PhD program with no master's because I obtained a first author paper from my undergraduate research and switched into neuroscience, and that is where I am today. I am doing neuroscience and biochemistry.
Speaker:It's a pretty big jump from plant science to neuroscience. How was that for you?
Speaker 1:So I had no neuroscience knowledge. Um, the reason I chose neuroscience specifically, obviously, everyone has something that's close to them. My Nana, she had Parkinson's disease, and I thoroughly did not understand the disease whatsoever, but I understood that I didn't like what she was going through, and I wanted to better understand what the brain was doing and how that was impacting her. And so that's really what brought me into neuroscience. Um, I really just threw myself into a lab, knew nothing about the brain, didn't really know what neurons did or what, you know, ion channels were action potentials, any of that. Um, took a medical neuroscience course with the medical school with no neuroscience knowledge, so that was a shell shock. Um, but I made it through that. But that's really why I switched into biomedical and why I chose neuroscience specifically.
Speaker:I see. I think it's a it's a common story that we we all have something that is personal and something that kind of yeah inspires us to it becomes our why to to go and yeah. Well, um yeah, you said it was a shell shock, but also I think your your story is just a big example or multiple examples of being so courageous. I know very few people who would in the second year of undergrad go up to a professor and be like, hey, take me into your lab. So Yeah, I don't know what bit me that day, but uh I had some courage for some reason. That's that's pretty amazing. I mean, it's also um interesting that she was open to that, that professor, right? And um would you say that she was your first role model as like what mentorship is or should be and shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I I was lucky enough actually to have her, Dr. Roberts, and Dr. Norris was the other professor who kind of co-led the laboratory together. And I still talk to them like to like today, basically. I reached out last year when I was dealing with the transition between PhD student land into assistant professor land very quickly. And um they were both able to give me some really good advice on that. So I've maintained that relationship, and they absolutely uh were my direct first role models for a laboratory and research setting.
Speaker:That's also really lovely that you had this positive experience and that you are maintaining that relationship. That's also I feel like it's not very common. Often people kind of don't want to see that anymore or don't want to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:A lot of the time, I totally I totally agree a lot of the time. It's just I think I have not been really surrounded with a lot of female um role models, and so I've really latched on to the support that they showed me originally, and I haven't really necessarily had that directly in my line since then, so I've maintained that.
Speaker:Can we now move to your uh journey from PhD land to assistant professor land? And I I think there was a short postdoc in between, right? But then you very quickly moved to to being an assistant professor. Yeah. Or did it just kind of happen?
Speaker 1:So the teaching has really developed throughout my entire PhD. I was the teaching assistant for the graduate biochemistry course at my school, New York Medical College. Um, and I did that for like five years, and then I transitioned to actually lecturing in the course the last two years of my PhD, because it was a seven-year PhD for me. And so I really enjoyed it that entire time, and I really knew that I liked communicating science. Um, truthfully, when I finished my PhD and during that like interim postdoc year that I did, I was really pissed off at academia. Um, maybe I don't know if you were following me at that point, but most of my content was centered around being extremely burnt out. Um, was not really liking science too much, was really not enjoying the culture, was not enjoying the, you know, constant pressure to perform and have to do work all the time, and it's expected, and you can't do anything else. And um yeah, I was very angry and burnt out at the end of my PhD. So becoming a professor was quite far off from my uh what I was expecting. I was actually applying for industry positions and as postdocs or scientists, and as well as a lot of science communication positions as well, out for different companies like BioRender, for example. I actually had an interview with them. Um and so this kind of happened because it fell in my lap. And so you know, things happen like that sometimes. I had the full background required for this position because I had performed and taught the content for biochemistry for seven years, essentially. And so the person who was the director for all of the content at my school left all of a sudden, and then they had literally no one to cover any of the content, take charge, none of that. And the school was starting on a next cycle in like a month and a half after that happened, and I was still there doing my postdoc, and so I was actually approached for the position to apply for the position, and um, I'd made the choice at that point to give it a try because I know I loved teaching and see if the spark would come back, and thankfully it has.
Speaker:Well, it's it's also curious to see this kind of lucky coincidences and how they then shape the the future and the continuation of your journey. Well, also great that your spark came back, but then what you said about being burnt out and struggling with academia, academic culture at the end of your PhD, let's then backtrack from the assistant professorship and from that experience a little bit into your PhD. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that experience was like and uh maybe why the burnout happened in the first place? Was it, you know, more outside pressure or your intrinsic um reasons, maybe your personality, or the combination of the two, and yeah, just whatever you want to share.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, I'm I'm pretty open about this. Um I it has it got progressively worse throughout the every year that went by throughout my PhD. Obviously, the first couple years, you're like, oh my gosh, I have no bags under my eyes, I'm ready to go. Let me uh, you know, work like crazy. I'm really excited. Um, and then over the years, you just what happened to me is I I really started understanding how the system was impacting me and how there were hoop hoops that you had to jump through, and you didn't really have the support to jump the hoops. You were really alone. Um, there was no guidance or support for that. You really had to drive yourself in my case. And because of those chronic years of literally being isolated and dragging myself through the process with really no support from committee members, I'm gonna say, I got really burned out because I was one doing everything alone in the laboratory because I did not have a PI who was really in the lab very much. You know, I was very independent, didn't have a lot of guidance. I had to teach myself electrophysiology, um, which is a technique in the laboratory that is quite intensive and has problems chronically constantly. And my project also required me to administer an opioid to mouse models every single day for two weeks straight for each cohort. Um, and so a lot of different factors, you know, on top of maintaining like large mouse colonies by myself, like a lab manager. I had lots of tasks, was like running the laboratory, running my thesis, running other experiments with other like master students that were brought into the lab. It was a large amount of things that kind of snowballed and hit each other all at the same time progressively as the years went on. And I literally at the end, how I actually got out and got my PhD is I stopped coming to lab. I literally was like, I am not coming in anymore, and the mouse colony might blow up and might be crazy, and it did it, yes, it did, because there was no one maintaining and doing all of the work for that anymore because I had all this crazy pressure put on me. And so I had to physically remove myself and say, I am done, and I'm not accepting anything else because I am upset, struggling. My mental health was the worst I've ever seen it in my entire life, if I'm gonna be completely honest. Um, my coping mechanisms were not really working very much anymore. Um, I turned to because I had such severe anxiety at the end, to taking CBD gummies because I literally could not function unless I could cut off the lower anxiety and not actually like feel it so much. Um yeah, there was a lot of factors that really snowballed and I had to drag myself out at the end, and that really left a bad mark on my view on the academic system. So that's a little snapshot into what happened at the end and how the trajectory really impacted me.
Speaker:I mean, even that little snapshot is enough for me to say that this is completely crazy. This is nuts. And like I I hear stories I have experienced, but this is one of the worst things I've ever heard, honestly.
Speaker 1:Most people say that to me, and I'm like, I thank you for for uh appreciating what I was going through.
Speaker:I mean, you are on the other side, and and it's yeah, God.
Speaker 1:It was a struggle, but thankfully um my partner was there the whole time. I did let him know at the beginning because we started dating during my qualifying exam, and I was like, I'm letting you know right now this is gonna be absolutely insane, and so you better like sign up for this, otherwise I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's gonna be crazy. And he stuck the whole time. So also brazen, yeah.
Speaker:Did you have thoughts about quitting at any point? No, no, okay.
Speaker 1:I did not have those thoughts. Um I because I I've always wanted to be a scientist, I've always wanted to be in research. I've always I know this innately, and I've known this for forever. I just was really upset with how I was put into the system and I had to figure out how to get myself out without the aid of others that I thought would be there.
Speaker:Um technically it's not supposed to be on you, right? No, you're supposed to have.
Speaker 1:I think unfortunately, though, it's a pretty widespread phenomenon, and a lot of people just don't talk about it. Well, they want to marry it.
Speaker:That's why we're here. Yeah, to talk about it. So your CPI was not really there, so you didn't kind of have a supervisor, you didn't have supportive committee members, and you from your story, you taught yourself everything that you needed, and you were doing a huge mountain of work by yourself. So there was no supervision, there was no mentorship in that period.
Speaker 1:No, not really, no.
unknown:God.
Speaker:I mean I need some time to kind of digest it and be like, oh my god, this is this is crazy.
Speaker 1:I mean, like, I definitely am able to achieve a lot of work in a small period of time if I could put my mind to that. And so I probably did put myself into the scenario in the beginning where I was very energetic and had a lot of energy and didn't really understand what was going on. That, like, oh, of course I could handle this. I can handle this, you know, like different pieces, but you know, you don't really understand what that chronically will do to you long term, and you can't really maintain all of those things long term. And so, one, I probably did take on things that I shouldn't have in the beginning, but I had no guidance telling me I couldn't do that or I shouldn't do that.
Speaker:And then was expected to keep doing them even though I was suffering. I see, I see. So you didn't put these boundaries from the beginning, and then it was kind of too late almost to do that. Okay. Right. I see. Um yeah, wow. So by the time you realized that okay, this is too much and this cannot go on, there was just nobody who took who could take over any of these parts like taking care of mice, and okay.
Speaker 1:Not particularly now. Yeah. It was a very small lab too, so it's not like there were a lot of others to lean on. Um, there was a postdoc when I joined the lab, but they had left a couple years in. And there was one other PhD student who was very new who was starting. So at that point, I was the senior everything and taking care of everything.
Speaker:So yeah. Yeah, I see. I see the the background now more clearly. I think I did start following you maybe at the end of your PhD when you were talking about mental health, but maybe you were already kind of on the way out, so it was not as much darkness and so much of this kind of information. Um you mentioned that your coping strategies and coping mechanisms kind of didn't really work at the time, but what what were they? What were the support systems apart from your partner who or which supported you and helped you go through this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what I really have tried to do is maybe because I needed to have something completely different, was do activities that were not anywhere near science related. And so um I would draw, you know, I would do art activities, I would binge read fantasy books like no return. If I really needed like a detox, I would, you know, read an entire series in like a week or whatever how long they were. Um, you know, try to go for hikes and be out in nature. One of the things that's like a daily task thing is I would take like baths, like bubble baths and stuff like that. That's one of my, you know, like daily easy things to do. Um, one, because when you do electrophysiology, your back hurts like no other because you're constantly like reaching. But two, it's just it would become one of those like ritual kind of things, like detox, relax, and then I would be able to go to bed without having like crazy racing thoughts all of the time. And so those activities and methods over time really didn't pan out and weren't able to actually relax me at the end because I couldn't actually remove my brain from what I was doing in the lab or work.
Speaker:I mean the the load, I guess, of stress accumulated and what's much larger than than these activities could help with. But it is a rare thing and pretty amazing as well that you stuck with it because what I find very common and what I was also doing myself is that as soon as things get a little bit more intense and a little bit more stressful, then all the hobbies just go out of the window, all the like sports, self-care, time in nature. No, because I either I feel too guilty and then it's kind of like, what's the point of doing that? Or I just I feel like I don't have time because I need to be working all the time. So, how did you manage to maintain these habits without this?
Speaker 1:It's kind of multifaceted. So you talk about guilt. I I would I felt guilty. Of course I felt guilty. I mean, you can't the the academic system just shoves guilt in your face, like, oh, you're not reading the new nature article that came out in this topic, you should do that right now, even though it's like 11 p.m. and you should, you know, prioritize that over going to bed. Um, so of course I felt guilty, but um, I really tried to be like, I need time to relax my brain in order to actually be productive. And the reason that I knew this is because when I draw, I am unable to draw if I'm extremely stressed out. It just doesn't, you can't, it just doesn't work because it's a creativity. And I I realized that my creative battery would run out. And if my creative battery ran out, that's a red flag. I was like, I need to take a step back and maintain myself because if I lost my creativity, then I knew that I wasn't gonna perform as well with designing experiments, with critically analyzing data, because it all draws from that same pool, for me at least. Um, and so I kind of used drawing as a way to gauge that in a way, because if I was like, look at my sketchbook, I'm like, oh, there's a gap of two months where I haven't drawn a single thing in it, um, because I date them. Um, I'd be like, well, that's probably a red flag, and I probably was having a really tough time the past couple months, so I probably should check myself and figure out how to actually get myself to draw something again. So I did stick with it, and I guess maybe I was just more aware or had better tells to figure out and tell myself how to, I don't know, address the situation.
Speaker:Um, two two important things that you mentioned is that yeah, you have you have these red flags that are telling you, okay, two months gap in my sketchbook, I have to do something about it. That's I think everybody should have, like everybody should figure out something for themselves that acts like this alarm, alarm, alarm, you know, something is happening, something is wrong. Um and then yeah, the the fact that um you actually continue doing it through the even through the guilt, and so you had some something to manage the guilt and be like, okay, I'm not going to allow it to overpower me and uh tell me that I I'm not good enough if I'm not reading a nature paper at 11 pm instead of sleeping. So that's um it's not easy. Like within within the confines of academic system, yeah, you're gonna be told from all sides and angles that this this is how you should be if you want to be a good scientist, a good researcher, and to kind of push back against it already at that time as a PhD student, as a like young researcher, is is really hard. I've been always kind of bullheaded though, so I mean so you have the personality to to help. That's yeah, that's one thing that's maybe I lacked, you know, in in this. I was maybe too agreeable and too like, okay, I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna take it everything personally, and yeah.
Speaker 1:Everyone has their own, you know, different personality and different way of viewing what feedback you're getting or anything like that. So everyone has a different very different perspective on how it's gonna end.
Speaker:Yeah, I think so mental health was um in a bad place during the PhD and and after. And after, okay. Quite a while. So would you say that by the time you started the the pro the professorship it got better or it was still a little bit dragging from the PhD experience?
Speaker 1:Um the entire year after my PhD experience was not good. Okay. Pretty bad. Um the the first half of the year after I accepted the assistant professor position was beginning better. I also had a ton of different responsibilities and workloads that I was kind of snowballed with. So I wouldn't necessarily say like much better, but I would say this past spring was really when things started turning around for me. So honestly, almost two years after I got out, I started actually recovering and feeling like my old self again and not feeling that dreaded guilt constantly pressing on my face. So about two years.
Speaker:Two years. I mean, it's it's good to know that yeah, it's honestly a good answer that's will hopefully tell people that yeah, you shouldn't expect that you're out and things will magically get better, or that we do get better, it just takes it's okay if it takes a while because it does. It's not gonna, it's a long process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it can be so drawn out and it's it's fine. And there is there is light at the end of the time of the time. Right. Yeah. Would you say that this experience then um changed or yeah, shaped the way you are showing up now as a professor? That the way you are treating the students and absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I um have always had this question of okay, everyone that is a colleague and everyone that is a professor now has a PhD. So they've all gone through the process that I just went through. Why don't they remember what they went through and why are they still treating students like the system is, and why don't they want to treat them nicer or differently, or just listen to them talk and make their what they're thinking just heard and valid? Because honestly, that's makes a huge difference. And so, yes, I am being different by just if a student wants to show up and ask me a question, awesome. Is it gonna turn into something else? They talk about their personal lives or something they need to just vent about. Great. I don't care. I I'm gonna be there because I didn't have that, and that makes a huge difference if you can just have someone literally listen to you and actually hear what you're saying. You don't have to give advice, you just have to be like a backboard and receive it.
Speaker:Yeah, I I'm wondering the same thing. Like people on one hand they they forget very quickly what it's like to also do experiments and they demand I don't know, let's say they demand a a Western blot or something today. And you know, have you forgotten how much time it actually takes? I just don't understand what happens to people, and I still don't get it. It's like there is something that with the brain that's just okay, I'm out, I forgot immediately everything, and then they also manage you, right? In a in a way that's or maybe it's something that comes from this bitter place. Like I suffered, I struggled, I worked all the time, so now you have to suffer. But but why do you want to propagate that, right?
Speaker 1:I couldn't tell you. I don't understand. I I just would never want someone else to feel like I have. So, like, if I can help alleviate that in any way, even if I'm not the PI, I'm absolutely going to.
Speaker:Yeah. So do you have time and space to interact with your students apart from just like teaching exams and oh all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Um, they they flood my office. So uh I have students I taught last year. They still come and see me. Um, students that I have knew this year, they're still they've come to see me. We haven't built the full relationship yet, but they they come all the time. They feel very comfortable talking with me. I think it helps that I'm closer in age to them too. Um, I'm the youngest professor at the school, and I'm also a female, so I think that makes me more approachable than the older faculty that are present at the school. So yeah, they I have a pretty good interaction with them.
Speaker:That's lovely to hear that. Yeah, you also you're there for them, also for the personal stuff and for biochemistry questions, and you uh you're trying to do things differently. It's it's amazing that somebody does, yeah. But do you think the I mean you you want to change the system, right? Because you don't want people to suffer like you suffered. But do you think it is changing already? Do you notice any anything shifting?
Speaker 1:So I mean yes and no. I mean, so what I've learned is student evaluations and student feedback are critical for the schools to respond to in terms of accrediting accredites. Um, for like medical school accredited, graduate school accreditation, that's actually like a criteria that they look at and have to respond to to like the state and stuff like that. Um so, in terms of that, any comments that students do make that are constructive and you know changing things for the better are actually looked at now. And so I don't think that that was a thing before. So I think on that standpoint, things are changing because it's a requirement for schools to respond to that. Um, but that's really for courses, right? On like a PI um student relationship, I think that policies are being put in place, but they have to be upheld, and I think there is still a disconnect in that portion because even if you make a policy, um, someone needs to be checking if that policy is constantly being upheld, and I think that's where it needs improvement because not every single PI is obviously going to be changing the way that they're mentoring, they're going to be performing in the same, you know, way that academically everyone has been performing, and you know, enforcing long work hours over what they should be putting all of the guilt and stuff like that on students. So I think in some parts it is, but there is still a pretty big disconnect between in each individual laboratory because every single person is so different, and it's very, you know, individualized. Each lab is each lab, and it's very separate from everyone else.
Speaker:Yeah, from my side, I think I do notice from my my studies that the at least the conversations are happening, people are talking about mental health or burnout among PhD students, among um postdocs. And that's already a big step because I feel like when I when I was in the university, I only heard you know some whispers that oh somebody went on sick leave because they were so stressed, or you know, maybe if if uh there was a question of a student committing suicide or something like that, then that would be also shared, like a like a scary story. But people didn't really kind of connect the dots and talk about you know why that happened and how we can prevent that from happening again. And I feel like even the PIs that had some connection or some experience with the range of these things, um they didn't really change how they were behaving. And yeah, here here in Europe we also do talk about it, and there's there was there were conversations in like PhD program um courses that we were doing at the beginning of the programs. But again, none of that affects the actual behavior of PIs very often, and even if there is like an ombudsperson in the university or somebody who's supposed to mediate conflicts or supposed to say to a PI, hey, you have to do some kind of like management, people management course or program to learn how to deal with your students better, nothing happens. Right.
Speaker 1:So there is still such a huge gap, and it's um it's truly like I I really don't think that a lot of people who need to understand these different things about mental health and what the culture or environment that they produce is giving people, they just really don't understand why they need to do that. They don't understand why someone else is being impacted differently than they were impacted by the same situation. Um, and they don't think it's relevant, and they think that burnout culture is just a phase. Um, you know, you know, just like a buzzword that's being pushed around, and I'm like, well, no, it's actually been there, it's just has a label now, and people are more open to talking about it, and that needs to be something that's recognized, but they just physically can't even grasp it, they don't understand. And I've seen this in meetings, like you talk about mental health and you talk about you know work life balance and stuff like that, and they kind of just like look at you like, like, why do I need to care about this? You know?
Speaker:Yeah, you said work-life balance, and I I I remember also a story exactly about that. How we, as young PhD students in the first weeks of our PhD program, asked the program coordinator about like what is your advice about work-life balance, and she kind of laughed in our face.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, what is that? So from from that moment on, I think this should have been a huge red flag for me. It wasn't so.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's everywhere, you know. Yeah, that's gonna be a uh laughable topic for most places, unfortunately. Um, and uh it should change. So that's why I'm trying to put my foot down and be an example that you can do it on normal hours and still be very successful.
Speaker:Yeah. This is bringing me to maybe a challenging question or challenging thought. Um maybe some people would argue with us and say that if we are very compassionate and very understanding and very kind to our students, how are we going to have standards? How are we going to demand scientific excellence? How are we going to get students who are actually doing the work because we're going to let them do whatever? And how do you balance um holding students or maybe your students or just in general, students in a lab, yourself to a high standard with being compassionate and understanding?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that there is a pretty easy answer to that, honestly. And people just aren't willing to accept it. It's the fact that well, why is someone in a research lab? Why is someone doing a PhD? Why did they choose to go into biomedical science or whatever, whatever field that they want to go in? It's because they're passionate about it. They're literally passionate about that topic. And why are you trying to crush their passion? Why not help them maintain that passion throughout and just guide the framework and how they can be the most successful to achieve what they need to achieve? Well, keep them excited about it. I do not understand why people need to grind you into the ground and then destroy your passion like happened to me. Why did I need to hate science for a while? Did that really need to happen? No, it didn't. I should have been upheld and my passion should have been maintained by my peers, advisors, whatever, so that I could keep going and I didn't need to go through all that. You know? The reason you you go into science is because you're passionate. So why are you fighting against that? No one else is signing up for a PhD program just because they want to be burnt into the ground for five years. That's not why they sign up.
Speaker:Yeah, uh, you're you're absolutely right. That people who are not passionate enough, or people who are not there for for good reason, maybe they are going to be sorted out away. And that's fine. They'll figure out what they want to do instead. Exactly. And then people who are passionate, they are going to be driving themselves. You don't need to put an extra weight and an extra uh, yeah, as you said, grind them to the ground in order to achieve excellency or like scientific whatever great.
Speaker 1:You can you can create a deadline without being like harsh on someone. Yeah. Like the the it's just the connotation that things aren't given to people is just wrong. Like I mentored a bunch of master's students while I was doing my PhD, and they had very successful projects and were very positive on their work in the laboratory working with me because I let them be excited about it. And I told them that it's okay if you need to take time and do something else, and they felt that freedom of like, okay, I'm respected. I'm gonna come back and perform because I want to, instead of being forced to do it and then have a bad taste in your mouth afterwards. I I love this.
Speaker:I wish more people understood that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker:So you started mentor you started teaching already in your PhD, you started also mentoring um students, mentoring master's students while you were a PhD student yourself. Um what kind of mentor, what kind of thoughts you had about mentorship back then when you just started this journey? What kind of mentor you wanted to be back then, and how has it changed since then?
Speaker 1:So I guess I've always been someone who will listen and will hear what someone else has to say. And I I've I've always been like that. People have people have always, I don't more, maybe more than I want to sometimes, have felt they could open up to me, and I'm very happy that they can feel like that. And so I've been receptive that people appreciate that from me. So I always thought that that was an important thing to keep up and keep going. Um, and so that's always been an integral part of part of my mentorship style, just to be, you know, that open backboard to just listen, and you don't need to like, you know, respond right away. You need to see where the person's coming from before you have a conversation forward. And um so that's a very big part of it. The other big part is creating a framework for someone without you know limiting them and being very clear about what I'm doing, which is I guess picks up on the science communication aspect. I have always been very annoyed when someone explains something to me that I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And then I figured out how to explain it to myself, and I'm like, well, they could have just said it this way in the beginning. And so another core part of it is that I would like to explain like a methodology or a concept in a way that's clear that allows someone to ask questions. Because a lot of the time, if you're snowballed with information that's like too much or too heavy, or just explains in a very high level, you what question are you gonna ask? You don't you don't know what to ask, and so that's my teaching style and my mentorship style as well, because um asking questions is really important, and I want to make people able to ask questions by explaining things that are difficult topics, but in an understandable way.
Speaker:I am feeling very tempted to send this episode when it's ready to like my former supervisor send a lot of people I know. And be like, here, please.
Speaker 1:This is what you should be doing. Uh will they will they listen or hear it? They might listen, but then will they hear it, you know?
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker 1:That's the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay. So let's move on to your Instagram, your social media science communication journey. How did you decide to start sharing on Instagram?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I, as you know, as I said, I was a teaching assistant for biochemistry for during my PhD. And I realized that I was going to be transitioning out of being the teaching assistant into the lecturing role because I was asked an approach to do that. And I felt like I was going to miss being a teaching assistant because the way that I was a teaching assistant is I had my box of whiteboard markers, right? Because this was like pre-COVID, and then I transitioned to um obviously virtual during COVID land. Um, but I had my like whiteboard markers. I would literally draw like glycolysis, draw the Krebs cycle, draw like transcriptional regulation, like all this stuff on the board. And I loved, obviously I love drawing, and so I would draw all these concepts for the students on the boards, and I was like, I'm gonna miss that. Like I really liked interacting with the students and having their faces just like light up, be like, thank you. Like I had no idea what they were talking about in class, but you just made it so much easier and it's not that bad. And I'm like, yes, that's why I'm here. And so I was going to miss that um quite a bit. And so I started my Instagram account really to communicate science because I was like, I really like drawing science concepts. Why don't I just try to make a community online to kind of replace the interactions that I was gonna be missing with students? And so I actually started it right before we uh were all shut down in the pandemic, like January 2020. Um, and then have kept up with it since then. And it's been so amazing because I've made so many friends from the community I've developed. I've met them at conferences, I've had like Zoom calls with them, you know. We have like group chats to talk about, you know, if we're doing like brand deals and like what's crazy and stuff like that. Um, and so that's that's really why I started it, and I'm not stopping anytime soon.
Speaker:That's good to know. And you also talked very openly there about your journey, your struggles, your mental health, and then now things that I've seen more of is after you left your PhD, is um so what I mentioned at the beginning, choosing rest as a as a professor uh instead of focusing too much on your overflowing to-do list. And so I guess this is part of like you you want to be a different kind of mentor, right? And you also want to show this on Instagram. Uh did you have connections with people also because of that? And and like people reaching out and saying, hey, this is amazing. Thank you for saying this out loud.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Um I I I guess I really started transitioning to that type of content towards the end of my PhD because I just needed an outlet to talk about what was going on in my brain, because it was not not working out really well. So I started to be creative with it in that aspect. And I've realized that a lot of people resonate with what I'm saying, and they would message me and say, like, thank you for just speaking about this or posting about this, because like I feel very isolated and alone with these different topics, and because it's really true, everyone feels some of these things to a certain degree, and it's not talked about enough, and I think it's becoming talked about a lot more now because of social media, which is actually great because it builds a community for students. Um, I think it's great for students to have, you know, you can create a Psycom account if you want. If not, just follow a bunch of creators that talk about these topics and then you'll feel validated in some way because someone is speaking them for you and it brings you some community. And so, yes, absolutely, people have reached out and I've absolutely created a bunch of connections because I've been speaking about these topics that we usually keep in our heads.
Speaker:This is something that I've I've been thinking a lot about as well. That, you know, how would my journey have been different if I had Instagram at the time of my one-year stretch as a PhD student? Because maybe I would have also seen your content or other people and be like, okay, yeah, I'm actually not alone. I'm not the only one struggling, and everybody else has it all together. I'm not the only one going through this shit, and everybody else is having a very rosy PhD experience. I think maybe things would have been different. But then again, I think I left for other reasons, not just because of stress and burnout. But it's it is very important to to have this sense of yeah, community and yeah, other people going through similar things and being, as you said, validated in your in your struggles, in your feelings, and knowing that also other people are um there with you, learning to set boundaries and learning to say, hey, I'm actually gonna take a weekend off and I'm not gonna work 24-7. So then you are getting inspired also, and maybe the trickle, trickle-down effect is going to happen. We can hope, we can hope. We can hope, yeah, for sure. So you are also modeling through your content, through your Instagram, some boundaries and healthy attitude towards work-life balance and work in general, and also how rest is important. And I I I actually really like that you mentioned creativity and drawing, and that you you were noticing that if you are not being creative with your drawing, if you're not doing that, you also know that this is going to affect your work because you are not going to show up in the same way at work and be creative and design experiments and and all that. And like now I see this so clearly. I I I have a two-year-old, so in motherhood, I see this very, very clearly that if I am not rested, if I'm not um putting or like filling my own cup first, I know that I'm going to be not a good mother. And somehow this was not a concept that I I found very easy to understand back then. And I didn't think about how lack of rest or lack of yeah, recharging my batteries somehow is going to affect my my focus, my creativity at work, my productivity. So for you, how was it, how is this connection made? You know, you just it just happened with with creativity, with drawing, and and knowing that you're not going to be creative at work, or somebody maybe told you, or and it was a light bulb moment. How did that happen?
Speaker 1:So no one no one told me this, that's for sure. Um, but I have to say, my mom is a very creative person. Um, and I grew up with her designing costumes for different shows, musicals. I would be the mannequin, unfortunately, and get stuck with a lot of pins. Um she would do, you know, she would make like the clay that you can make from flour, and I would get to play with that to make props and stuff like that. Um, she would always like have all these creative activities for me to do, probably because I was annoying and asked her a lot of questions. So she had to come up with things for me to do constantly. Um but I I've always been in a very like creative environment, I have to say. And so that's been a very integral piece of how I have grown up. And obviously I've kept it along with me because I draw now. Um, where the whether it's like on a piece of paper, right, in a notebook, or if it's on the iPad, or if I'm creating um posts on Canva, which I thoroughly enjoy doing as well. That's another outlet, you know, it all kind of like maneuvers, but I really realized that if I was pressured to do something like, for example, make a presentation on my research for some symposium or a class or something like that that I needed to do within a short period of time. Because you have to do this so often during your PhD and on and on afterwards, you know that you have different qualities of presentations you make. Some of them are pretty bad. And the reason could be because one, you don't understand what you have to talk about, or two, because you are just like so burnt out that you can't make a good presentation. And I think doing that over and over again and realizing which presentations were more successful over others, and associating with what my mental state was or how much time I had to be creative about it really made the connection for me because I have become like pretty good at communicating science, of being a lecturer, being a presenter. I'm usually told that it like the like good job on your presentation, it was explained so well, blah blah blah. And from the feedback that I received after each presentation and how I felt giving it, really I think aligned the connection between creativity and science or just performing and work, honestly.
Speaker:Yeah, I again the connections should be made clearly and very early on at the beginning in our in our academic journeys and our studies, but somehow never clicked for me. And it's really curious to to see how it happened for you and how uh growing up in this creative environment helped you kind of connect connect the two, kind of connect the dots. So obviously, this is one of your outlets and one of your um support systems and pillars that help you with stress, with yeah, maybe through difficult times. What are others maybe outside you mentioned some at the beginning and you then you said that uh they stopped working throughout your PhD, but what what is happening now? How does rest and um supporting your mental health looks like now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so um I have lots of hobbies, um, and as as you've probably uh caught up with, I have tried to maintain them throughout. Um I love obviously drawing, we've talked about that. Um I love being outside, hiking, gardening. I'm very into being in nature. There's something just about walking through the woods that does something to your CNS, you just feel relaxed, opened up. Um, so I'm always down for that. I also love playing video games. Love playing video games, and I finally have figured out what type of video gamer I am, and I am a cozy video gamer. If you don't know what that is, it's people who like to play farming sims, creature collection games. Um, I am a Pokemon fanatic, and so there is a game coming out next week, which is right before my birthday, that I will be playing in that genre. Um, so I play lots of video games. Um I love to eat good food, meaning I have the urge to cook a lot of the time. I love cooking good food, and um, you know, the typical things hanging out with your friends, your family, and uh obviously my pets. I have a dog, which we just got in March. She'll be one next week. And I have three cats. One of them is a new kitten that we just adopted because he is best friends with our dog, and I couldn't get rid of him. I adopted his siblings out. They didn't really like the dog so much, but he really loves her and she loves him.
Speaker:Oh, that sounds so so lovely. I I kind of yeah, I kind of also wish that we had animals here, but maybe at some point. They're very comforting to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I always joke that um my orange cat that I have. I got him when I started my PhD. He has his doctorate too. It's Dr. Moose. That's that's him.
Speaker:He's he's seen you throughout this whole journey and he's been there on your lap. Yeah. That's amazing. A science cat. Yeah, exactly. Okay, good. Okay, so I think we discussed a lot of the things that I wanted to ask you. It was a lovely conversation, but let's kind of wrap it up with a few final um thoughts. So looking back at yourself at the very beginning of your maybe your entire science journey or your PhD in particular, what would be a piece of advice or one thing that you wish younger leads knew?
Speaker 1:So it would absolutely be that you need to communicate with all of your advisors every single week and be very upfront with how you are feeling in response to feedback, in response to what's going on, because you're not going to receive the questions. And so you need to actively make sure everybody knows what's going on with you because it doesn't go the other way most of the time.
Speaker:That's a good one. I think we, yeah, we all could have been maybe a bit more proactive and more um upfront also about our feelings and about our boundaries and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's then no one's gonna chase you down to ask you about them, unfortunately. It's just not how the system's built right now. Hoping it will change. You know, I I send up emails to just see how people are doing, and um, it seems like they are appreciating that so far, but that's not common. So you really have to look out for yourself and make sure that you're not in a hole and everybody understands that you are going through something and how you're feeling on a daily basis because they can't read your mind, turns out.
Speaker:Yeah, and it should be clear, but it's also very difficult for I think on average for a human being, it's very difficult to be vulnerable, right? And to show this, to show this side of you. So how did you buy practice like that? Like what do you think is is the key to kind of unlocking this vulnerability and being able to share with your mentors, your supervisors, this kind of things?
Speaker 1:So I think that it probably stemmed with me learning how to take exams. I know that sounds very strange, but what I used to tell myself when I would take exams is that it will be over in two hours. So just put a smile on and do the best you can and stop telling yourself all these negative things that aren't going to make you do well. And so I kind of carried that with me through everything. Like, okay, I'm gonna have a conversation about what's going on with me right now. Why do I need to have all this negative self-talk about it? Just put it out there. You can confront and you can handle what conversation is going to happen. The good thing is it's gonna be open and you're not gonna be alone in your head with it anymore, which is worse a lot of the time.
Speaker:Yeah, the thing about it's gonna be over in two hours, or in case of a conversation, probably 20 minutes, it's it's a very helpful kind of reframe that it's just going to be this period, brief period of discomfort, and chances are it's gonna go much better than you think. Yeah. Okay, so as an now experienced mentor, uh Having mentored master students and now teaching and communicating science or kind of being a mentor also for a lot of people on Instagram, um, what is one thing that you wish all mentors knew or practiced maybe in their in their uh journey of supporting others and bringing up younger generation of scientists?
Speaker 1:Honestly, just asking, how are you doing and listening? Because unfortunately, that's not done. Um, you usually get like steamrolled by whatever they're going through, and then the student doesn't even get to tell them what they're going through. Um, and so they need to stop doing that and they need to step back and say, How are you doing today? Yeah, or how has it been going and let them speak?
Speaker:That would be great. Yeah, and l listening and then actually remembering and acting upon the the conversation that happens would be would be nice. And not like you you you heard them and then nothing changed. Exactly. Yeah, wouldn't that be a world to to live in? No, but we are here hopefully to to begin the snowball effect of changing the environment and changing how next generations after us will be going through this process and acting. Okay, let's do one last question and wrap it up for today. Uh do you have a favorite science fact or maybe something that just completely blows your mind every time you think about it?
Speaker 1:Favorite science fact. I mean, there's like so many different possible things. I for one one thing that for some reason I did not know and it makes such a big deal for me is thinking about the different types of fuel that your different organs and cells use. Because I talk about metabolism a lot now in um the courses I teach, obviously. And your your red blood cells in your body, they only use glucose. They literally cannot use any other fuel. They can't use fats, okay? They're not gonna use proteins, they can only use glucose. And so if you are in a state where you are hypoglycemic, you don't have a lot of glucose around, who's gonna suffer the most? Your red blood cells are not gonna do too hot unless they can have enough in your body. And that was something that really just blew my mind because I knew the brain was very dependent on glucose, but the brain can use ketone bodies, it can switch, it can use ketone bodies. That's why people go to the ketogenic diet, but your red blood cells are stuck. They're a bag of cytoplasm with no organs, no organelles in them. And so they only are using glycolysis to make maintain themselves, which I thought was insane. So I'll leave you with that.
Speaker:I okay, I learned something new, so thank you so much. That's that's actually a very impressive, very interesting fact. Yeah, thank you. All right, so let's wrap it up here. Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. I am feeling very inspired. I hope that so many people will hear that and think, okay, maybe there is something that I need to change, maybe there is something that I need to see differently, maybe there is something in my life that I'm not doing, skipping that is a red flag about my mental health. So, so many nuggets of wisdom that you shared. So thank you. And I hope that we will stay in touch and maybe there is a part two at some point somewhere down the line.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was great. I love um being able to talk about this. As we've talked about this, it isn't talked about enough. And so, if there is a recording that people can access, like this one, which will help them understand and not feel so alone, I'm always happy to come back and talk about this more.
Speaker:Perfect, thank you. And I will put all your information in the description of the of the video and also on Spotify and everywhere so people can find you and follow you and see for themselves the inspiration that you are. And thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm happy to uh share it as soon as it comes out so that we can have a large group of people listen. Perfect. Thank you.
Speaker:Okay, so now thanks to all the listeners, and we'll see each other soon.
