Rock Your Research

THE WEBSITE DEDICATED TO HELPING YOU BE A HAPPIER, MORE PRODUCTIVE RESEARCHER.

Like you, we are graduate students working every day to become better and make our small contribution to the world of science. We write about the struggles that we all face to become better researchers, better people, and live a meaningful life. We share our journey and the journey of other researchers and provide actionable steps you can take to achieve the life you want and explore careers that spark your interest.

TOPICS DISCUSSED HERE:

• Ways to achieve work life balance.
• Awesome alternative and academic career options.
• Ways to finish your dissertation, publish journal articles/books, and get grants.
• Successful strategies to overcome impostor syndrome and boost your mental health.
• Proven ways to boost your productivity.
• Tips for building adviser and committee member relationships.

OUR CONTENT:

• Weekly interviews with:
  • Successful academics
  • Journal Editors
  • Experts on key graduate student issues (i.e. impostor syndrome)
  • Funding agencies
  • Amazing people in alternative careers
• Weekly blog post on the topics mentioned above

OUR STORY AND MISSION:

Like most of us, I (Chris) have spent time pondering life after graduate school. After my son was born, I started doing this more seriously. I also started listening to productivity and motivational podcasts and audio books. This combination led me to the realization that I don’t want a traditional academic job. After making this realization I went to talk to my non-academic mentor.

He told me that he thought I was making a mistake: that I would better serve the needs of humanity by staying in academics and helping address climate change through research. I was humbled that he thought I could do this.

This conversation played through my mind for weeks before a light bulb went off: What if I didn’t just work harder myself, but I helped other graduate students achieve success? I have dealt with impostor syndrome and wished that there was an open forum for discussion. I have beat myself up over a grant proposal, taking the document through more iterations than should ever be allowed for one piece of work. I have overloaded myself with course work and failed to spend enough time with my family and friends. Oh, and the best part: I never talked about these things!

The idea: A website, podcast  and community that could reach and unite all graduate students. We would talk about common graduate student issues openly and publicly with successful researchers and discover how they overcame these universal problems. I would not only help myself with these issues, but I could empower the next generation of great scientists to not only solve global warming, but also find a cure for cancer, solve the poverty problem, and end social injustice.

Together with my amazing wife, we have set out to provide the best possible content to help you not only become the best possible researcher you can be, but the best version of yourself. If even a handful of the people that listen to this podcast are helped, then I will feel like it was worth it. But the grand goal is that together we can make the world a better place. And we can look at our children and say with confidence that we have done our best to leave them with a world that they can be proud of.

ABOUT CHRIS

I’m a first generation grad student at UNC Chapel Hill in Geography. Actually, for that matter, I am a first generation college graduate. I come from a rural town in Ohio and my parents are both factory workers. This makes the graduate school experience more challenging because I can’t talk to them about what I do. However, it does allow me to practice explaining my research in a form that most people can understand. I had a long journey to graduate school. After high school, I joined the military in order to expand my view of the world and to pay for college. I saw places and things that I had never thought possible during this time. Best of all, it allowed me to meet Shannon, who has changed my life in more ways than I can articulate. Without her, I would still be in the military doing work that I was no longer passionate about (it was the easy route). In 2009, as my 7 year enlistment was coming to an end, I was interested in sustainable energy and habitat management due to efforts at the base I was stationed at. I chose to leave the military, turning down a $75,000 signing bonus, to pursue an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science at UNC Chapel Hill. This decision was the best I have ever made. It also led me to graduate school through the work I did for my undergraduate honors thesis. I love science communication, outreach, and all things nature (except ticks and mosquitoes). My research focuses on understanding how a forest pathogen affects forest areas at large spatial scales. I am particularly interested in the effect it has on carbon sequestration and fire magnitude and severity. Connect with Chris on Twitter or Facebook!

ABOUT SHANNON

I am passionate about science communication and education, and I want to help fellow students and researchers! I do a lot of the behind the scenes work on Rock Your Research like website design and editing. Like Chris, I am a first generation graduate student. I’m in the curriculum of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at UNC. My research focuses on using computational models to understand the fluid dynamics and aerodynamics of flight. But, I’m very interested in how modeling can be used to model a wide variety of biological systems. In the broader science world, I’m particularly passionate about understanding how people think, learn and maintain motivation, and how this applies to science education. Connect with Shannon on Twitter!