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[本篇全文] [回复本文] [本篇作者: monble ] [本篇人气: 175]
发信人: monble (weiwei), 信区: Localnews
标  题: 管中窥豹——从蒋辉的信看神所氛围
发信站: 生命玄机 BBS (Sat Nov 20 15:26:42 2004)，WWW信件


相信不少人知道老浦每年元旦都会给神所的所有人写公开信，鼓励大家。老浦04年元旦的
公开信在神所引起了热烈的讨论。偶从同学那里要来了蒋辉的一封信，他的信通过介绍自
己在神所的学习经历希望激励更多的后来者。

reply to Mu-Ming and Ninglong's message

Dear all,

  After reading Mu-ming and Ninglong's message, I do feel shame that I did not
 speak up publicly during the past three years I spent in ION. I am the studen
t that will give a low score if we take the poll Mu-ming mentioned in his mess
age. 

  But I (and I think the most of us) waited for Mu-ming to do more, to encoura
ge students, to push PIs. While Mu-ming is asking PIs to give us more freedom 
to explore science, I see many of us are still waiting for PIs to give them pr
ojects. I also see some students around me are discouraged or turn their inter
ests to stuffs unrelated to science. 

  I did not do anything to boost their interests before, while Mu-ming was try
ing everything he can, even against PIs. I did think it is "inappropriate" for
 me, a junior student, to do such things.  But now, I will give up anything re
lated to "keep modest","save face", and "respect elder", and speak about my ow
n experiences during the past three years. 

  I think my experiences are of some values for new commers. I think it is the
 only way that I can help new students here, the only way that I can share som
e responsibilities from Mu-ming for students. I also hope other PIs/students c
an give your opinions.  

  Generally, I do not fully agree with Mu-ming's opinion that students need no
t read much. Several disavantages make hard reading necessary:

  Firstly, most new students cannot read scientific literature smoothly, espec
ially outside the field that they are currently working on; 

  Secondly,  undergraduate education in China  laggs behind the world over 20 
years, and we need update our knowledge through reading. For example, several 
years ago, undergraduate students in Berkeley are asked to describe the mechan
ism and stucture of Arp2/3 in their final examination of cell biology. I am qu
ite sure that most, if not all, students can not learn about Arp2/3 in their u
niversities. 
 
  Thirdly, people not knowing the progress in other field will possibly miss t
he chance to boost their own research. A recent example is the groups rushed i
nto RNAi mechanism resarch. Compared with other groups in the RNA field, the l
abs took the opportunity boosted rapidly, like Hannon lab, Cold Spring Harbor 
laboratory. I can say that if we do not read for the sake of reading itself, w
e are safe from loosing ourselves in the huge amount of literatures.


Starting period: getting out the situation of innocent

  I was almost innocent about neuroscience before I joined ION. I only had som
e pieced knowledge about action potential, axon. I knew nothing about neuroana
tomy, neurodevelopment, and high-level functions such as vision. The first res
earch paper I read is a Cell paper from Yi Rao lab. It took me a week to stumb
le through it! I was so upset and discouraged at that time. I thought I was in
appropriate for neuroscience. I think some of the new comers may share the sam
e feeling as me. Finally, I passed through that period. What I did was that I 
spent three months in our library without doing any experiment. I randomly pic
ked up papers from CNS, neuron, J.Neurosci. Before reading them, read the rela
ted chapters in Principles of Neuroscience, then go to the papers. I read them
 sentence by sentence. It was really hard initially, but soon I felt encouragi
ng, because I found that I could read faster after several weeks. At the end o
f three months, I found I learned something unexpected: I can feel the quality of papers, that is, I can tell the paper is J.Neurosci or Neur
on according to my own judgement. I never had the experience again, because I 
had experiments to do now.  I don't know how other students passed through thi
s period. I think the only way to be not innocent is hard reading. I hope othe
r students/PIs can give your opinions. If most of you have the same feelings, 
I hope students can be allowed to spend more time in library.


Improvement: systematic reading

  When I was OK for reading itself and critical reading, I held an ambitious g
oal: to be an expert of every aspect of neuroscience. Of course, I gave it up 
finally, but I really explored  many aspects. And the process is still not fin
ished yet. I took up two strategies: textbook oriented and people oriented. 

I read Principle of neurosciences chapter by chapter, and read my interested o
riginal papers listed after each chapter, especially reviews. I also searched 
Pubmed for the names cited often, because I wanted to know what publications c
an make someone "giant". I still remembered that I gasped at the beautiful pub
lication list of Tom Jessell and some others. 
 
 Another approach of systematic reading is people oriented. I downloaded mater
ials about neuroscience winners from the Nobel Prize website. Firstly, see wha
t they say about their fields. Then I will try to find out their students, and
 see what they are doing now. I often make "lineage trees" for those peoples. 
I can still remember the excitement when I made the list of Kuffler, Hubel & W
iesel, Shatz&Stryker&Katz... The names on the NAS site are also useful. I also
 made my reading list from Journals: Cell, Neuron, J.Neurosci editorial board 
members, Current opinions, Triends editorial borad members. You will find the 
world is really small: many of them are in multiple boards. Notabally, what I 
read were mostly reviews, but I ensured at least one research paper for each o
f them. This kind of readings brought me many funs, I felt very intimate with 
some of them, although I never met them. Sometimes, I can guess the content of
 their next paper.

Furthur improvement:

 One way I found can keep improving me: Look at lab websites of those "giants"
. Several things need to be done: find out what they are doing now; is it the 
most important question addressable in his field; can it be improved or diffic
ult problems can be solved by introducing some new techonologies or cooperatio
n with another lab (I always think of doing two rounds of Postdoc for one impo
rtant question or field).  

 
  Discussion: I have the chance to closely discuss with stimulus mentor, which
 is not available for most students. My experience is not appliable for all, s
o I will not talk about it here. 

  I think if you have clear vision of your field, you will easily find interes
ting questions and hypothesis to work on, and need not wait for assignment. 


  I hope my experience and feeling can help a little for those wondering what 
to do at their beggining period. There must be other good ways. I hope you can
 share your experiences with us students. I do hope the students can hold ambi
tious goals, it is one good way to prevent you from been depressed by current 
problems. 

Best,