A (Wednes)Day in the Life of a PhD Student
What is it that we actually do? (Part 2)
Hello, everyone! Today’s post is designed to give you an insight into the working day of a PhD student. No two days are usually the same, but here’s a sample of a day that I recently had involving a lot of immunohistochemistry.
Morning
I woke up at 7:30 am today, which is a bit later than usual, because I had a long day yesterday. My girlfriend and I went to Manchester to look at some flats, as we’re planning to move there soon. We had breakfast together and then I read a book for a while. I’m currently reading “Who Rules Britain” by Andrew Gamble, which is an analysis of the political and economic forces that shape the UK. It’s interesting, but a little dense at times. I’ve been going through a few economics and politics books at the moment, of which this is the latest.
I started working on my thesis at 8:30 am. I spent about an hour or so editing a section of the introduction, as I recently got some feedback from my supervisor. I try to do some writing every day, even if it’s just a few paragraphs, to keep the momentum going.
I got ready to leave the house at 9:30 am and then I’m out of the door by 9:55 am. It takes me about 15 minutes to get to the lab, which is not too bad. I enjoy cycling because it helps me clear my mind and get some exercise before I start the day.
I arrived at work at 10:10 am and checked my to-do list for the day. I had quite a lot of things to do, so I prioritised them and decided what to do first. The first thing I did was to put some media in the oven to warm up. I needed to bring some cells up from liquid nitrogen storage today, as they are part of an experiment that I’m going to do next week.
I then put an antibody on a western blot that I ran yesterday. A western blot is a technique that allows me to detect changes in specific proteins in a sample. Essentially, we break open a cell to look at the proteins inside, and then run those proteins out onto a special membrane. We then use antibodies and a special machine to visualise the proteins on the membrane, to determine how the proteins of interest have changed. While the antibody was incubating for an hour, I had a chat with one of my colleagues and grabbed some slides I prepared yesterday for analysis on the microscope.
At 10:40 am, I jumped on the microscope to look at some tissue slides. These are part of an immunohistochemistry experiment, which is another technique that allows me to detect specific proteins, this time in tissue samples. I was testing different concentrations of an antibody to see which one worked best. The antibody binds to the protein of interest in the tissue and then I can visualise it under the microscope to see where that protein is in the tissue of interest.
Afternoon
I had a quick coffee break at 11:15 am and then spent some time helping out the new PhD student who started in the lab recently. It was his first time collecting cells for lysate and then processing them for western blotting, so I showed him how to do it step by step.
At 12 pm I went for lunch with some of my colleagues. A few of us have upcoming holidays and so we were talking about that mostly, as well as what films and TV series we had been watching lately.
I went back to the microscope at 1pm and finished analysing my slides. I took some images and then discussed the results with my supervisor. We decided which concentration of antibody worked best and agreed on the next steps for the experiment.
I did some tissue culture at 1:20 pm and brought up some cells from liquid nitrogen storage. Cells are typically stored at extremely low temperatures to preserve them when we’re not using them for experiments. The cells have to be frozen down in special media that stops ice crystals forming, as this would destroy the cells. Bringing up cells from liquid nitrogen storage involves taking them out of this special media and then seeding them in flasks to grow.
I started the next set of immunohistochemstry at 1:40 pm. To analyse tissues, typically we have to first “fix” them in a preservative such as formaldehyde, to prevent the tissue decaying. The tissue is then set in a paraffin wax block, that we can then take extremely small sections of (one thousandth of a millimetre!). I had already cut some tissue blocks and put them on slides, so today I had to process the tissue, perform antigen retrieval, and put the primary antibodies on.
The fixation process described above will “hide” some parts of the protein that you want to detect, so you have to perform a process of antigen retreival.This makes the proteins more accessible for the antibodies by breaking down some cross-links in the tissue. It can be done using different methods, such as heat or enzymes.
This part of the experiment was quite lengthy, especially because I was using two different antigen retrieval methods and several different antibodies. This took me a few hours, and I was juggling a few different tasks (such as bringing more cells up, scanning a western blot) during this time.
Evening
I finally finished processing my slides at 4:55 pm and put them in the fridge overnight with the primary antibody on. I’ll continue processing them tomorrow. I then packed up my things and went home.
I got home at 5:20 pm and joined my girlfriend for a jog. She was going out for a run anyway, so I decided to go with her to relax and unwind from the stressful day.
We got back home at 6:05 pm and started cooking dinner. We had a butter chicken curry with the chicken substituted for halloumi (butter halloumi?). We watched some TV while eating dinner. We’re currently watching The Grand Tour, which usually helps me take my mind off of the work day. I generally prefer to watch these lighter comedy-style TV shows at the end of the work day.
We headed out to do our weekly food shop at 7:25 pm; going later in the day means the shops aren’t as busy, so it’s a bit less hectic. We usually go to Aldi and then Morrisons, depending on what we need and what’s on offer.
We got back home at 8:30 pm and put away the food. We then sat down and watched some more TV.
We got ready for bed at 9:50 pm and got into bed at 10:00 pm. I read a book for about ten minutes before falling asleep. Reading helps me to wind down from the day.
Reflection
That’s it for today! I hope you found this informative as to what a “typical” working day for a PhD student looks like!
On reflection, today was one of the more stressful days as I was having to juggle so many different tasks, and trying to supervise someone on top of that is very demanding. You will inevitably get days where you’re very tired and you have to force yourself to get through the work, especially when it’s quite technical with many different steps. But I managed to get everything done that I wanted to, so overall it wasn’t so bad.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates!