As a grad student, I always thought the choice was binary: either (1) be an industry scientist and do boring, mindless work or (2)
run an academic lab and do thrilling, exciting work. Once I started actually talking to people in industry, however, I found out this wasn’t true.
If you’re completely obsessed with a specific field of biology and want to continue studying it, academia is probably the best fit for you, and it’s a great career. On the other hand, as an industry scientist, you might be part of a team that develops a cure for sick patients – how cool is that? If your goal is to do something more applied, or if you’re just not sure, talk to some people in industry – you might like what you hear. Honestly, never pass up an opportunity to talk to someone about what they do — a conversation is almost always going to be more valuable for your research and your career than staying an extra hour in the lab.

Overall, I think CDB does a really good job of preparing grad students – in particular, the grant-writing experience I got in CDB courses and the presentation experience
I got during lab meetings and in the CDB student seminar were incredibly useful during job interviews and throughout my postdoc. I
do wish I had known more about the odds of securing a faculty position in the future, and about alternate career paths. I am very fortunate to have ended up with exactly the type of job I always wanted, but if that hadn’t worked out, I’m still not sure what my plan B would have been!

Two things I would have told myself at the beginning of grad school:
1- Prioritize spending time outside of lab do- ing other things that you like. No one is go- ing to tell you to take time away from your experiments, but it really is an important part of the training process to learn when you need it. I realize, looking back, that I could have spent more time doing other things that I enjoy, recharged my energy, and have been just as (or more) productive in the lab.
2- Take more time to enjoy working with fellow young people and colleagues of CDB. The de- partment is truly rare in the academic world, so get to as many seminars as possible, ask as many questions as you can, and, of course, take advantage of those happy hours!