As someone who took no breaks between my undergraduate-graduate-postdoc days (12 years total), I can certainly say that I became used to the sheltered life of an academic setting. Therefore, once I decided that I would trade in my pipets for a keyboard, I realized that I would be in for many lifestyle changes. I'll admit it did give me momentary pause; after all, even if you may not love your current profession, the sense of comfort can make it a bit harder to leave. Of the many differences, though, adjusting to the different pace of my science writing profession has been the biggest.

For years, I had existed with the pace of academic research, which being dictated by your experiments, is frequently uneven. Sometimes I needed to run a time course experiment that kept me up for most of the night, whereas other days I only needed to do a little bit of prep work. Some of my experiments required constant attention for an extended time period, while others had a long idle period between set-up and completion. And, of course, with my future experiment choice being dictated by the results of my previous ones, there was always a level of uncertainty with long term projects. In those moments when I observed unexpected results, or more frustratingly, negative results because my experiment did not work at some level, I had to reevaluate my line of thinking.

However, while quite varied over the course of a day or week, my time was easy to manage, since the protocols for my experiments were constant and I could set up a working schedule in advance. This allowed for a great deal of flexibility in my work. While I certainly put in my share of arduous hours, the pace of academic research meant that I could adjust my daily regimen as needed. So, while on occasion I would have to work extremely late or come in on a weekend, these were offset by other times where I could arrive a bit later or leave the lab for a couple of hours while I had a gel running to relax, attend a class, or handle a personal matter like a doctor's appointment. For my, and many other"s, boss, this was not a big issue since PIs generally give a fair amount of independence to their lab members; so long as you are showing continual progress in your research, then your exact hours aren't crucial. Looking back, this ability to structure my research around my personal habits was one of the main advantages of bench science.

The pace of writing, on the other hand, is quite different. First, most staff writing jobs follow a standard weekly work schedule (9 to 5), which makes for a far more routine experience. My work also has less flexibility now, since I work at a weekly publication and I have to write with strict deadlines in mind. This idea was somewhat foreign to me back in graduate school. I had periodic moments where I would have to discuss the status of my work (lab meetings and student seminars), but these were informal deadlines. Whenever it was my turn to present, I discussed what I had done and what my future goals were, although I was never required to complete a concrete set of results by a certain deadline. (I may have been fortunate in that working on a training grant, I did not have to worry about the deadlines of grant or fellowship applications, which is a nice example of the writing and bench work worlds colliding.)

The time involved for each individual writing assignment also starkly contrasts that of a lab experiment. When given a piece, like writing a summary of a particular article, I know roughly what the end result will be as I can dictate the direction I want to go in. On the other hand, when I start, I have no idea how long a project will take. An interview may last thirty minutes or over an hour, the writing may come easily or be difficult, and I may get few or many edits. Unlike lab work, I do have the luxury of stopping anytime, but at the same time I can't come in the morning and guarantee I can write two press releases by lunchtime. So I never know when I may have to skip lunch or stay late to make a deadline.

Coming in to my writing career with little experience beyond my dissertation, I think that having a transition period --first in a writing program, then in an internship-helped me change my mindset without too much of a jolt. The writing program was especially useful since I could focus on changing only one aspect of the pace, namely the time commitment involved in preparing and writing stories, while maintaining the comfortable and flexible academic environment which I was used to. Every good scientist understands the need for adaptation, I just happened to follow a path of gradual evolution. There are definitely other paths to take, so long as the key message remains; during the first years it's just as critical to adjust to the different pace of a writing lifestyle as it is to developing your own writing style.