Dr. Wendy Xin, PhD in Neuroscience | Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California San Francisco (UCSF)

In this episode, we discuss what led Wendy to pursue a postdoc in Neuroscience and a career in academia, the different factors she considered when choosing which postdoc position would be the best fit for her and her particular needs, and her advice for those interested in pursuing lab-based postdoctoral fellowships. 

Hosted by Michael Wilkinson

To connect with Wendy and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Michael Wilkinson

Hello everyone. I'm Co-host Michael Wilkinson and this is the 100 Alumni Voices Podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journey of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Wendy Xin. She received her PhD in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins in 2018 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at USCF. Wendy, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here.

Wendy Xin

Hi, thanks for having me.

Michael Wilkinson

Sorry for almost butchering the university. A lot of different letters. So, to start off, you know you're pursuing your postdoc. You've been there I think for like 3 years now when I looked at it. So why did you pursue the postdoc route? And what are your goals post postdoc?

Wendy Xin

I mean, I think I went into it pretty in the standard route that a lot of people get into a postdoc, which is that I want to continue my career in academia. I was really excited about being able to do another sort of long project in the field of neuroscience, so that I can get a related but different perspective on my field and receive additional training both professionally as well as in terms of new techniques. And a postdoc was the obvious way for me to gain those experiences. And my actually partner is also a postdoc currently. So, we were kind of going through the same trajectory together, and we looked for postdoc positions together, and that is part of the reason I ended up where I did. UCSF is, of course located in San Francisco and the Bay Area is a very big hub for neuroscience research, so we were able to both find labs that we were really happy with and joined. So far, no regrets. Really enjoying our time here, yeah.

Michael Wilkinson

So, are they are they a postdoc in the same field? Or are they, like, are they also a neuroscience postdoc?

Wendy Xin

Yes, yes. Also a neuroscience postdoc, also a Hopkins Neuroscience alum. 

Michael Wilkinson

Oh wow.

Wendy Xin

We met in the program as is frequently the case. So, we navigated this career transition together and it's been really, really fun.

Michael Wilkinson

So, I'll dovetail a little bit because that's really fascinating that, you know, you had to go through this journey with a partner and like figure out all these different complications that come with that. You know, I my wife and I are thinking through the same thing right now in our own paths. So, you know, I wonder what was that, what was it like kind of managing that? Managing you know not just kind of what you want to do in your desires, but also like what your partner wants to do and kind of finding that happy medium, especially now when you're working in your own professional career development path into that?

Wendy Xin

Yeah. So, I knew it was going to be definitely a challenge. So, we're both in neuroscience, but very different fields. So, I study a slightly more I would say niche area. The brain has a lot of neurons that everybody knows about and it also has a lot of these non-neuronal cells that have been collectively termed glial cells, and I study glial cells. So, that meant that I had fewer choices of labs that would make sense for my trajectory. And so, my partner at the time said, you know what, why don't you just make a sort of short list of labs that you really want to interview with and I’ll kind of follow suit and identify potentially suitable labs in those locations. And so, we thought we had a pretty good system worked out and were in agreement for the most part, but once it came to actually making that decision, it was a lot more challenging to balance our relative preferences. And what had originally seemed like viable options became less viable when it came down to actually committing to those labs. It was definitely a tense time. We had a lot of and also, as I'm sure you're familiar, when you're doing your PhD, you don't have full control of your timeline, and sometimes one person is ready to move on before the other person is, if you're both navigating that particular trajectory. And there were a lot of disagreements about when to reach out to people, when to start interviewing, when to tell them that we were ready to move. So those were all works that—there were definitely tensions that we had to actively resolve. And I mean we made it work in the end. But there were ups and downs during that time when we were more frustrated with each other than we had been in the past. And I think part of the reason that we also wanted to choose San Francisco as opposed to some of the other locations that we had maybe considered is that we knew that with a postdoc, you try your best to make a good decision and choose a lab that you think will best fit your goals. But a lot of times when you get there, the reality is very different from what you expected, and you may end up wanting to go a different direction. And with San Francisco, there's of course a lot of biotech, a lot of pharmaceutical industry kind of in the vicinity that would provide additional different career opportunities if that was needed. So, we kind of weighed that heavily also as a factor for us to choose this particular location, even though there were some big cons, most of which was related to financial aspects.

Michael Wilkinson

Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine.

Wendy Xin

So, I was actually originally very reticent to move into this area because postdoc salaries are not that different than graduate student salaries, and there are of course a lot of people living in San Francisco with with much more disposable income than us, but in the end, I think on balance it was the right choice to try to mitigate some of those risks. We haven't needed to explore other options beyond our original labs that we chose. But certainly, if we had needed to, then this would be an ideal place to explore those options.

Michael Wilkinson

So, you know, one of the one of the disagreements you mentioned having was reaching out to folks. So, you know you knew pretty well in that this is the route you wanted to go. So, when when did you start reaching out to PI's? And you know is there any part of that timeline that you would do differently in retrospect? Or do you think you kind of did it the right way as far as the timing and like how you actually reached out to folks?

Wendy Xin

So, I think the timing question is actually very dependent on your current lab circumstance. So, I will say I approached this path from a an extremely privileged position of being in a graduate program that people have some familiarity with. And also having on my thesis committee, somebody who was very well known in my subfield of neuroscience. So, what that gave me was the ability to present myself as a potential candidate before I had my first author publication out. And I realized that that's not a position that everybody might find themselves in. And the thing is, the labs that I contacted kind of paused to look at my application, primarily because they knew one of my recommenders. So, having that, uh, you know, baseline connection is was really key for me to be able to approach people a lot earlier than I thought I would be able to just because I had these other factors that were beneficial for my application. So, I let's see, I defended December 2018. And I think I was reaching out to people like mid-2017, so.

Michael Wilkinson

OK.

Wendy Xin

A little over a year before I graduated. And again, it's just completely contingent upon what opportunities you have available to you because I, I do know that if you're coming from a smaller graduate program and you're trying to break into a field that you don't have any personal connections in, then it becomes a lot more challenging to get people to consider your application without a first author publication.

Michael Wilkinson

So, I was going to ask because I think you know a lot of people have this kind of publish or perish mentality, I think is the joke, and you know as someone who works adjacent to neuroscience, I know how hard it is to get publications because you know you have to get a lot of data. There's a lot of analysis, like it takes quite a lot of time. I don't I don't in my 4th year, I still don't have a first author publication. And you know, and I think that's pretty common.

Wendy Xin

Yeah, I mean that’s standard.

Michael Wilkinson

Yeah, it's extremely common. So, you know now that you are a postdoc and I'm sure you look at people who are coming in for their own PhD to your lab and things like that or people who are coming into postdocs into your lab. Did you find that to be a—not just in the labs that you had an immediate connection with, but even those you didn't—did you find that to be like a major hindrance that you didn't have a lot of publications and that you weren't really in this like publish or perish mentality, mainly because your science just didn't afford you to be like that?

Wendy Xin

So, you are are you talking about whether or not I was competitive for postdoc positions?

Michael Wilkinson

Yes, yes.

Wendy Xin

OK. Yeah, so. So, everybody that I reached out to, I had already some some degree of familiarity. They didn't necessarily know me, but I definitely knew them through just, you know, seeing their work at conferences. And they definitely at least recognized that one person on my thesis committee who was one of my recommenders. So, I think that was just very game changing in terms of how they evaluated my application. It was kind of like because they knew that recommender, my CV became a secondary consideration, because once you get an interview, it becomes a completely different scenario, right. At the interview, you're giving a chance. You're given a chance to present your unpublished work, and you're given a chance to demonstrate your mastery of your field, regardless of your publication status, and at that point they have a lot more information with which to evaluate you fully as a candidate. But getting that interview is of course most of the time more contingent on your CV, and I do think at least in one case if I had had a very high-profile publication, it would have changed the outcome. This person actually did not say that they were not interested in my application. They simply said that they were in the market for somebody else that they really needed to hire that was not a postdoc, but I suspect if I had a very nice publication that they might have tried to make some space, yeah.

Michael Wilkinson

So, securing that interview was kind of that very important first step. And you know, I can imagine that it is really the time to sell yourself. So, when in those interviews, you know, how was it? Was it was it stressful? How did you prepare for those interviews, knowing that OK, going into this on paper, I might not look as good, but like in the interview, this is my chance to kind of blow them away? You know, what was that, what was that like for you going into these interviews and kind of preparing for those interviews? And like, how did you effectively prepare for those interviews?

Wendy Xin

So, I definitely gave a couple of practice talks before I went out and did my first interview. I was very nervous. So, my graduate lab was not a sort of known player in the field. I was very, very much tangential in my research, and my lab mates did not have any real understanding of the field that I was trying to get into. So, I had, I did do a practice talk with a couple of lab mates, but then I also did a practice talk with people who were more familiar with the work that I'm doing. And so that was definitely very, very helpful. They helped me figure out you know where in my top construction things were a little bit unclear, or maybe a little too understated, where I could try to, you know, set up the story in a more palatable way that could capture an audience. So, those were definitely very useful pointers. And then I just you know, I tried to read a lot of different, the more recent papers from these labs that I I visited. The interview process itself was definitely a lot more fun and relaxed than I was originally envisioning. It was much more of a kind of a collegial visit, and the interviews were actually kind of reminiscent of the way that interviews went for Graduate School applications, in that people are not trying to grill you or undermine you or or, you know, like find the limits of your knowledge or anything like that. It was really more about here let me tell you about my current work. Does that sound interesting to you? Like, what are your plans for the future? It was all these kind of casual and friendly conversations, and I think it's the same advice that I give for Graduate School applications, which is ask a lot of questions. People always love that, you know. Listen intently when somebody is telling you what they're working on and come up with a couple of good questions to ask them. That goes a super long way in demonstrating your enthusiasm and your ability to kind of think critically about questions that are not immediately just you own research.

Michael Wilkinson

Makes a lot of sense. So, you know, you mentioned earlier that you kind of knew that this was the route you wanted to go. Was that something you knew from the day you applied for your PhD? Or was it like once you got into a certain point, you knew this was the route you wanted to go? Because I know many people kind of struggle with this like, which way do I go? Some people come in knowing very well like I want to be a professor. I want to be in academia. A lot of people, I think are more the kind of floating zone. So what, what space did you find yourself in when you were first entering versus like when you were leaving?

Wendy Xin

I think I I left with a lot more conviction than I entered with. I actually do think a lot of times It's the other way around.

Michael Wilkinson

Yeah.

Wendy Xin

But I definitely sort of fell into a PhD the way that many people do where I was not one of those people who understood what research meant from early on. I really came to understand it in college, like a couple of years in. And even at that point, I didn't really have a good sense of what being a professor was like, what working at a university was like. I just lucked into the PhD program that I got into, to be honest. I mean, having now seen a lot more of the current Graduate School applications, I'm amazed that anyone let me into a graduate program. 

Michael Wilkinson

I'm sure many people feel that way.

Wendy Xin

Yeah, it's just unbelievable. I feel like every year the quality of applications just like goes up exponentially. I can't explain it. But yeah, so coming in, I really didn't have a fully formed idea about where I would go after the PhD. I just felt excited about that being the step that I was taking at that moment. And then spending a few years at Hopkins, really solidified for me my desire to be a part of this particular community. I was not the most outgoing, sociable person for most of my life, and it felt like coming to Graduate School I found this interesting concentration of people who had very similar interests. And it was really easy to interact with them and and, you know, talk about things that we, just a lot, there were a lot of commonalities that I found that I really enjoyed. And then interacting with both people who were senior to me, who gave me these really profound insights into the work that I was doing and also people more junior than me, who seemed to enjoy some of the insights that I could share with them. Both of those interactions were so meaningful and enjoyable to me that I just felt like that's that's what I wanted to, to keep pursuing. And I wanted to keep existing in this space. That was a huge part of why. And the other one was just, you know, I I really love the research that I'm doing and I wanted to do more. And there were all these questions that I felt like I wanted to ask in Graduate School but didn't have the opportunity or I I came to these questions a little bit too late and I ran out of time in Graduate School. So, you know, a postdoc was just a great opportunity to give myself a little bit more time and explore those new questions that I really became passionate about towards the end of my PhD.

Michael Wilkinson

So, you talked about giving yourself a little bit more time. I think sometimes with neuroscience postdocs a little bit more than a little bit more time. So, you're you're three years in. How much more do you think that you want to like, how much longer do you think do you want to stay in your postdoc? And how are you preparing for when that eventual day comes and you're now doing your next set of applications and interviews and whatnot for now professorship positions?

Wendy Xin

Yeah, it's it's one of those things where when you're enjoying yourself, the time always feels like it's not enough. And that's definitely the situation that I'm finding myself in. Which is a way better situation than the opposite, right? Of course. But so, I my timeline has now been kind of set for me because I am going to receive this career transition award that basically places a limit on the amount of time that I can stay in my postdoc. And effectively, what that means is I actually have to go on the job market this year. Yeah, which I I do not feel prepared for at all. It all feels like it's happening very, very quickly. I still feel like I just started my postdoc, and actually you're being very generous in your assessments. Theoretically, I've actually almost been here four years. Even though it doesn't it really feel like it

Michael Wilkinson

In fair, yeah. In fairness, neuroscience postdocs are like 7 years, which is always insane to me, that they're they go for so long, but I somewhat get it.

Wendy Xin

Yeah. So, I think part of that is well, as you know, when you're doing these kinds of in vivo experiments, a lot of setting up the models can take years sometimes and it's not until you know your 4th or 5th year that you've actually got all of the resources that you needed to actually do the experiment, and then you're you're collecting your real data within the last year and then you have to take time to publish and then you have to take time to find the job. So, seven years sounds like a lot, but then when you break it down, you're like, oh, I don't have time to do any of these.

Michael Wilkinson

So, I guess now that that's been forcibly expedited for you, does it feel like you have been able to condense that? Or do you think you're going to miss out on a lot like your ability to do a lot of stuff because it's been kind of forcibly expedited for you?

Wendy Xin

You know, my ideal scenario would be to get a job and then be able to stay as a postdoc for another two years. I I find myself kind of dreaming of that period that I've recently decided to call like the golden sunset of your postdoc, which is when you've already figured out the next step, but you can still stay around and pursue some of those kind of pet projects or experiments that weren't the highest priority for your current project, but that you have a lot of desire to find the answer. I mean, yeah, I would I would love to be able to do that. But, it's more of a luxury than a necessity.

Michael Wilkinson

So, you know, I I can't imagine balancing an industry job and a postdoc at the same time. It's extremely ambitious. You know, speaking of, I guess the the balancing part of it, so I think you know this applies for both postdocs and PhDs, but I think often one of the things we struggle with is work-life balance. Especially, you know you mentioned the very low income that we make that tends to also kind of factor into that. So, you know, being where you're at in California, which I can imagine cost of living there is insane and all that, how do you, you know, how do you balance your, your work life and your kind of, you know, home life and your fun personal life and all of that? And have you been successful in doing that or has it just kind of been crazy, crazy until you get to the next stage basically?

Wendy Xin

So, it definitely feels very much like a transition period, and I think a huge part of that is exactly the limitations that you described which is postdoc salary living in San Francisco. It doesn't feel like we've really kind of established our home here. It just feels like we're in this transition period. We just have to make it through. And I think that doesn't always have to be the case. If you live somewhere a little bit more reasonable, you can feel more comfortable, kind of, you know, establishing roots in other ways. But for us, you know, that was the kind of balance that we struck between our professional goals and, well, mostly our professional goals. We decided that it was worth it to kind of put up with this temporarily hectic lifestyle where we're doing a lot of OK the the rent is going to increase this year, we got to move again to make sure that we can get like the you know the deal where we sign up and there's like a temporary bonus of a month's rent. You know, things like that. You you you have to find creative ways to make it work. The good news is UCSF has this, like slightly subsidized housing that graduate students and postdocs can can choose to take advantage of. It used to have a term limit. Now they've removed or I guess they've extended the term limit. So, whereas you had to move out before within two years, now it's five years. So that is definitely a good option. We decided to move out during the pandemic because the rent around us had decreased sufficiently that it was an option, but if if that hadn't happened then we would have just stayed in the UCSF housing. Yeah, it's we were very lucky because we didn't have any dependents at the time. We recently welcomed our first baby, so that's been 

Michael Wilkinson

That’s awesome. Congratulations.

Wendy Xin

Thank you. It's it's really amazing and a huge adjustment and way more chaotic than we could have ever envisioned. But I can tell you right now for sure that my my balance has tipped a lot more heavily into the personal life direction than it was.

Michael Wilkinson

I I can, I can imagine with a newborn that'll happen.

Wendy Xin

Yes, yes, yes. I don't know if this was a good strategy or not, but I had no idea what kind of schedule a newborn kept until a newborn arrived. And honestly, I think it was probably good for my own sanity. If I had known ahead of time, I would have worried a lot more. Now it's just like, oh, let's just take every day as it is, you know, we'll see what happens. The bottom line is, you know, baby is alive and healthy, and there's nothing more important than that.

Michael Wilkinson

Yeah, absolutely. You know, so it seems you've become quite proficient at managing your professional career, chaos, all these things that you are constantly managing. So, you know what, being in the position that you're in, what advice do you have for current PhD students who are considering this postdoc transition and going to be throwing themselves into their own little versions of research and chaos?

Wendy Xin

Two things. One is there is nothing more important than the initial decision, which I do, I mean, it's unfortunate that this is the case, which is that if you, if you if you find yourself in a bad lab situation, there's actually very little that can be done to fix it, just because of the reality of how reliant we are upon somebody's recommendation in this system. And that is definitely a fault of the system. But it is the reality in which we have to operate. So, this decision has to be made as as carefully as you possibly can, and that means doing a lot of legwork upfront, you know, trying to talk to as many people as possible who have had interactions with this person and, you know, feeling out what the what the dynamic would be once you join the lab. And the thing is, I don't want to say watch for red flags, like, of course, there are some really obvious red flags, but most of the time you're not going to find the perfect person for you. You're going to find people who have a lot of strengths and a lot of weaknesses, and you have to figure out which of those weaknesses you can live with. So, I think there's nothing more important than getting a realistic sense of what that person is like, what the lab is like, and whether or not that's a place where you think you can thrive. And then the second part is, it's all luck. Everything is luck. Like taking, I know it sounds really contradictory. Yes, you have to try your best to make a decision, but sometimes you can do all that work and you still find yourself in an unfortunate circumstance. And you have to know that luck is the driving factor in so much of this. Like your outcome, there's only so much that you can control, and you cannot let the outcome affect how you view yourself and your value, because you can do everything right and things can still go wrong. And that is through no fault of your own. You got to take it, you know, go with the flow. Like, luck is just too big a part of this whole trajectory.

Michael Wilkinson

I think that’s a very wonderful piece of advice. So, I think you know we're getting somewhat close on time here, so I'll wrap it up with asking, you know, I think you have a very inspirational journey and a lot of very wonderful pieces of advice for folks. So, you know what inspires you now in what you're doing?

Wendy Xin

It kind of goes back to something I said before. So, I have two sources of inspiration right now. One is my mentor who I have never met anyone as kind, altruistic, supportive as he is. My graduate trajectory was not the most ideal and I had some warped sense of what it meant to be a PI from that experience and now coming into this lab, it's it's just been an unbelievable kind of 180 as to what it means to be a good mentor to be a good advisor. Everything he does is an inspiration to me constantly. And then the other one is recently we've had this new college graduate join our lab as a research assistant. And everything is new. You know, she this is her first like real job in, in, in research and there’s just there's something wonderful to about seeing somebody come into this for the first time and learning about all the possibilities. And being able to share the insights that you've accumulated with them to help them navigate this part and also hopefully the next part where they're trying to decide whether or not they want to go to Graduate School. All of that. Yeah, having those two really positive bookends just makes everything a dream, you know? I'm just I'm so excited to be at work every single day.

Michael Wilkinson

Well, it's wonderful. You know, I think we're all very excited to see where you end up. You know where you'll no doubt be a professor at at some point. Thank you. Thank you.

Wendy Xin

Luck, it's all luck.

Michael Wilkinson

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with us. I know people are really going to look forward to hearing it. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Wendy Xin

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the wonderful questions.