Do you ever get such extreme tunnel vision in your research that you forget how wonderous your field is?
I find that poster sessions are a fantastic cure.
My regular workday is taken up primarily by troubleshooting: why did my labeling fail? How can I increase signal? Decrease noise? Is this what I think it is? Working out problems is necessary to move research work forward, but focusing on them too closely limits my appreciation for what I'm doing.
Participating in the poster sessions at BPS 2022 has increased my awareness of how incredible biophysics (including my biophysics) can be. These sessions are like science immersion. Everywhere I look I find measurements so tiny they almost shouldn't be possible, answers to questions I never would have thought to ask, and overwhelming evidence of life's beautiful and mysterious intricacies. I am reminded that biophysics is so much broader than my personal lab bench!
With my perspective broadened beyond the few points of interest of my home lab, the BPS poster sessions became quite an inspiring place. Every conversation could potentially yield ideas for new approaches, food for thought, or connections for collaboration. Interactions with poster authors left me invigorated and excited to be a biophysicist! They also gave me a great opportunity to encourage other researchers. For example, I met someone who uses the same technique as I do and we both left the conversation thinking "I'm not the only one who deals with xyz after all!" Not to mention, a "thank you, this was very helpful/informative/interesting" goes a long way.
There is a sense of community and belonging when we come together for posters. All questions are welcome, and all people are welcome. We don’t all know each other but we can have a great discussion because we both enter knowing one thing: we have a passion for science. These are the people that will listen to all of your nerdy details and actually care about them! These are the people that appreciate your work even if they don't understand it at first because they already understand its difficulty and its importance. The biophysics community in action makes me prouder to be a biophysicist.
Even my own poster was surprisingly therapeutic for me! When it feels like you've been working on the same problem for the past few years, it can be easy to miss how far you've come. Yet, seeing my work printed on a poster showed me how much I have accomplished in my graduate school career. Answering questions and talking with others about my work also showed me how much I have learned along the way! My tendency is to associate one experiment with one piece of new knowledge, but as I talked with my poster's visitors I realized my project has taught me so much more than I once thought.
Did you find this year's poster sessions to be therapeutic in some way? What did your conversations at BPS 2022 remind you that you tend to forget every day at your lab bench/office? Let me know in the comments!