"Senior Sun, are you saying that this kind of doctoral student service team is actually just a fancy term for an alcohol-fueled social group?" Fang Ziye asked while inquiring about the rural support and assistance doctoral student service team from Senior Sun Shaoqing, who had been long immersed in the training room.
"Mm-hmm, it's useless. Don't go, it's just a waste of time," Sun Shaoqing replied.
"The time during your doctoral studies is so precious. It's far better to stay in the lab or training room, do some experiments, or solidly improve your practical skills," Sun Shaoqing continued, still practicing his incision technique.
The practice materials for Senior Sun Shaoqing's debridement technique were relatively high-end—pork.
Randomly taking a piece of pork, roughly cut by the butcher, if you could cleanly and neatly separate the cut pork into distinct layers of muscle, fat, skin, fascia, and tendon, then you would be considered to have mastered the practice.
Such practice materials were expensive. Only doctoral students or those who had surpassed the master's level in incision practice could apply to the material supply room of the skills training center for relatively cheap pork.
Otherwise, several pounds a day at more than ten yuan per pound, all self-funded, would be unbearable for most people.
Sun Shaoqing was currently in his third year of doctoral studies, having reached the ceiling of both degree and academic qualifications.
In our country, higher education is divided into three academic levels: associate degree, bachelor's degree, and graduate degree.
Graduate degree is the highest academic qualification, but graduate students can be further divided into master's and doctoral students based on their degrees. Doctoral students represent the highest level of higher education.
There are many ways to pursue a doctorate, including studying for a doctorate after completing a master's degree, direct admission to a doctoral program after completing a bachelor's degree (known as direct PhD), and continuous bachelor's-master's-doctoral programs, like Luo Tingzhu.
As doctoral students approach graduation, they generally have two choices: enter a postdoctoral research station or directly look for a job.
Joining a postdoctoral research station is actually preparation for job hunting, adding more to one's resume, such as publishing some papers or applying for good research projects at the postdoctoral station, so that hospitals will consider you capable and want to keep you.
However, it seemed that although Senior Sun Shaoqing's research output currently exceeded the standard for doctoral graduation, it was still a bit short for the fierce competition to stay at the hospital.
In the entire orthopedics department, there were six third-year doctoral students from this hospital, but only one position available!
There was also competition from doctoral graduates from other hospitals. The best would be selected based on the number and quality of papers, as well as operational skills.
Sun Shaoqing was under tremendous pressure now, attempting to use the shortcut of emerging from seclusion in the training room to apply for a position at the hospital. Otherwise, there wasn't enough time left to surpass others through research output.
"Oh, I see. Well, Senior Sun, I won't disturb you anymore then," Fang Ziye said, having gotten the answer he wanted, and not wanting to bother Senior Sun Shaoqing who was in the midst of his grueling practice.
The pressure on Senior Sun now was much, much greater than what Fang Ziye himself had experienced a few months ago.
"Mm! We'll have a chance to discuss and learn together another time," Sun Shaoqing glanced at Fang Ziye, looking slightly apologetic.
Fang Ziye quickly took his leave.
Saturday was the weekend, a time when resident physicians who weren't on duty could freely manage their time, as no elective surgeries were scheduled on weekends.
Many would spend long hours in the training room, or go to the lab to conduct experiments, or stay at home writing papers to produce output.
Fang Ziye wasn't currently immersing himself in the training room, because continuing to do so wouldn't be very meaningful for him and wouldn't result in much research output.
So, Fang Ziye first went to the laboratory, planning to take some time to familiarize himself with some basic experimental methodologies in preparation for conducting experiments during his future doctoral studies.
In the laboratory.
Fang Ziye took the list of materials handed over by Junior Luo Tingzhu: "Junior Luo, thank you for your hard work. So, basically, I just need to purchase these materials now, right?"
Fang Ziye was a newcomer to the lab. Although he had read books and done some preparation, he still lacked experience.
Although Luo Tingzhu didn't have much experience either, she had been in the lab for a month, so she knew a bit more than a complete novice like Fang Ziye. After all, she had already started culturing cells.
Fang Ziye was a professional master's student who had rarely been to the lab before. On the occasional visits, he had only helped his teacher move some experimental equipment.
Professional master's students had ward management tasks, on-call duties, graduation pressure, and the pressure to write papers. How could they find time to conduct experiments?
"It's okay, I'm still in the exploration stage too. Previously, I was guided by senior brothers," Luo Tingzhu replied.
"You don't need to buy alcohol, the lab has 100% concentration alcohol that can be prepared. The main things you need to buy are fetal bovine serum, culture medium, trypsin, and things like that. Also, PBS buffer."
"I've marked the ones that are essential for you," Luo Tingzhu explained in detail.
"Are you also doing osteosarcoma cell experiments?" Luo Tingzhu asked after pointing things out.
The hottest topic in the orthopedics lab was osteosarcoma research.
"No, I'll be working on giant cell tumor of bone cells," Fang Ziye replied with a smile.
His advisor's project wasn't focused on the most popular osteosarcoma.
Just yesterday, Yuan Weihong had privately sent Fang Ziye the project proposal for the "National Natural Science Foundation" project he had successfully applied for. The proposal outlined the research direction of Yuan Weihong's approved project.
In fact, many people don't understand what ordinary master's and doctoral students are actually doing.
They think these students are doing some high-level research, but that's not the case.
For ordinary professional master's students in medicine, they're immersed in clinical work, churning out some utilitarian papers, such as reviews, systematic analyses, meta-analyses, and bioinformatics analyses.
These types of papers are actually just tools, comprehensively analyzing and summarizing existing materials, allowing the paper writers to become familiar with relevant methods of medical statistics and data processing models. It's a demonstration of research capability skills.
Most academic graduate students, on the other hand, are people "working" for their advisors.
After meticulous analysis and preliminary basic research, the advisor secures funding from the National Natural Science Foundation or Youth Foundation. Then, the students repeat the research path designed by the advisor.
Simply put, the advisor explores, guessing what might lead to a breakthrough in a new field.
The students then verify whether the advisor's guesses are right or wrong according to their direction. This is what most academic graduate students are doing, which is also basic research.
There's a premise here.
That is, if students don't have their advisor's project funding, they can't do anything—no money, no direction.
So, in many cases, graduate students are working for their advisors.
As a mere master's or doctoral student, wanting to make your own breakthrough without any preliminary research, you can't even afford the tools to culture cells. This is the reality!
And this process is the process of mastering basic medical cell biology experiments.
...
Two days later, Fang Ziye finally prepared everything and began to revive the first batch of cells frozen by his teacher, opening the door to Fang Ziye's new vision.
Before everything was ready, novice Fang Ziye, looking at his blue-gloved hands that had been disinfected and the cell operation table that had been sterilized by ultraviolet radiation, turned his head and said, "Junior Luo, please help watch and correct me."
He silently thought to himself, "Hello, new world."
"I'm not very skilled either. Let's learn together. Start by quickly thawing the cells stored in liquid nitrogen with warm water..." Luo Tingzhu began guiding him.