Chapter 33: Hello, New World (Asking for Collection, Asking for Follows)

"Senior Brother Sun, are you saying that kind of doctoral student service team is actually a sauce-aroma-type drinking companion group?" Fang Ziye asked again when inquiring with Senior Brother Sun Shaoqing, who had long been drilling in the training room, about the matter of going down to the countryside to support the doctoral student service team.

"Mhm, this thing is useless, absolutely don't go, it just wastes time."

"Time during the doctoral stage is so precious, it's far better to stay in the lab or training room, do some experiments, or solidly improve your operational skills — that's more practical." Sun Shaoqing was still practicing incision technique.

However, the debridement technique practice material Sun Shaoqing, the doctoral senior brother, needed to practice was relatively high-end — it was pork.

Randomly take a piece of pork, the butcher cuts it arbitrarily, and then you can cleanly and neatly separate the cut pork into layers — muscle, fat layer, skin layer, fascia layer, tendon layer, etc. — one by one, then the practice counts as successful.

Such practice material is very expensive; only doctoral graduate students or those who have surpassed the master's incision stage in incision technique practice can apply to the material supply room of the skill training room for relatively cheap pork.

Otherwise, several catties a day, over ten yuan per catty, all self-funded — most people can't bear it.

Sun Shaoqing is currently a third-year doctoral student, already at the ceiling of degree and diploma.

Our country's higher education is divided into three academic levels: specialty, undergraduate, and graduate.

Graduate education is the highest academic level, but graduate students can be divided into master's graduate students and doctoral graduate students according to degree; doctoral graduate students are the highest education level in higher education.

There are many ways to pursue a doctorate: some pursue a doctorate after graduating as a master's graduate student, some do direct PhD with integrated master-doctorate after undergraduate graduation, and there are also integrated bachelor-master-doctorate forms, like Luo Tingzhu.

When a doctorate nears graduation, there are generally two choices: one is to enter a postdoctoral mobile station, the other is to directly find a job.

Entering a postdoctoral mobile station is actually also preparation for finding a job, adding some resume items — for example, publishing some articles, securing some good research projects at the postdoctoral mobile station, making the hospital think your capability is good, and then they'll let you stay at the hospital.

However, it seems Senior Brother Sun Shaoqing's research output, while currently exceeding the doctoral graduation standard, still falls a bit short of the hospital retention struggle.

The entire orthopedics department has six third-year doctoral students in this hospital, but only recruits one!

There are also doctoral students from other hospitals coming to compete for jobs; the capable rise — they look at article quantity, article quality, and operational level.

Sun Shaoqing's pressure right now is enormous; he's trying to apply for hospital retention through the shortcut of passing the training room test; otherwise, wanting to suppress others through research output, there's already not enough time.

"Oh, so that's how it is, Senior Brother Sun, then I won't disturb you anymore." Fang Ziye got the answer he wanted and stopped disturbing Senior Brother Sun Shaoqing who was hard at work.

Senior Brother Sun's pressure now is many times greater than his own from a few months ago.

"Mhm! ~ Let's discuss and learn together if there's a chance." Sun Shaoqing turned his head to glance at Fang Ziye, looking slightly apologetic.

Fang Ziye hurriedly left.

Saturday is the weekend, a time when the resident physicians not on duty can freely dispose of their time; after all, elective surgeries are not scheduled on weekends.

One can soak in the training room for long periods, or go into the lab to do experiments, or stay home writing articles and producing output.

Fang Ziye currently also isn't immersively soaking in the training room, because continuing to soak in the training room doesn't hold much significance for him — it won't yield much research output.

So, Fang Ziye went to the lab first, planning to find time to first understand some experimental methods of basic experiments, to prepare for doing experiments during his subsequent doctoral pursuit.

In the lab.

Fang Ziye took the material list Junior Sister Luo Tingzhu handed over: "Junior Sister Luo, thanks for the trouble; so that means I just need to purchase these materials, right?"

Fang Ziye is a newbie in the lab; although he read books and made some preparations, he ultimately has little experience.

Although Luo Tingzhu doesn't have much experience either, she's been in the lab for a month already, so compared to a pure newbie like Fang Ziye, she understands a bit more — after all, she's already started culturing cells.

Fang Ziye is a professional master's graduate student; previously he almost never came to the lab, and on the rare occasions he did, he just helped his own teacher move experimental equipment.

Professional master's graduate students have bed management tasks, on-duty tasks, graduation pressure, article writing pressure — where would they find time to come do experiments?

"No worries, I'm also in the exploration stage; before, I was also brought along by a senior brother."

"You don't need to buy alcohol; the lab has 100% concentration alcohol that can be prepared. The main things to buy are fetal bovine serum, culture medium, trypsin. And also PBS buffer."

"The ones I marked with a hook are the ones you must have." Luo Tingzhu gave Fang Ziye detailed guidance.

"Are you also doing osteosarcoma cell experiments?" Luo Tingzhu asked after pointing it out.

Currently, the hottest basic experiment direction in orthopedics is the osteosarcoma direction.

"No, I'm doing giant cell tumor of bone cells." Fang Ziye smiled in reply.

The research project the teacher applied for is not the hottest osteosarcoma direction.

Just yesterday, Yuan Weihong privately sent him the project proposal for the "National Natural Science Foundation of China" he had secured; inside the proposal was the research project direction Yuan Weihong had applied for.

Actually, many people don't understand what general master's graduate students and doctoral graduate students do.

They think it's high-end research; actually it's not.

General professional master's graduate students, in terms of medicine, just soak in the clinical side, water some tool articles — for example, review (retrospective articles), system analysis, meta-analysis, bioinformatics analysis (analytical articles).

These article types are actually instrumental uses, comprehensively analyzing and summarizing existing materials, enabling the article writer to familiarize themselves with corresponding methods of medical statistics and data processing models — a manifestation of research capability skills.

And most academic graduate students are the people who "work for" the teacher.

The teacher, through various meticulous analyses and preliminary basic research, secures National Natural Science Foundation or Youth Fund project funding; then the student repeats the project route the teacher pre-designed.

Simply put, the teacher goes to explore how to do it for a possible breakthrough, a new field.

The student then verifies, according to the teacher's speculation, whether this direction is right or wrong. This is what most academic graduate students do, and it's basic research.

Here, there's actually a premise.

That is, if the student doesn't have the teacher's project funding, then he can't do anything — one, no money; two, no direction.

So, in many cases, graduate students are working for the teacher.

A small master's or doctorate student wants to make their own breakthrough; without any preliminary research, you can't even afford the tools to culture cells — this is the reality of the human world!

And this process is the process of mastering medical basic cell biology experiments.

……

Two days later, Fang Ziye finally got everything prepared, began reviving the first batch of cells his teacher had frozen, and opened the door to Fang Ziye's new vision.

Before everything was ready, newbie Fang Ziye, facing his already disinfected blue-gloved hands and the cell operation bench disinfected by UV irradiation, turned his head and said: "Junior Sister Luo, help watch and correct me, okay?"

In his heart he silently recited: Hello, new world.

"I'm not very proficient either; let's learn together. You first take out the cells sealed in the liquid nitrogen, then quickly revive them in warm water..."

(Chapter End)