Writing Career Advice From a Neuroscientist, Part I: Choose your
Projects Carefully  As a graduate student studying the brain
mechanisms of reading, I'm blessed with a pretty awesome day job
(or more accurately, “afternoon, evening, and weekend job”). My
adviser is a tenured professor at MIT and occasionally gives
graduate students advice on building a scientific career. Not
only is his advice spot on, but I've realized that many of his
tips apply to building a writing career as well. His tips are
the inspiration of this four part series: Writing Career Advice
From a Neuroscientist  Tip #1: Choose Your Project Wisely
Before I came to my current lab, I worked as a behavioral
psychologist -- I made people do experiments on computers and
measured their responses and how quickly they responded.
Behavioral experiments are very fast paced -- you can finish an
experiment in a week if you work quickly. Because of the small
time commitment, the cost of not planning a good behavioral
experiment is minimal. If you have