u/mycetes

Hi, turning here to get some advice regarding a planned hiking trip to Odda/Trolltunga.

Me and my partner were planning on camping near Odda and attempt the Trolltunga trail, arriving on the 4th and leaving for Oslo late in the evening on the 7th, giving us the 5th-6th as realistic days to attempt the climb.

The issue is that we managed to find the absolute worst timing for our trip, with the weather forecast promising rain on both days, (5-9mm and 6-10mm respectively) and cold weather at the peak (17-20 degrees celsius in Odda, 7-6 in Trolltunga, reaching as low as 1 in the night). Although the wind looks manageable ranging from mild to at most intermediate. We were orginally planning on taking it slow and split the trail into two days, but now instead consider starting from P3 and attempting it in one day instead.

Both of us have hiked in the past and have good gear, but i am still worried this will be dangerous or miserable, and would as such appreciate the input from any locals or people who have done the climb in similar circumstances.

Hi!

Im turning to this forum for some advice regarding career options, and possibly pivot or improvement suggestions to unfuck my career into something desirable on the current job market.

To give some crucial background to my predicament, I am a recent PhD graduate in my lower 30's, with an engineering bachelors and masters in bioinformatics. The university i received this degree from is well respected, and although i was never an honors student (due to a lack of motivation at the time), i was part of many extracurricular activities and graduated on time with ok to good grades without issues.

After a brief stint in an adjacent field during covid, i got offered a fully funded PhD position and decided on a whim after interviewing some former graduates from the group that I wanted to give academia a real shot, as i genuinely love research and have a compatible personality. Unfortunately, as it would turn out, my PI lied to me, and his former graduates all withheld crucial information. Although my workplace was not abusive in the traditional sense, my PI, as it would turn out, was simply not active in research anymore and my department lacked any resources to aid or guide bioinformatical research in the first place. I was the only person with bioinformatical knowledge there, and my suggestions for a bioinformatical co-supervisor was dismissed at multiple instances by my PI, despite the support of one of my co-supervisors that wholeheartedly agreed with my suggestions. If i had been in a sound state of mind at the time, i would have simply quit or demanded a change of PI's, but due to personal circumstances i was battling both PTSD, severe burnout and severe depression (confirmed by a MD and a psychologist) which unfortunately hampered this escape until the sunk cost felt too severe for such a move.

Consequently, in my project i was "abandoned" to essentially run the project myself from the ground up, something that although it made me independent and very self driven, also led to my skills stagnating or even regressing in some cases as i completely lacked any form of oversight and guidance. I had to essentially fight to even attend some conferences, and my networking opportunities suffered immensely as the only contacts available were those working strictly in a wet-lab environment. I managed to defend my thesis successfully on time with high accolades from my committee, and have both first and second author papers published in non-predatory journals, although several are stuck in the peer review limbo. Now that i am trying to pivot into the commercial field or to a better group for my postdoc, i am faced with the issue that my profile feels far too narrow for what is requested.

My work was almost strictly bioinformatical with only some wet-lab required during the first year, and although i carried out work on several bioinformatical levels and implemented a wide range of tools, i still feel that my work was quite "rudimentary" compared to the listed positions that seem to want experience in all types of NGS data, especially single cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics. Consequently although i have years of experience and feel confident in the areas i worked with, i feel my experience and skills are far too limited and rudimentary, where the work i carried out was enough to impress non-bioinformaticians, but not actual bioinformaticians that are reviewing my job applications. Maybe this is only imposter syndrome talking, and im currently trying to update my github with some refined code to present myself better, but I have been struggling alot with my confidence when seeing positions that request extensive wet lab experience along with highly specific areas of expertise, something i simply lack, and am unsure how to obtain now that i hold a doctorate and at least on paper am expected to already know these things.

Have any of you had a similar experience with a PhD that left you feeling behind and with a lack of confidence, and if so what resources did you utilize to improve your resume to be more competitive?