I had moved to Japan from my

home country of Indonesia, where

I was accustomed to a different re-

search and training culture. When

I pursued my master’s degree there,

my research was much less struc-

tured and I only went to my adviser

when I had questions or prob-

lems. That presented its own set of

issues—for example, when my grad-

uation deadline crept up on me, I

hadn’t yet completed everything I

wanted to. Still, it was what I was

used to.

In Japan, I was surprised to learn

that I was expected to update my

advisers on a weekly basis. They

didn’t tell me what details to report.

So, while I was coming up with my

research questions and study de-

sign, I wrote brief updates about

any new ideas or experimental

plans I had in mind. But seeing the

progress my lab mates were reporting, I soon felt pressure

to communicate something more substantive. That spurred

me to dive into experimental work faster than I should have.

I started to do experiments each week, usually frantically

putting them together during the 2 or 3 days leading up to

my weekly email. The experiments worked, but I had a nag-

ging feeling I was getting lucky and that eventually I’d be

discovered for being sloppy. During one group meeting, my

adviser scolded a lab member for wasting time, energy, and

money on a poorly designed experiment. The same could be

said for much of my work up to that point, I knew. Some-

thing needed to change.

I realized my earliest reports, during the time I’d spent

planning my project, could be a model—one that I could

build and expand on. I hadn’t gone into much detail in those

emails because ideas and plans didn’t strike me as significant

accomplishments. But after stumbling through experiment

after experiment, I came to see that there was real value in

laying out detailed plans.

I wasn’t sure how my advisers

would respond if I reverted to the

experimental design stage, but I

decided it was worth a try. I spent

the weeks that followed reading

papers and thinking about the big

picture goals of my project. I was

nervous when I wrote my first

email update listing all the papers

I’d read and ideas I’d explored—but

lacking concrete data. To my relief,

my advisers didn’t object. After one

report, which focused on papers

I’d combed to figure out the right

method for one experimental step,

one of my advisers reached out to

another professor who had relevant

expertise to ask for advice. That

helped me make a final decision

on my method more quickly than I

would have on my own.

Expanding my idea of progress

helped me feel more productive

and gave me the intellectual space to explore topics more

deeply. My research became more efficient and I ran into

fewer dead ends. I also realized that writing out detailed

ideas and plans in the weekly updates provided a valuable

opportunity to articulate them for myself, which helped me

approach my advisers more confidently and engage in more

productive discussions.

Over time, I began to see the updates not as a burden,

but as the tool they are intended to be—to gradually build

the chapters of my research story, and to spur constructive

feedback from mentors along the way.

On my last day in my Ph.D. lab, I did something I never

could have foreseen during the first 6 months: I thanked my

professors for the lab tradition of weekly progress reports. It

helped me collect the small stones I ultimately used to con-

struct the stairs to my Ph.D. j

Pijar Religia is a visiting researcher at Osaka University. Do you have an

interesting career story to share? Send it to [email protected].

“It helped me collect the small

stones that I ultimately used

to construct the stairs to my Ph.D.”

My weekly assignment

D

uring my early months of graduate school, I struggled with a weekly task: sitting down at my

computer and writing an update for my advisers. More often than not, I felt stuck. I didn’t know

what to write because I didn’t think I had done enough work worth sharing. My stress level sky-

rocketed, and I started to do experiments just for the sake of having something to report. It was

the perfect recipe for making no progress. But by the end of my program, I realized the weekly

updates didn’t need to be packed with data and accomplishments. Instead, they could serve as a

tool to refine my thinking and get the feedback I needed. I was glad my advisers required them.

By Pijar Religia

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

1290 3 DECEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6572 science.org SCIENCE

WORKING LIFE