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Have you ever wondered what your advisor struggled with as a graduate student? What they struggle with now? Growing up in science is a conversation series featuring personal narratives of becoming and being a scientist.

Growing up in Science was started in 2014 at New York University by professors Wei Ji Ma and Cristina Alberini, and is now worldwide. This article describes the origin and impact of the series. If you are interested in setting up your own series, check out these pointers.

At a typical Growing up in Science event, one faculty member shares their life story, with a focus on struggles, failures, doubts, detours, and weaknesses. Common topics include dealing with expectations, impostor syndrome, procrastination, luck, rejection, conflicts with advisors, and work- life balance, but these topics are always embedded in the speaker's broader narrative.

The NYU Growing up in Science series has also featured several special events on diversity, inclusion, and identity in science.

Many Growing up in Science series also feature speakers who left academia. However, Growing up in Science is not about generic career advice; the individual speaker's narrative is still central.

Join us for a conversation about the human factors that are universal undercurrents of working in academia but that too often remain unspoken.

Background

Wei Ji Ma's article in Science describes the origin and impact of the series:

Mentorship survey

After the inaugural event on August 1, 2014, we held a survey about the future of this mentorship series, and about the general mentoring situation in the Center for Neural Science, the Department of Psychology, and the Neuroscience Institute at NYU. Here are the results.