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Earlier this month, part of a Ph.D. thesis went viral on social media. It wasn’t a bizarre artificial intelligence–generated figure, or a scintillating methods description, or a result that could revolutionize medicine; it was a twist on the standard acknowledgements section. The excerpt, written by a graduate student named Rachel Los, featured a page of anti-acknowledgments, offering her heartfelt “no thanks” to everyone who dissuaded, intimidated, or made inappropriate comments to her as she worked toward her degree: colleagues who had expressed skepticism about her ability to pursue science as a woman; did or said unsolicited icky, creepy things; or otherwise made comments that, in her words, “shattered my confidence” and “made me feel like I do not belong in science.”

It clearly hit a nerve: The posts have been viewed thousands of times, with many proposing their own anti-acknowledgments—and many more lamenting that, in 2025, we’re still fighting some of the same battles against harassment and discouragement that should have been obsolete decades ago.

I was struck by how Los subverted a traditional—and sometimes boring and boilerplate—component of a thesis to speak her truth. Graduate students inherently have so little power that the ability to deviate from tradition in the prologue to your thesis—a document that, let’s face it, you’re primarily writing for yourself—is a legitimate flex. Your dissertation is your dissertation, and though the scholarly part still needs to meet academic standards, the decorative bits are yours to control. An anti-acknowledgments section—right smack at the beginning of vellum-bound scholarly research, printed on nice paper and enshrined in the university library—has impressive heft.

Some may argue that such a section has no place in a formal dissertation—that it’s unprofessional, or ungrateful. And certainly, it’s nice to have a true acknowledgements section—for the people who truly contributed positively.

But, let’s face it: A lot of traditional acknowledgements sections are phoned in. Honestly, I couldn’t remember who I might have thanked in my thesis. When I recently pulled my dissertation down from a shelf in my bedroom and opened it for the first time in years, I found that first I thanked my adviser, because that’s what you do. Then I thanked my thesis committee, because it seemed prudent to commend them in advance for a favorable decision. Next up was my oral exam committee from 5 years earlier (because why not), then all of our collaborators at other institutions. A page and a half in, I started thanking other members of my lab who had contributed to the project, then everyone else in the lab who hadn’t contributed to the project (because why not), then the department itself, then our funders, and finally my family and “the 261 mice who gave their lives for this project.” Mercifully, the acknowledgments ended there, rather than continuing to list the name of each mouse.

I wrote this section for two main reasons: I wanted to thank everyone who had assisted me, and more importantly, I had seen previous students write this section.

But if you find yourself in the lucky position of finishing up your dissertation soon (because the science job market is awesome right now), maybe you’ll want to do something different. Maybe you’re thinking of adding an anti-acknowledgments section, to celebrate your success—no thanks to the unhelpful people and events along the way. If that idea appeals to you, you probably have some ideas for that section. But if you’re looking for inspiration, here are some suggestions for the only page of your thesis that you might post on social media:

• No thank you to the kindergarten teacher who said I’d never amount to anything. Check it out, dummy: I’m getting an advanced degree, and I got to eat all that paste.
• No thank you to the people I tried to date who never, ever understood why my work schedule wasn’t a typical work schedule and why I sometimes just had to go to the lab at midnight. “Why don’t you tell your adviser it’s not reasonable to work at midnight?” they would ask. See below.
• No thank you to the adviser who made me work at midnight, yet at the same time made me feel like I couldn’t ask to not work at midnight.
• No thank you to the snackless seminars. Stupid seminars! Have snacks! Why wouldn’t you have snacks? What, I ask you, is the point of the seminar otherwise?
• No thank you to the politics that made science harder and less impactful. No thank you to the reorganizations and funding hiccups that no one wanted, and most of all, no thank you to every time we had to avoid the simplest, most logical way of doing something just so we didn’t have to annoy someone in a position of power.
• No thank you to the mice who died before the experiment was over. I tried, guys, but seriously, you’ve got to hold up your end.
• No thank you to anyone who said, either implicitly or explicitly, that a good scientist has no outside interests. You fools: I never said I was a good
• Finally, a big no thank you to the part of myself that absorbed and dwelled on every negative comment, every failure, every feeling of hopelessness. You’re the part of me that sat in every classroom and showed up in the lab every day certain that I was the only impostor in a room of smart people. I know you’re a natural part of being human, and I know you’ll always be with me, but as I progress in my career as a scientist, I look forward to bidding you farewell—or at least seeing you a little less often.

Anti-acknowledgments probably aren’t destined to become a standard part of the dissertation—goodness knows there are already enough graduation requirements without a new expectation that you recount your misery.

But for those who feel strongly enough that they want to put their dissatisfaction on record, thank you—an actual thank you—to Rachel Loh for sharing her own.

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Five years ago, I got the email I had hoped for. “We are very pleased to offer you admission to the Neuroscience Ph.D. program,” it read, as confetti in the school’s colors rained down the screen. My parents didn’t have college degrees. I didn’t meet someone with a Ph.D. until college—and now I was going to be one, training in my first-choice program. My friend and I decided to celebrate by making some homemade mac ’n cheese, and we headed to the grocery store for milk. But there was none: The date was 13 March 2020, and COVID-19 had been declared a pandemic 2 days before. Now, I’m nearing graduation in another time of crisis—hoping to draw strength from the lessons I learned the first time around.

My graduate school experience was not what I expected. Soon after starting, I received another email: “Nonmedical students, including Ph.D. students, are not considered essential workers.” I wouldn’t be able to attend in-person classes or meetings with professors, or work in certain lab spaces. Orientation events, where I should have been getting to know my fellow classmates, would be online. In my new apartment, far from friends or family, the sounds of traffic and the birds chirping in the bushes were my only company—those noises, and the many houseplants my father had lovingly carried up two flights of stairs for me. I felt anxious and alone, but found consolation by immersing myself in rigorous and exciting neuroscience.

When I feel myself drifting toward despair, I think about what I learned during the pandemic.

• Paige Nicklas
• University of Rochester

At the same time, I began to experience dissonance between my personal and professional lives. I watched as family and friends posted on social media saying the virus was not dangerous or spreading misinformation about the vaccine—even while a loved one was hospitalized with COVID-19. At first I felt helpless. But when I began to share how I was feeling with my classmates, I learned many were having similar experiences. And I realized I had both the capability and responsibility to make change—by connecting with scientists and nonscientists alike.

In addition to building community with my fellow scientists, I started to take science communication classes, attend workshops, and get involved in outreach. Writing science news articles, visiting local elementary schools and museums, improving my data visualizations—anything that helped connect me with nonscientists, I would do it. The follow-up questions, feedback, and personal anecdotes I heard energized me. I envisioned a career dedicated to both innovative research and imaginative science communication. I was going to get my Ph.D., and then do everything I could to help prevent the confusion felt during the COVID-19 pandemic from repeating itself.

Now, it’s not just the public that is bewildered, but the research community, questioning the future of science after rapid-fire actions by President Donald Trump’s administration against scientists and universities. Last month, another email popped up on my phone, from my institution’s leadership: “While awaiting further guidance from federal agencies … we remain deeply committed to the well-being of the University community and to our values as we pursue our research, health care, and education missions.” It may have been a wellintended statement of support, but the platitudes did not help much.

I have been watching my friends lose their postgraduation jobs and seeing layoff announcements at places where I thought I might work. The opportunities we worked so hard to pursue are evaporating in front of us. Some are considering leaving the country after graduation. Others may leave science entirely. For trainees from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds, these and other worries are an even bigger burden.

It is difficult to absorb all the uncertainty and still hold on to hope—to remember the feeling I had while watching the blue and yellow confetti flutter across my acceptance notification. But when I feel myself drifting toward despair, I think about what I learned during the pandemic, the first crisis of my Ph.D.: Build community and keep sharing the value of science. The way through this, as with all challenges, is with each other.

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When I was in grad school, a new postdoc brought a valuable import from his own graduate lab: a game called Septa. Here’s how it worked: We would each take a septum—the little orange-brown rubber stoppers that were ordinarily used to cork glass test tubes—and draw a face on it in permanent marker. We would then open the cell culture incubator, which was a large box, about the dimensions of a piano bench whose floor held a steel platform that shook when the lid closed. With the platform immobile, we’d each place our septum in the middle, then stick a pencil inside a little hole to deceive the incubator into thinking we had shut the lid. The platform would shake, septa would gradually rumble off to the sides, and whoever’s septum stayed on the platform the longest was the winner and would collect $1 from every other player. Think of it like horse racing, if the horses were inanimate until acted on by an outside force, and instead of a linear track, the horses ambled stochastically off the racetrack and into the surrounding environs. We often played the game right before lunch or a coffee break, so one lucky grad student or postdoc ended up with their sandwich or latte paid for.

Amid everything happening right now, the insignificant games we played with rubber stoppers in the mid-aughts hardly seem important. Or, maybe the games we play in the lab, taking breaks from our research to shout encouragement at bouncing pieces of rubber, are the small slices of humanity that keep our days sane.

An internet search shows I’m hardly the only scientist who has taken time away from important research to act like a kindergartener. Reddit is replete with discussions of Lab Olympics–type games—shooting pipette tips into a bin, guessing the mass of a powdered chemical, quickly robing and disrobing in personal protective equipment.

In my graduate lab, we built massive desserts for the department holiday party. We played billiards in the grad student lounge. We formed a softball team. We posted comics and articles from The Onion on the walls. Our lunches became epic storytelling fests. We wrote and rehearsed skits and songs for the department retreat. We kept a deck of cards and chips at the ready, often taking a break for a quick poker tournament.

Listing the many ways we didn’t do science makes me feel a bit guilty that maybe we should have, um, done more science. But we didn’t neglect science, we just kept ourselves mildly entertained on the side. That’s not a deficiency as a scientist, it’s a prerequisite for being human.

I’ve tried to bring this mindset with me after leaving academia—though at times I’ve wondered whether I’m doing myself a disservice by committing any energy to them. Once, within my first couple weeks at a new job, we learned that every department would need to enter some sort of fun potluck/decorating competition. I ended up being quasi-volunteered as part of the small group coordinating our department’s entry—which, ordinarily, I would have found fun and exciting. But because I was so new, I wondered: If I do a great job with this, will people resent the time I’m spending baking a pie and making our table look beautiful? Will they think I’m more interested in the distractions from science than I am in science? Or is the distraction an integral part of the endeavor—and by baking a pie and decorating a table, I’m helping build community and positive feeling among colleagues and give talented scientists one more reason to want to stay at this job? In the end, I compromised: I baked the pie and decorated the table, but I kept a look on my face that indicated I was doing this somewhat against my will.

I was afraid of being labeled as that guy who takes the fun too far. When I worked at a small biotech company, we hired a recent college graduate who was quite a jovial fellow—but then one day a co-worker texted to let me know they’d seen him tossing around a football in the lab. (He agreed to put the football away and luckily didn’t break anything, but we kept a closer eye on him after that.)

More recently, after seeing colleagues decorate their offices with Star Wars figurines, diplomas, and vacation photos, I decided to bring in a full-size vintage pachinko machine. (Pachinko, for the uninitiated, is Japanese vertical pinball.) It’s not like we play pachinko instead of working—the machine mostly sits there and looks awesome. But every now and then, when we’re discussing Serious Scientific Matters, someone will notice the pachinko machine in the corner and ask what it does. I’ll sproing a little steel ball up into the workings, and we’ll watch it tinkle down through a field of brass pins. And for a few moments, we’re all reminded that there’s a world outside our office walls.

I’ve been back to visit my graduate lab a couple of times. The cell culture incubator is still there, sitting in the same spot, probably still susceptible to the same pencil hack to start it shaking with the lid open. I don’t know where my rubber septum is, though. Maybe I left it for a future student. Maybe I threw it away. Maybe I kept it to treasure forever, a symbol of a more carefree time, then forgot that I intended to treasure it forever, and it’s in a box in my basement with a pair of lab goggles and stack of business cards people handed to me at a networking event in 2006. Regardless, 20 years after the postdoc introduced Septa, I remember the rules of the game—and I kind of wish I was back there, dollar bill in hand, playing.

I know you have more important things to do today. But if you have a minute or two, find some colleagues and play a stupid game. Tell your boss I said it was OK.

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When Ashlynn Boedecker started her postdoc, the moving costs—renting a truck, gas, a security deposit, rent—were more than she had available in her bank account, she recalls.

The aquatic biogeochemist, like many academics, wasn’t a stranger to financially stressful moves. When she relocated to start her Ph.D. at Baylor University after finishing her master’s degree, she couldn’t afford to buy a mattress for the first few months. “I slept on the floor … on a makeshift bed,” she says.

But this time around, Boedecker was more fortunate: She was one of 51 Ohio State University (OSU) postdocs awarded $5000 to cover or reimburse moving costs. “It was super helpful,” she says. “Moving is expensive.”

The OSU pilot program, which began in 2022 funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, was the brainchild of Zakee Sabree, a former faculty director for OSU’s office of postdoctoral affairs. Sabree, an associate professor and microbial ecoevolutionary biologist, was inspired to take action after speaking with postdocs about their financial challenges and reading a 2019 Nature Careers story entitled “How a long-distance job move can leave early-career researchers short of cash.” “I remember my own experience of having to fund all of my moves,” he says. “When I saw that postdocs are still doing the exact same thing I was doing, oh gosh, nearly 20 years ago, it was surprising to me.”

Early-career scientists are often expected to uproot their lives and move to a new location every few years. But given the low pay of many graduate student and postdoc positions, “financially, it’s not always possible,” notes Veronica Farrugia Drakard, an ocean science postdoc at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and member of the National Postdoctoral Association’s postdoc council. Some universities, programs, and individual faculty members provide support to postdocs who relocate for the job, she notes. But according to an analysis of policies at 49 research-intensive universities Sabree and colleagues published last month in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, it isn’t very common, at least at the university level.

The OSU pilot program shows one way it can be done. Science Careers spoke with Sabree to find out more about the program and why funding for postdoc relocation expenses is needed. The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What are the challenges and constraints for faculty who are trying to fund this on their own? I imagine it’s hard given that salaries are going up and budgets have remained relatively flat.

A: I think faculty are recognizing that it’s harder to just recruit postdocs because fewer and fewer Ph.D.s are doing postdocs. So even though the budgets have been flat, faculty who want postdocs are having to be a lot more creative and are trying to do things like this to stand out. That’s particularly true for junior faculty that are trying to compete for the best postdocs with labs that might be more well known and well established. Faculty are also using these kinds of incentives in efforts to try to recruit postdocs that are maybe from underrepresented backgrounds, who may not have independent wealth to be able to support them traveling from place to place.

Q: Incoming postdocs are often coming straight out of grad school, so they probably don’t have a lot on their bank account.

A: Exactly. I learned from the questionnaire that we administered to recipients of the award, that some of them were like, “I came from a family where I’m the first person to go to college, and there just wasn’t any money. So this was really nice, because it meant that I didn’t have to put this on a credit card.” Many of them had very little, if any, savings. Some of them had debt from grad school.

Q: How did you select who received the funding?

A: We wanted faculty to use this as a way to recruit really competitive postdocs. And so when we put out the call, we told faculty, “You don’t have to have hired someone. You can tell them that, ‘If you do come to OSU, this is one of the things that I could offer.’” So it was available for faculty to use as an incentive. It was also available for postdocs that had been here for less than a year.

Then for who we selected, we were looking to support postdocs that were going to labs where faculty had a record of having done some kind of training in postdoctoral mentoring, or had some history in having mentored a lot of postdocs. Because we wanted to ensure that we were funding postdocs that were going to be getting a lot of support. We were also interested in postdocs that were doing research that asked questions that impacted underrepresented people in some kind of way. In the end, we were able to fund about 40% of the applications.

Q: You got this funding from Kellogg for the pilot project. Are you going to continue it and scale it up? What’s the plan going forward?

A: We reached out to some university leadership about scaling up this program, because it’s fairly inexpensive to run, and we were informally encouraged to continue to seek external support for this program. I’m no longer the faculty director, and so it’s not clear to me if the current director is going to try to pursue external support for it. It’s uncertain what will happen.

Q: In your paper you recommended incoming faculty think about negotiating postdoc relocation expenses in their startup budgets. Are there other creative ways to fund this?

A: That’s right, it was one of my co-authors who had suggested that. It made all the sense in the world to include that as a part of the startup package negotiations. Another idea we had, but didn’t put in the paper, was that faculty could apply for this kind of funding every few years—for example, every third or fourth year the university could provide them with support to hire a postdoc like this. So it wouldn’t be something for all postdocs being hired at all times, but all faculty would receive this kind of relocation support occasionally. This way, it wouldn’t have to be quite so expensive for central budgets.

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I vividly remember the day I realized I couldn’t keep going as I was. I was sitting in my office, the late afternoon sunshine casting long shadows across my desk. My hands were trembling, not from nerves, but from the sheer exhaustion that had been my constant companion for months. I had just finished a long consultation with a patient when a sharp pain shot through my chest—a not-so-subtle reminder from my body that I was pushing it too far.

I had always prided myself on being strong and resilient, someone who could handle anything thrown my way. As a doctor and skin researcher, I was always busy: My days were filled with the demands of the clinic and the lab, my evenings spent poring over the latest studies.

I was also living with a chronic illness. When I first received my diagnosis, I brushed it off. “I can handle this,” I told myself. “I’ve handled worse.” And for several years I did, pushing through the pain and fatigue, convinced that slowing down in my work would mean falling behind.

But the chest pain, it turned out, wasn’t only a symptom of my illness: I was also pregnant. I was overjoyed when I found out—but also terrified. How could I continue to work at this pace while also nurturing a new life? I had to make a choice: Continue to push myself to the brink, or take a step back.

I began to see my time off not as a failure, but as a necessary pause.

• Monisha Madhumita
• Saveetha Medical College

Deciding to take a yearlong break from my work was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. I felt I was letting everyone down—my colleagues, my patients, and worst of all, myself.

The dismissive reactions of some of my colleagues made it worse. In India, where I work, women doctors normally take just 6 weeks of maternity leave, right after delivery. It’s unheard of to take a full year off, or stop working a few months into pregnancy, as I did. One colleague remarked that taking so much leave “isn’t a great look for someone aspiring to leadership.” Another told me, “Women have been working through pregnancies for generations. Why should you be any different?”

Repeatedly justifying my need to take time off to protect my health and my baby’s was exhausting. And with no clear policies to rely on, my institution was uncertain about how to handle the situation, so I had to draft multiple requests, consult experts, and appeal to my employer’s goodwill—not for special treatment, but simply to meet my basic needs.

In the early days of my break, I often lay awake at night, wondering whether my decision would indeed derail my career. I watched my colleagues continue their research and publish papers, while I missed out on an important promotion opportunity and had to give up a large multicenter grant. It was hard to watch others advance while I stood still.

But as time went on, something shifted. I began to see my time off not as a failure, but as a necessary pause. I realized it didn’t mean I was any less capable or ambitious, but that I valued my health and wellbeing enough to prioritize them. And it meant that when I returned to work, I was able to give my best—not just the remnants of someone who had been running on empty.

My experience also made me realize how far academia still has to go to better support women and people with disabilities—both in India and around the world. I was able to make a strong case for myself, but not everyone is in such a position—and the onus shouldn’t be on the individual. Taking time off for health reasons, pregnancy, or mental well-being should be not only accepted, but encouraged. This means both governments and employers need to implement policies that provide real support, such as flexible working arrangements, more generous paid leave, and resources for managing chronic conditions. And we shouldn’t have to apologize or feel ashamed for asking for these changes: They would lead to a more inclusive, productive, and humane workplace for everyone.

I’m grateful to have been able to return to my job, unlike many people who take long absences. Now that I’m back, I approach my goals differently. I no longer feel the need to tackle everything at once; instead, I have learned to focus on what matters most. And I’ve come to understand that stepping back isn’t a setback; it’s a strategy.

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