Daniela's Wednesday, two ways
9 lessons · 26 prompts
A day in the life of a Postdoctoral Researcher: what changes with these prompts.
Track progress as a memberDaniela, a postdoctoral researcher in materials science.
Daniela starts Wednesday with forty PDFs on perovskite stability and a grant deadline in three weeks. She opens ChatGPT and uses the literature review prompt: summarize each paper in five lines, group them by theme, and list the gaps. By nine she has a clear map of the field and two ideas for her next experiment.
At ten she switches to Claude for the manuscript prompt. Her discussion section is a pile of rough notes about grain boundary passivation. She asks the AI to turn the notes into three paragraphs with a calm academic tone, then edits the result herself. By lunch the section is ready for her PI.
Afternoon is data. Her Python code for XRD peak fitting keeps failing on a messy batch. She uses the data analysis prompt in Gemini to find the bug and clean the outliers. Then she uses the lab admin prompt to draft a progress report email, which takes ten minutes instead of an hour.
Daniela leaves at five thirty. She walks her dog, cooks a real dinner, and reads a novel. The papers are sorted, the draft is moving, and the grant outline is started. The time she won back is hers.
Before
- Tabs open until midnight
- Papers read in a blur
- Reviewer comments feel personal
- Weekends lost to email
After this course
- Papers sorted by Friday lunch
- Draft sections before noon
- Clear answers for reviewers
- Home by six most days
What you'll learn
- Literature reviews: Turn a folder of PDFs into a clear summary of themes and gaps.
- Manuscript drafting: Shape rough notes into polished sections and answer reviewer comments.
- Grant writing: Structure proposals and justify budgets with clear language.
- Experiment design: Plan robust experiments and troubleshoot when things fail.
- Data analysis: Write and debug analysis code, interpret stats, and clean messy data.
- Conference talks: Prepare talk scripts, posters, and practice Q&A.
- Mentoring students: Give better feedback and build training plans.
- Lab admin: Handle emails, progress reports, and peer review drafts.
How this course works
- 9 lessonsOne task of your job each, from literature review & summaries to peer review & research ethics.
- Ready-to-paste promptsCopy, fill in the parts in {{brackets}}, paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
- Tick and completeTick the prompts you tried and mark each lesson complete.
- Get certifiedFinish and keep the prompts as your own library.