By Deeksha Raju, PhD.
Ever wondered what a day in the life of an Immunology PhD student looks like? Here is a brief idea!
07:30 – The Naïve Optimism Stage
You wake up thinking, “Today’s the day! I’m going to finish that experiment, analyse the data, read the ten papers I’ve bookmarked, prepare that presentation – and maybe even start writing that manuscript.”
By 07:45, you’ve spilled coffee on your lab notebook and remembered that your cells needed splitting yesterday.
09:00 – Cell Culture: The Tiny Diva Daycare
You enter the cell culture room like a surgeon entering the OR – gloved up, lab coat buttoned, and sterilizing everything in sight with your bottle of ethanol, like you’re auditioning for a cleaning product commercial.
You carefully navigate the battlefield of 30 flasks piled high, desperately trying to find your cells hiding somewhere at the very back of the incubator.
Working in cell culture is basically like babysitting. But instead of toddlers, you have tiny cells that refuse to behave. They need perfect temperature, just the right amount of nutrients, and zero contamination – which is basically like trying to keep a houseplant alive in a hurricane.
And when you finally get that perfect, healthy culture it’s like winning the cell culture lottery. Cue the happy dance – right before you have to passage them again.
10:30 – The Great Reagent Hunt
You need TGF-β, but all you find is an unlabelled tube of mystery liquid someone’s been hoarding since 2018.
You briefly consider asking the neighbouring lab (again) for just a tiny bit of their TGF-β. It’s your fifth “just this once” email this month. You start the message with “Hi again! 😊” and end it with “Promise this is the last time (for real this time haha 😅)” even though you both know you’ll be back next week like a cytokine-deprived raccoon.
14:00 – Flow Cytometry: Stains, Pains, and Cytometry Gains
You’ve spent hours staining your samples, missing antibodies that you realised you yourself forgot to re-order last week, after interrogating everyone in the lab.
Only to find out that the Fortessa is down for maintenance. Again. You cry softly, using a Kimwipe as a tissue.
After yet another heart-to-heart with the cytometer maintenance guy, who now knows your entire thesis project, you finally get your samples on the machine. The plots appear on screen, and for a moment, you just stare. The data looks… beautiful. Peaks where they should be. Populations exactly where you hoped. You blink, wondering if it’s real, then start zooming in, gating, analysing…suddenly, the exhaustion fades and the excitement kicks in.
16:00 – The Wandering PI
Your PI pops in with a casual, “Hey, how did that experiment from last week look?” You panic and mumble something about “interesting trends but the detailed analysis is yet to be done” while mentally reviewing all the things you haven’t done since Tuesday.
18:00 – Leaving? Not so Fast
Just as you’re about to pack up and declare victory for the day, a colleague swoops in with the news – the FBS has run out, and guess who’s on aliquoting duty? Yep, it’s you. Because nothing says “end of the day” more like meticulously portioning out tubes of precious serum under fluorescent lights.
Finally, keys in hand, heading to the door, you wonder if your cells will miss you…or if they’re secretly throwing a contamination party behind your back.
Final thoughts…
Throughout it all, it’s the friendships forged during those bleary-eyed late-night experiments in the lab, the thrill of experiments that work, those glorious “aha!” moments and the invaluable skills gained in critical thinking, project management and navigating uncertainty that make the whole Immunology PhD journey memorable and totally worth surviving!
What PhD students at University of Zurich love about their PhD:
“What I enjoy most is the sense of community. We’re all passionate about the immune system, and it’s amazing to learn from and with others who share that drive.” – 4th year PhD student
“I enjoy the freedom to pursue my scientific interests and solve new challenges in the lab!” – 3rd year PhD student
“Even on the hard days, I remind myself that I’m contributing, in some small way, to science that could potentially change lives” – 4th year PhD student
SYIS 
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