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Summertime is a cool drink in the sun or shade, perhaps a swim, a picnic, a bike ride or a tour of an ancient city. To enjoy such past times alongside working in the lab seems like a plan hatched in a hazy summertime nap. But summer courses can enable such plans. Here are reflections on two of the many summer courses that graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and senior scientists take. Certainly, there are financial and visa considerations, as well as issues for people with children or special needs, but before deciding to not apply, it’s best to check in with course organizers.

For this column and an associated blog post, I interviewed participants, teaching associates, course organizers and faculty of two summer courses, who shared their exuberant impressions. Some words and phrases people used to describe their course experience included supportive, empowering, amazing, life-changing, intense, exhausting, creative, fun, hugely beneficial, invaluable, incredible, inspiring, collaborative and transformative.

“Put simply, the Physiology course transformed my career,” says Jonny Nixon-Abell, a principal investigator at University of Cambridge about the seven-week summer course ‘Physiology: Modern Cell Biology Using Microscopic, Biochemical and Computational Approaches’ at the Marine Biological Laboratory (��Ůֱ������) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. .

Source: 'A sweet summer of science' | Nature Methods