Balancing Research and other ECs

[Shirafune]

For those that work on their own research projects (i.e. eventual first author papers), how do you balance your schoolwork, other ECs, and your research?

I'm finding that planning experiments around my other things takes a lot of time at odd hours. Everything like literature search, planning out experiment conditions, and etc. Any tips to make my time more efficient or at least less stressful? Feel free to chime in if your biggest time commitment isn't research related as well.

If it matters, I (broadly) work on tissue development using primary cell lines.

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[cs24]

It is (was) a lot of work. That's why publishing a solid first author paper is an achievement. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Specific things would be just planning ahead (eg start the PCR when you first get into lab so you can knock out other things while its running) and other common sense stuff that apply to any sort of activity and have been discussed ad nauseum on this site.