"bad" research experience

[Youknowgo]

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Hello everyone, so I need some advice with interviews coming up concerning my research project:

So i have been working in the same pathology research laboratory for 2.5 -3 years now and it has been really difficult because basically I have been doing an independent project with absolutely no supervision, either from my PI or post-docs. I am the only student working in this lab so basically I am always working alone.

My PI started me off on this project with a basic procedure and then left me alone which I followed but was also very confusing. I started off having NO IDEA what I was doing, and had no background to the science behind my research. My PI is an extremely nice guy and very renown, but he is just WAYY too busy to spend any time with me, so I found little assistance from him. I tried to ask him questions whenever (felt like I was always bothering him), and still was left kind of stranded.

I am trying to keep as much anonymity as possible, but basically I just cultured bacteria, did serial dilutions, added some reagents here and there, and plated them (I was basically looking for morphology changes upon the addition of a special protein to a bacteria). The process of growing them took a couple of days, and i grew them over a 5 day period, so one whole run would take about a week. My project was extremely simple.

Over two years, I was doing the same thing over and over and over again, kept having experimental failure, so that is why it took so long. I had to look on my own at the biological facets underlying the research, but still I don't understand too much about what is EXACTLY going on. I have gotten the data I needed (not much at all), and have written the whole paper by myself, along with the minuscule data I have. I have been trying to push my PI to look at it for like 5 months now, and he is just beginning to actually take a look at it and sit down with me (i want to stress again that he is an extremely nice guy, just really really busy).

I thought this whole time that this was kind of normal. But as I have applied and see others, most everyone has publications, poster presentations (what???), presentation at national conferences (wth is that???). I never even knew about these opportunities and have seriously missed out in my research. I thought about leaving several times bc I was so frustrated, but every time thought it was too late to leave and to just stick it out.

Throughout this time, I did realize that research IS valuable to me (especially since we are working against diseases), but mine was just extremely frustrating. I have been working here for 3 years and am afraid this looks really bad to the ADCOM because I have NO publications and haven't really learned anything scientifically, except like persevering and being determined lol. I just really need advice on how to explain this in my upcoming interviews because although it was really unproductive, I still listed this as one of my most valuable experiences because I spent so much time here and had to overcome so much difficulty with it. I am working on several other projects right now with my PI (he gave me some other tasks), but now I feel like I am just being used to run the meticulous experiments (immunohistochemistry, protein and toxin purfication, etc...)

I just don't know how I'm gonna explain how extremely SIMPLE and DUMB my research was and why it took so long, no publications, etc... however but I am about to get published to a really crappy journal and maybe be second-author to another one.

any advice?

 

[pietachok]

There are lots of applicants and even medical school graduates without any publications, posters, or published abstracts. Your sense of how common and necessary that is for admission is skewed from being on SDN, and furthermore by the fact that more accomplished individuals are going to be more vocal, because they don't feel intimidated.

You can learn from your experience -- make sure you figure out what you were supposed to learn scientifically in case anybody asks you. But more than that, you gained experience about how to be a mentor, albeit through negative example. If you want to do research in your career as an MD this is worthwhile. And if you don't ever want to do research again, it is still worthwhile, because there is *a lot* of teaching involved in teaching younger students/residents as your progress through your training as well as in discussions with patients -- you know what it's like to be given a small amount of complicated information and then be left high and dry to process it on your own. Extend this and imagine how a 3rd year med student on his first rotation feels when told to do something and he's embarrassed to ask for instructions or feels his resident is inaccessible, or what patients feel like when we give them a brand new diagnosis and blurt out big words but then send them home understanding nothing.

...and don't forget that a large portion of the research published by applicants is no more groundbreaking than yours, even though it feels like it is. Yes, some people are lucky and fall into positions with great mentors who set them up for amazing success -- but for the most part, they couldn't do it without the mentor at this point in their education (applicants with graduate degrees obviously being the exception), and people on adcoms know this . . . the research etc. is more of a sign of your commitment, initiative, motivation, etc. than brilliance. There is something to be said for sticking with a project for 2 years even if it didn't have wonderful results.

 

[WillburCobb]

Not getting published, and not even having research experience is much more common than you think. I worked in 2 labs during undergrad and never got published. I also can think of probably 20+ people I know or have met who were accepted to med school without any research what so ever. Most of the stuff I did in the labs I worked in was pretty boring and simple too. Just being able to talk about the ideas/questions behind the research, how you and the PI went about exploring them, what you found out, and most importantly what's the significance of the findings and their implications should be adequate. n=1 but my research experience was never brought-up last year and I even marked it as one of my most meaningful experiences.

 

[Goro]

Quit fussing; it's very RARE that UG researchers get anything published.

Hello everyone, so I need some advice with interviews coming up concerning my research project:

So i have been working in the same pathology research laboratory for 2.5 -3 years now and it has been really difficult because basically I have been doing an independent project with absolutely no supervision, either from my PI or post-docs. I am the only student working in this lab so basically I am always working alone.

My PI started me off on this project with a basic procedure and then left me alone which I followed but was also very confusing. I started off having NO IDEA what I was doing, and had no background to the science behind my research. My PI is an extremely nice guy and very renown, but he is just WAYY too busy to spend any time with me, so I found little assistance from him. I tried to ask him questions whenever (felt like I was always bothering him), and still was left kind of stranded.

I am trying to keep as much anonymity as possible, but basically I just cultured bacteria, did serial dilutions, added some reagents here and there, and plated them (I was basically looking for morphology changes upon the addition of a special protein to a bacteria). The process of growing them took a couple of days, and i grew them over a 5 day period, so one whole run would take about a week. My project was extremely simple.

Over two years, I was doing the same thing over and over and over again, kept having experimental failure, so that is why it took so long. I had to look on my own at the biological facets underlying the research, but still I don't understand too much about what is EXACTLY going on. I have gotten the data I needed (not much at all), and have written the whole paper by myself, along with the minuscule data I have. I have been trying to push my PI to look at it for like 5 months now, and he is just beginning to actually take a look at it and sit down with me (i want to stress again that he is an extremely nice guy, just really really busy).

I thought this whole time that this was kind of normal. But as I have applied and see others, most everyone has publications, poster presentations (what???), presentation at national conferences (wth is that???). I never even knew about these opportunities and have seriously missed out in my research. I thought about leaving several times bc I was so frustrated, but every time thought it was too late to leave and to just stick it out.

Throughout this time, I did realize that research IS valuable to me (especially since we are working against diseases), but mine was just extremely frustrating. I have been working here for 3 years and am afraid this looks really bad to the ADCOM because I have NO publications and haven't really learned anything scientifically, except like persevering and being determined lol. I just really need advice on how to explain this in my upcoming interviews because although it was really unproductive, I still listed this as one of my most valuable experiences because I spent so much time here and had to overcome so much difficulty with it. I am working on several other projects right now with my PI (he gave me some other tasks), but now I feel like I am just being used to run the meticulous experiments (immunohistochemistry, protein and toxin purfication, etc...)

I just don't know how I'm gonna explain how extremely SIMPLE and DUMB my research was and why it took so long, no publications, etc... however but I am about to get published to a really crappy journal and maybe be second-author to another one.

any advice?

 

[orderofthescar]

I worked 2 years in a lab and never got published, and know plenty of people that got II's this cycle without getting published either. Publications really aren't the norm for us lowly UGs, so don't stress yourself out!

 

[Dropit]

You are worrying too much. I work in a lab as a full-time tech, and I am training a 2nd year medical student who has no research experience at all, I am trying to get him on my paper by giving him simple tasks because he literally only work for 4-6 hours a week. I wonder how he managed to get time to work at all.

 

[Youknowgo]

oooo okay. haha thanks everyone, your responses were EXTREMELY helpful. especially pietachok, really gave me a better perspective on UG research !

It just seemed like almost everyone on this forum who has had research experience had publications, and I read somewhere that working in a lab for a longtime with no pubs was a red flag. I think I was just concerned with how extremely simple and uncomplex my research is... hmm..

 

[Aerus]

oooo okay. haha thanks everyone, your responses were EXTREMELY helpful. especially pietachok, really gave me a better perspective on UG research !

It just seemed like almost everyone on this forum who has had research experience had publications, and I read somewhere that working in a lab for a longtime with no pubs was a red flag. I think I was just concerned with how extremely simple and uncomplex my research is... hmm..

The fact that you learned how to do all the protocols, run your experiments, and analyze the data by yourself is quite a feat. You really have to understand what you're doing to be able to do that without supervision.

The fact that you may get published in the future already puts you ahead of most undergrad applicants. Very few will ever publish. You're doing just fine. =)

 

[Reckoner]

There are so many factors that go into getting a publication as an undergrad that it usually doesn't mean much. I worked for 2.5 years on a project that looked easy and promising at the beginning, and am still working on getting it published. Another student in our lab joined a year after me, lucked into a project that came together quickly, and had a publication in less than a year. Even MD/PhD adcoms recognize that publications aren't great indicators of an undergrad's potential. Also bear in mind that a lot of these students you meet might be middle authors, meaning they might have only done a single set of experiments.

I would worry about becoming extremely familiar with the hypothesis behind your project and why your PI had you do the experiments you did. No one is going to ask you to describe the specifics of your cultures, but they will definitely ask why you did those cultures, and what the results told you about your project.