Can An Undergraduate Student Do Research Any Time ?

[BellaEXE]

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My schedule is extremely packed with two jobs and full time schooling. I wish to volunteer at a lab, but I only have a few hours throughout some days to invest into research. Would their be a possibility of weekend researching or all night researching? I have 6am-9am free every week day morning along with a few scattered hours throughout days in the week. I also have afternoon Saturday's and Sunday mornings free.

If you need a schedule planner to more easily assess my current time constraints let me know.

 

[u_raptor]

I have done research on weekends, at 10 PM on a Friday, and just about every other ungodly hour. It depends on your lab clearance (for instance our lab building was locked after hours, but researchers have clearance to key in) and also on what you are doing. Cryostat or staining? Sure! Something that may require help? Idk.

 

[BellaEXE]

I have done research on weekends, at 10 PM on a Friday, and just about every other ungodly hour. It depends on your lab clearance (for instance our lab building was locked after hours, but researchers have clearance to key in) and also on what you are doing. Cryostat or staining? Sure! Something that may require help? Idk.

Hopefully I can obtain that level of trust. Thank you for your advice!

 

[longhaul3]

My schedule is extremely packed with two jobs and full time schooling. I wish to volunteer at a lab, but I only have a few hours throughout some days to invest into research. Would their be a possibility of weekend researching or all night researching? I have 6am-9am free every week day morning along with a few scattered hours throughout days in the week. I also have afternoon Saturday's and Sunday mornings free.

If you need a schedule planner to more easily assess my current time constraints let me know.

Nobody here will need more information because it's all dependent on the lab you want to work in. If you're feeding mice, running gels, culturing cells, etc., there may be specific times that you need to be present in the lab. If you're mining the EMR or working with preexisting databases, you can probably work from home whenever you want. These are details that you need to talk about with your prospective PIs.

If you have that much time free on a daily/weekly basis and are at a research university, there's probably something that can work for you. Clinical research is better suited to people with specific time/place constraints, so I'd start there if your school has a medical center.

 

[Goro]

My schedule is extremely packed with two jobs and full time schooling. I wish to volunteer at a lab, but I only have a few hours throughout some days to invest into research. Would their be a possibility of weekend researching or all night researching? I have 6am-9am free every week day morning along with a few scattered hours throughout days in the week. I also have afternoon Saturday's and Sunday mornings free.

If you need a schedule planner to more easily assess my current time constraints let me know.

Me personally, I would not trust a UG in the lab unsupervised.

The value of research is overrated by premeds. Wait until your schedule lightens up and then try to land a gig.

 

[imbesrs]

My schedule is extremely packed with two jobs and full time schooling. I wish to volunteer at a lab, but I only have a few hours throughout some days to invest into research. Would their be a possibility of weekend researching or all night researching? I have 6am-9am free every week day morning along with a few scattered hours throughout days in the week. I also have afternoon Saturday's and Sunday mornings free.

If you need a schedule planner to more easily assess my current time constraints let me know.

Will prob need to be available during normal hours to learn things before going independent and you need to find a lab that has lax hours like that

 

[Orangekiwi]

My schedule is extremely packed with two jobs and full time schooling. I wish to volunteer at a lab, but I only have a few hours throughout some days to invest into research. Would their be a possibility of weekend researching or all night researching? I have 6am-9am free every week day morning along with a few scattered hours throughout days in the week. I also have afternoon Saturday's and Sunday mornings free.

If you need a schedule planner to more easily assess my current time constraints let me know.

I work in a lab, it's currently 9:19 AM, and one post-doc has arrived for the day. Someone needs to teach you how to do the things you'd be doing in the lab, and I count it as very unlikely that you'll find a lab where someone is willing to do that between the hours of 6 and 9 AM. How many normal business hours a week do you have? They should be in at least 2-3 hour blocks so you can actually follow what's going on. Experiments take time, unless as someone else mentioned you're just doing data analysis, which is even less useful on your app because it doesn't really teach you anything about actually doing science. You sound like you have a lot going on, adding another thing on top of all of that is probably a bad idea.

 

[deleted972488]

Will you have more time during the summer? I find it very frustrating to train undergraduates who can only come in for scattered, short periods of time. Many protocols take several hours, if not all day.

 

[theKingLT]

Dont do wetlab or wait until your schedule clears up more. Research isn't important from an admissions standpoint anyways.

 

[u_raptor]

Dont do wetlab or wait until your schedule clears up more. Research isn't important from an admissions standpoint anyways.

Eh I'd disagree. According to that one AMCAS survey it had medium importance in admissions. Similar rating as cGPA, SES, etc

 

[AMCASTuesdays]

Wait until you have more time. It takes a lot of time to get trained properly- at the beginning, its not productive to come in for a few hours every few days bc you’ll need to observe/ do protocols fully through while under supervision. You’ll be able to scale back after you have experience and can gauge how long you need to do tasks. As an undergrad, I never had access to our lab after hours unless our PI was in the building, I think that’s more common than what you are hoping for. I’m out of school and in a bigger lab now and like someone else said, most folks blow in at about 10am.
For me, Research was valuable but only as an addition- don’t try to cram it in where there isnt room.

 

[theKingLT]

Eh I'd disagree. According to that one AMCAS survey it had medium importance in admissions. Similar rating as cGPA, SES, etc

Exactly. OP is studying full time with 2 jobs. They need the most bang for their time and wetlab research would be extremely time consuming for moderate gains to an application, even if they can fit it in their schedule. A few hundred hours of volunteering will have more of an impact than a few hundred hours of research, even at top academic institutions.

 

[atm14834]

For me and my lab partners, we had to learn technique and whatnot when our mentor was available. After a while, she let us go in whenever we needed, but she had to be on campus somewhere, but not necessarily in the lab with us.