Doing research for a 4th year elective

[Sean2tall]

Hey, just wondering if many people do research for one of their 4th year electives? I am at a community tertiary hospital for rotations, so one option I was thinking of is to contact the researchers at the big academic places nearby and see if they have any projects for a month - or is it creepy to just pick somebody off the department "research interests" site and contact them?

 

[magician]

it is hard to learn anything in research within one month.

 

[Thaitanium]

Hey, just wondering if many people do research for one of their 4th year electives? I am at a community tertiary hospital for rotations, so one option I was thinking of is to contact the researchers at the big academic places nearby and see if they have any projects for a month - or is it creepy to just pick somebody off the department "research interests" site and contact them?

If you are able to pull it off, you can do electives in path (actual path rotations in hospital) to get some experience (or more experience if you've already done one rotation in path). If the rotation is light, you can volunteer your time with research. There are many PIs out there looking for a hand. I think you would be better off using the one month getting cool path experience in the hospital. If you do one month of research, you will most likely be doing mind numbing work. Of course you will learn SOMETHING in regards to what you are researching, but IMO, I think your time would be better spent doing an actual rotation in the hospital and using any extra time you have to volunteer in research.

 

[Sean2tall]

Yeah, I am doing a couple of actual path rotations, I was just entertaining this idea rather than having to do another month of say internal medicine. I know it wouldn't be that much time to get anything significant done, I have done research before, but just thinking of other options than doing rotations I am not really interested in.