how many hours a day are you guys in a lab?

[bananaw]

Just curious to see how many hours are asked of us in the research lab... How many hours are you guys normally in the lab per week?

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[asquared]

You usually start off slow, so maybe 8-10 hours a week. Although I started off as a glorified dish washer, over the years I progressed and now conduct my own projects! So with more responsibility comes more time in lab, I work at least 20 hours a week if not more. It kind of depends on how much you want to get involved but a safe bet is around 12-15 hours.

 

[SpartanWolverine]

Most PIs I've worked with wanted students working 6-12 hours per week in their lab -- I recommend at least 10 if you want to have a useful experience.

 

[moisne]

Honestly I don't know... But I ended up with about 2500 total.

 

[lets_operate]

Technically I'm supposed to be in about 12 hours a week, but this varies a lot based on where we are in the experiments. For instance, one week I might spend 36 hours in lab and then the next two weeks I may only come in for an hour or so to check up on things. With research (or at least research with animals) I think it's sometimes hard to have a solid number of hours that you put in every week, but it usually averages out over time.

 

[PugsAndHugs]

0

 

[tenblackalps]

Zero as well 😀 , but I work a job for 20-30 hours a week

 

[dexter7788]

My PI started off wanting 12 hrs/week, but it quickly escalated to 18-20 hrs/week

 

[davisfenos]

The general consensus at my school is at least ten hours a week, according to my old PI.

 

[tunicaexterna]

I was in the lab 15-20 hours a week

 

[Shirafune]

Minimum at my schools' labs is 10 hrs/week, but most labs here look for 15 - 20 hr/week commitments.

 

[soundofserenity]

Good lord. I've been doing 30-40hrs per week (20-30 during classes), but my PI is notorious for driving her students quite a bit. It has paid off, though, in terms of projects/papers.

I guess that is a good thing, but I am surprised to hear that that is not the norm.

 

[Strigon]

I'm in for about 20 hours minimum a week. With all the other stuff I'm doing, it's no wonder I may be cultivating an addiction to Red Bull.

 

[mimelim]

From another thread: "During the school year I was working 20-40 hrs/week, Summer closer to 70-80 hrs/week. I had a couple of publications, but those were miniscule compared to my lab contributions designing and building a beowulf cluster, writing programs to optimize genome analysis and annotation (I stopped by my undergrad a couple weeks ago while on vacation and noticed that at least 2 labs are still using the software I wrote based on their posters and the unmistakable drawings that my programs produced)."

 

[Satire5Texul]

15 hours a week. one of the days is 9 - 5. starting out sorta new. more experienced people in , my lab who have mastered the techniques spend sometimes 45 + hours due to ability to access 24/7.

I have friends who did 35 a week in difficult labs. all of them quit ☕

 

[carolina910]

At my school, the general expectation is 10-12 hours/week for either independent study credit, work-study pay, or just "volunteering" for experience. However, if you want to get enough experiments done to produce meaningful data for a thesis and/or to have interesting things to talk about when it comes up in an interview, usually you're going to have to put in more, but pretty much never more than 20 hours/week.

If you want to be strong enough to "check the research box," so to speak, 10-12 hours a week for at least two semesters so you'd have 300-400 hours and some meaningful experiments and an understanding of how research is conducted should be sufficient, if you are planning to dedicate your leftover time to other things that interest you more.

This all being said, it also varies by PI and/or grad student/postdoc, so you want to be careful to make sure expectations are clear before you join. I have a friend who slaves away for 30+ hours/week during the semester growing countless bacterial cultures to purify tons of a certain enzyme for the grad student to do experiments on. Others have a lot more freedom which leads to more meaningful data and less terrible hours.

 

[Easonred57]

40 hours/week. During undergrad, I worked 20-30. 4 years so far, several publications and posters.

I ask my undergrads to work between 15-20 to get the most out of their project, because any less than that and you don't tend to be in lab long enough to complete time-intensive protocols and you're stuck doing piddly things like PCR and autoclaving.

 

[Lawpy]

Basic science research requires at least 15-20 hours per week if you want to plan and run experiments to have meaningful results. Computational research may seemingly require less thanks to flexibility but there is a lot of off-site learning that needs to be done. Clinical research probably follows a regular schedule, but it is also common for many to work 40+ hours per week based on what is being carried out.

So it's hard to quantify a weekly research schedule but you should try to be in the lab everyday for a few hours.

 

[spaingirl17]

During undergrad I worked in the lab 5-10 hours a week for 3.5 years. I was doing computational/psych research which allowed for more flexibility as @Lawper said, but I spent some time reading journal articles and preparing presentations outside of the lab. During my thesis (which I did in the same lab), I was working closer to 15-20 a week. In the summer, I worked in bench science research and that required closer to 35 hours. So it really just depends on the research you're doing as well as many other factors.

 

[DrHart]

During the semester I usually do about 12 hours/week. Over the summer I did about 30-35. Its been getting harder and harder to stay motivated because my position is unpaid... and this application cycle really broke the bank for me :/

 

[mrspecialist]

168... I eat,sleep, breathe of lab.

 

[Petrichor1]

Just curious to see how many hours are asked of us in the research lab... How many hours are you guys normally in the lab per week?

lol PI told me to come every day of the week and now he wants me to come full-time...wth? and this job is for free too

 

[ImmunoLove]

You usually start off slow, so maybe 8-10 hours a week. Although I started off as a glorified dish washer, over the years I progressed and now conduct my own projects! So with more responsibility comes more time in lab, I work at least 20 hours a week if not more. It kind of depends on how much you want to get involved but a safe bet is around 12-15 hours.

We all start off there. Gotta know the basics. But back to OP, it depends and you do start slow. I also started ~8hrs, and several years later run my own little group (80hrs), so it depends on the gig and the rest of your life.