No Research In Lab

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

swifteagle43

Lover- not a fighter
15+ Year Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
916
Reaction score
3
Well...i got this internship at a prestegious medical school(I am still in undergrad) but the guy won't let me do anything to help. It was my first week but all I can do is read papers on the study and thats it. Wtf is this?!

Members don't see this ad.
 
Its how researchers start their lives. They first clean dishes and then move on to helping post-docs and then learning techniques before doing independent research.
 
Dr.Giggles said:
Its how researchers start their lives. They first clean dishes and then move on to helping post-docs and then learning techniques before doing independent research.


:*( that blows...how can i ever get my name on the paper by cleaning dishes :(
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Are you serious? Undergrads rarely get to publish. I guess it depends on the lab. I know some of them will list dozens of authors, right down to the work-study who makes copies and stirs the solutions, but most people have to really make a significant contribution to get their name on the paper.

Unless you want to go into research and get a Ph.D., and I assume you don't since you're posting on the pre-allo thread, just concentrate on learning as much as you can while you're there. I spent all four years of undergrad in labs and it barely came up in my application or interviews. And I got in. If you really want to focus on getting something valuable, kiss up for the recommendations.
 
You should talk to your PI, make your point clear... may be he wants to see how active you want to be. It is up to you how involved you want to be with research. I have met people who have publication as undergraduate and also some people who did research at one of the top institution and didn't do much at all.
swifteagle43 said:
Well...i got this internship at a prestegious medical school(I am still in undergrad) but the guy won't let me do anything to help. It was my first week but all I can do is read papers on the study and thats it. Wtf is this?!
 
iwutitan said:
You should talk to your PI, make your point clear... may be he wants to see how active you want to be. It is up to you how involved you want to be with research. I have met people who have publication as undergraduate and also some people who did research at one of the top institution and didn't do much at all.

I don't think the PI wants me to be too involved.
 
I've been listed on two publications as an undergrad. I did do a significant amount of work for them, but I started out doing nothing except reading papers at first too for the first week I was on both projects. My PIs wanted to make sure that I knew what was going on and the background of why we were doing what we were doing for our project before I actually started doing things. So be patient and maybe you will get a chance to do something else soon.
 
It depends on your undergrad college too. If your research is part of a undergrad research course then you can talk to your major counselor (ie biosci counselor) in charge of that department. If not then I suggest first ask to observe lab techniques, you can show your interest then by asking questions. Hopefully he gets the point and lets you become more active as time progresses. Good luck!
 
To publish you have to #1, find an investigator who is willing to let you do some independent work. If you have no experience in labs at all, that is going to be tough. You may have to just work with them for awhile to get some independent projects, but while your cleaning glassware and making gels ASK your PI whats going on in the lab. Ask questions, try to learn, show some interest!! Anyway, once you get any project, you need to do it with great dedication. If you want anything published in a even semi-reputable journal, you have to do good work; design good experiments, address possible flaws or conflicting data, control for as much as you can and lastly show something with your experiments that a journal reviewer is going to care about. I teach 3 summer intern freshman undergrads, and the #1 thing I tell them about publishing is, you cant just come in, do 4-5 hours a day, for the course of a summer internship and expect to get much out of it. If you find the right PI with the right project, you can publish with no problem. I've done it twice.
 
swifteagle43 said:
I don't think the PI wants me to be too involved.

It truly is how research starts. I think you will appreciate research more because of it, and think beyond just getting your name on a paper. You'll also understand what exactly you're going to be involved with beyond techniques. Your PI knows this, and since you probably don't have much research experience behind you, your PI doesn't want you diving in just yet. Give it a little more time, and if your PI still doesn't let you do anything, I would definitely be more proactive and ask if you could possibly help with anything. People that I have trained under me have always started with at least a couple weeks of shadowing and familiarity with the project/reading primary publications and have always been considerably more sharper for it.
 
The problem with Premeds (myself included) is that we want to do everything, we want to be the best at it, we want people's recognition, and we want it quick.
Lab work sucks. Its time consuming. In the lab I work, I see lots of premeds who just come in, they see its hard to get published, they leave. If you were a reputable MD you might get your name on a paper by doing very little, no way as an undergrad. If you really want to get published, you have to do work and defend your work. If you're going in thinking I'm gonna published and then bail, thats not the right attitude because you may/will probably get disappointed. You may not have noticed this yet, but grad students want you to work (yes scrub), not get published. Its their job to get published. The PIs don't care, they want people to publish because automatically their name gets on there so if you're enthusiastic and there is a simple side topic, they may give it to you, but you gotta remember who they're stealing the side topic from...... a grad student. Whose help do you need to accomplish your research? that same grad student. (The PI will not have time to answer simple questions.) The only way around it is if you stay long enough for the grad students to like you, and you understand enough things, and have helped out enough, for them to help you out. I'm not saying all labs are like this, but MAJORITY are. Good luck and hope you find a lab you actually enjoy scrubbing the floor in :D.
 
hb2998 said:
The problem with Premeds (myself included) is that we want to do everything, we want to be the best at it, we want people's recognition, and we want it quick.
Lab work sucks. Its time consuming. In the lab I work, I see lots of premeds who just come in, they see its hard to get published, they leave. If you were a reputable MD you might get your name on a paper by doing very little, no way as an undergrad. If you really want to get published, you have to do work and defend your work. If you're going in thinking I'm gonna published and then bail, thats not the right attitude because you may/will probably get disappointed. You may not have noticed this yet, but grad students want you to work (yes scrub), not get published. Its their job to get published. The PIs don't care, they want people to publish because automatically their name gets on there so if you're enthusiastic and there is a simple side topic, they may give it to you, but you gotta remember who they're stealing the side topic from...... a grad student. Whose help do you need to accomplish your research? that same grad student. (The PI will not have time to answer simple questions.) The only way around it is if you stay long enough for the grad students to like you, and you understand enough things, and have helped out enough, for them to help you out. I'm not saying all labs are like this, but MAJORITY are. Good luck and hope you find a lab you actually enjoy scrubbing the floor in :D.


If you work at a lab on your college campus this is probably going to be the case. However, LOOK AROUND. There are a lot of labs around doing research besides your school campus. My advice: Find a PhD who is a "junior researcher", or has not fully established his lab and reputation. These docs generally don't have many if any grad students, and are much more willing to work with you directly. There is a better chance of you getting some type of paper recognition if you aren't competing with grad students for attention. Working for a 20 year established well published doc with 5 grad students is futile.
 
Hi-

I am a graduate (master's) student who does a significant amount of research and i have had many undergraduates work with me (not scrub tubes) on projects. My suggestion to the OP is to sit down with your PI and have a "heart to heart". Tell him/her what you want to do, what you'd be willing to do and the reality of your situation. do you have the hours to spend in lab doing research? ask yourself seriously. you sound like you want to waltz into the lab and have a publication dropped in your lap. it's really not that easy. a word of advice: don't do it just to get your name on a paper - it won't happen. make sure it interests you, make sure you'd be willing to spend late nights in lab doing experiments for the umpteenth time, otherwise, find something else you can focus your effots on. if you do want a publication, it's going to take a lot of TIME and EFFORT. and it may take even more than that (persistence, dedication, LUCK, you name it).

do you have any previous research experience? do you know how you'd approach the problems being presented in the literature you find so painful to read? can you grasp what's being done in the lab? i'm sorry if i sound harsh, but you come off a bit whiny in your post. i'm not saying i'm the know all about research, but it's going to take time, and you may have to prove you are capable of doing/thinking about research before they'll even let you pick up a pipette.

you shouldn't get discouraged reading papers the first week, that's what EVERYONE should have to do in order to even think about research. but you need to sit down with your PI and ask him/her what he/she has in store for you. if it is merely dishwashing and you'd like something else, look around, there are labs that will let people get their fingers in things without the obligatory year/semester of dishwashing. if the prospect of research is there, make friends with the grad students in the lab, they are normally willing to let an UG watch what they're doing, maybe even lend a hand. stop whining and be proactive about your situation!

sorry for the long post, hope it helps.

good luck :luck:
 
Members don't see this ad :)
LT2 said:
Hi-

I am a graduate (master's) student who does a significant amount of research and i have had many undergraduates work with me (not scrub tubes) on projects. My suggestion to the OP is to sit down with your PI and have a "heart to heart". Tell him/her what you want to do, what you'd be willing to do and the reality of your situation. do you have the hours to spend in lab doing research? ask yourself seriously. you sound like you want to waltz into the lab and have a publication dropped in your lap. it's really not that easy. a word of advice: don't do it just to get your name on a paper - it won't happen. make sure it interests you, make sure you'd be willing to spend late nights in lab doing experiments for the umpteenth time, otherwise, find something else you can focus your effots on. if you do want a publication, it's going to take a lot of TIME and EFFORT. and it may take even more than that (persistence, dedication, LUCK, you name it).

do you have any previous research experience? do you know how you'd approach the problems being presented in the literature you find so painful to read? can you grasp what's being done in the lab? i'm sorry if i sound harsh, but you come off a bit whiny in your post. i'm not saying i'm the know all about research, but it's going to take time, and you may have to prove you are capable of doing/thinking about research before they'll even let you pick up a pipette.

you shouldn't get discouraged reading papers the first week, that's what EVERYONE should have to do in order to even think about research. but you need to sit down with your PI and ask him/her what he/she has in store for you. if it is merely dishwashing and you'd like something else, look around, there are labs that will let people get their fingers in things without the obligatory year/semester of dishwashing. if the prospect of research is there, make friends with the grad students in the lab, they are normally willing to let an UG watch what they're doing, maybe even lend a hand. stop whining and be proactive about your situation!

sorry for the long post, hope it helps.

good luck :luck:

I agree.
 
The first step is shopping for the right person to work for. Hopefully you have friends; that's how I got my best lab job (which led to me getting a first author paper in the best journal in my field). The "big shots" are invariably the wrong people to work for. They often are big shots because they are anal retentive micro managers who will never give you any independence.

Even once you've found the right person to work for, you have to demonstrate that you want and can handle independence. Even though I had prior research experience, my first two weeks in my lab I was assigned to lit reading and helping someone else with their experiments. After two weeks I understood the field enough to propose a new project (backed by suitable lit refs, of course), showed I was ready to be left off on my own, and I never did somebody else's bitchwork again.

The most important thing is to read every paper and understand it. Nothing enrages a phd more than when you don't already know what "the literature" says about X and you should. You will never get any independence until you show your understanding of the research the lab does
 
Master students, phd students, heck even post-docs spend their first month or so doing nothing but reading articles...That's how people get ideas for their own research project...While you're at it, ask yourself lotta questions, make yourself familiar with the subject, explore your curiosity, communicate with your PI.
 
I agree with the previos posters. Think of it this way; you're there to get training...reading literature and washing dishes is training. I've worked in a lab the past three years, two of those as an undergrad and I currently manage the lab. When we have a new undergrad (and there are alot), I always start them out reading lit and washing glassware. However, I'm using that to scope out their strengths, weaknesses and interests without them knowing. If they hate reading the literature, they're probably not interested in the subject. If they break every piece of glassware they touch, I probably won't have them work on an important project.
Don't worry, most labs start you out this way. That's exactly what my first PI did and I didn't understand it at first either. But, he saw that I was interested and after three years I have 3 first author publications and all of those where in very good journals and one in Molecular Cell. But, let's not get into the countless hours and nights I spent in the lab to get that done.
Just show interest and let the PI know you want to do more. Chances are he'll let you.
 
One more thing, it's common knowledge in labs that most premeds are only in a research lab for a recommendation letter. If they assume that's all you're there for, they probably won't let you work on an important project that they figure you could care less about.
 
swifteagle43 said:
Well...i got this internship at a prestegious medical school(I am still in undergrad) but the guy won't let me do anything to help. It was my first week but all I can do is read papers on the study and thats it. Wtf is this?!

when did you start? because i'm doing research at another school, and they won't let me do much except read papers. it's because it gives great background knowledge- don't worry, he'll make you do stuff soon. if by the second/third week of your internship, you find yourself reading papers, i'd definitely talk to the head guy .. or even the prof. you work with. good luck! :)
 
swifteagle43 said:
Well...i got this internship at a prestegious medical school(I am still in undergrad) but the guy won't let me do anything to help. It was my first week but all I can do is read papers on the study and thats it. Wtf is this?!

You have no research skills, how do you expect to jump right in and perform experiments? You need to read to increase your understanding of the research area your lab focuses on before you can really start to do meaningful experiments. You need to chill out and learn how to do research the proper way.
 
Lab research isn't instant gratification. For the most part undergrads are viewed as disasters in lab. No one wants them to touch anything. I for the most part always reject undergrads when my PI offers them to me. Only once in 5 years of grad school have i had an undergrad that was useful....and i worked him all summer.
 
swifteagle43 said:
Well...i got this internship at a prestegious medical school(I am still in undergrad) but the guy won't let me do anything to help. It was my first week but all I can do is read papers on the study and thats it. Wtf is this?!

to get published by yourself, you gotta be super super knowledgable in your area.. that includes not only reading tons of past papers but also understanding all the techniques, theories on the techniques, and theories of your research..

sometimes you can piggy-back with a nice researcher, but this rarely happens.. the problem is basically that the researcher doesn't want you wasting his funds and materials on your silly research project.. unless he's getting something out of it.. he won't allow you.. this can be circumvented by reading, learning, and then applying for your own undergraduate research grants..

honestly, read the papers and learn for the next 2 months, then ask to help out his research...
he didn't hire you to do your own research.. you are his slave :) if you can handle his stuff while doing your own research with your own grants.. thats when you can get published.. eventually
 
Wohooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! The Guy Just Called And He Said He Has A Major Project For Me!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!
 
Top