Not cut out to be a research scientist?

[Roy G Biv]

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Thanks for the advice. 🙂

 

[witness23]

working at two labs (especially basic science labs) takes away from each experience, imo. I think to be productive, you have to put in time and carry experiments throughout. Knowledge and expertise will come eventually. Most labs focus on such intricacies that when you are making the transition its a bit hard to understand initially. Keep running experiments and asking questions (atleast to yourself). If you want, you can get a review paper here and there but I think I learned the most from doing experiments

 

[Roy G Biv]

Okay thanks. I'm actually going to be in a developmental psyc lab. In that case, do you think it should be okay to work in two labs?

 

[itsallthesame]

working in two labs at the same time will only hurt you. i agree that at this stage, if the lab you are in now is a good situation, keep working there. if it's not, then switch labs (but do NOT go 50/50!)

you should be spending a lot of time reading journal articles, trying to come up with experiments, learning techniques, trying to figure out how to ask relevant scientific questions, chatting with post docs, grad students and your PI. read, read, read. you can never read to many articles carefully and try to understand exactly how experiments were done, what they claimed to show and really did show. you can never perform enough good experiments. 1 lab at a time, and the longer you're in it, the better (if it's a good lab).

 

[URHere]

My take on this is a little bit different than the above posters. Personally, I think the ideal thing for you if you want to try out a new lab would be to figure out if your current lab collaborates with any other lab groups and then to try to work on a project that would span the two labs. I did that through most of college and found that I learned twice as many techniques, had far less downtime between experiments, and had two very dedicated PIs to brainstorm with. It was an invaluable experience, and because the labs shared my project, I wasn't giving either group the shaft.

 

[witness23]

My take on this is a little bit different than the above posters. Personally, I think the ideal thing for you if you want to try out a new lab would be to figure out if your current lab collaborates with any other lab groups and then to try to work on a project that would span the two labs. I did that through most of college and found that I learned twice as many techniques, had far less downtime between experiments, and had two very dedicated PIs to brainstorm with. It was an invaluable experience, and because the labs shared my project, I wasn't giving either group the shaft.

sounds like a great experience

less downtime = 👍

I think your situation is not only a bit unique, but you were obviously confident going in. For those who are still new to the lab setting, I think I would start with getting acclimated and developing awareness for basic science research. I think confidence is imperative in holding down yourself in a lab, and the the OP seems to be a bit wary of him/her-self at the moment.

 

[Roy G Biv]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm not really doing much in the lab I am currently in because the PI doesn't have anything new to be done...he is writing up a manuscript from a previous investigation. I don't really have a mentor and I am not learning many new techniques. Is it worth staying in this lab if I could possibly learn more later on or should I try to find a new one?

URHere: You mentioned "wasn't giving either group the shaft". What do you mean by that?

 

[MNIkid87]

Hi,

fellow psych student (well, actually graduate since about a month - huzzah) here. You mentioned that your "new" lab is in developmental psych. From personal experience I can (unfortunately) tell you that working in developmental / cognitive psych lab "on the side" will not be as beneficial as you might hope it is (unless this is the research you would like to do for your PhD).
I am assuming your developmental lab is as most labs of this type, and so the research done there is taking little kids, giving them a behavioral task and then code the data (please correct me if I am wrong). The problem with this, though, is that running these tasks / experiments takes quite a bit of time (you have no idea how few participants actually bother to show up on time), you have to do it with quite a few participants and you will overall invest a looot of time into this (participants are scheduled in mornnings or afternoons, which will either conflict with your class time or your time in the other lab) , while most likely not learnig any techniques that will be beneficial to you when you do your PhD (exception: if you do a psych PhD) or that will impress your future PI or interviewers. On the other hand, the increased time you put into developmental psych is probably going to affect the time you put into the neurobiology lab (and thus your performance there) - your PI there will most likely not be amused. So the danger is that you'll end up doing mediocre work in two labs as opposed to splendid work in one lab, and thus get two mediocre LORs as compared to one amazing LOR.

Thus the danger is that the payoff might be significantly lower than the costs.

Of course there is the chance that you could still excel in both labs and in your courses (and if you do congrats, more power to you 🙂 ), but the danger of decreases in performance is imminent and should not be underestimated. I am currently trying to handle this balance act (working > full-time in one lab, while working part-time/nights in another lab because the supervisor doesn't wanna let me go), and while my work at the full-time job is not suffering, my work at the part-time lab is doing so significantly ( p < .05)


Sorry for the pessimistic post 🙁

 

[URHere]

URHere: You mentioned "wasn't giving either group the shaft". What do you mean by that?

Usually, when you work in two labs at once, you can't give either lab the time or devotion it deserves. Because I worked in two collaborating labs, I was able to spend all of my lab time on a project that was important to both labs. I didn't leave either shorthanded or on the sidelines, meaning I didn't "give them the shaft" (Just a strange figure of speech).