Research during school

[Ex_EE]

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I am interested in doing research while in dental school, but I am concerned with how much time will be required. I have a wife and two children, so I don't really want to spend more time away from them. Can anyone who is doing research while in school comment on this? How much extra time is it really?

 

[Istr8nthem]

I am interested in doing research while in dental school, but I am concerned with how much time will be required. I have a wife and two children, so I don't really want to spend more time away from them. Can anyone who is doing research while in school comment on this? How much extra time is it really?

This will entirely depend on where you are at dental school. When I did research we had time off in the summer and completed most of our research during those months. The only time spent during the school year was preparing for our research (reading articles, writing proposals/abstracts). Therefore, it's incredibly hard to tell you what kind of time committment there will be without knowing the school you are attending, however, I will say that I would imagine it will be managable, and an overall worthwhile experience.

 

[Catfish]

I think it depends on what type of research you're doing. If you're doing clinical type, more of patient interaction, questionare, survey analysis kinda of research, which doesn't take much time and extremely flexible, you'll be fine. You can do those work at home, on a computer, and the time you spend in the clinic is flexible too. But if you're talking about pure science, working in a lab, it's gonna be tough. A few of my classmates are doing it. They get paid to do around 5 hrs a week. I didn't have any special training, and tried to work in a oral biology lab. My mentor expects me to do at least 10 hrs a week, and it has to be during the week days because they can't let me come in to the lab alone on the weekends. Besides labwork, I'm expected to develop my own project, have ideas how to approach it, and lots of progress reports, presentations. But again, I'm a first year, with minimum research experience. It's not easy for me, and I'm single 😛

 

[Ex_EE]

Thanks for sharing that. I am in the same situation. I have little research experience and I am interested in the pure science research and not so much clinical. It sounds like it might be too much for me with my current situation.