Research Essay Question/PI question

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jc235693

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Hi all, so I am trying to write my research essay but am in a bit of a dilemma. I attend a small liberal arts college (we don't have any graduate programs) with not a lot of research opportunities. I finally was able to join a lab in the beginning of my sophomore year. For the entire year there wasn't much for me to do except come to lab meetings, lead journal discussions, and observe other students in the lab. In order to get real hands on research I applied for a summer grant for an independent research project, got the grant and spent the summer working on my project. The next year due to in my opinion disorganization and laziness on the part of my PI I didn't get to do much of anything again (I think in the entire year the lab completed half an experiment), so I spent most of my research time working on a paper, and preparing for presentations (I presented at a poster session at my school, gave a talk at my school, presented a poster at a local undergrad research conference, and presented at a national conference). The paper has still yet to be published due to the fact my PI has been "editing" it for over half a year.

My question is how should I approach this when writing my essay. I don't want to say during the year I did nothing, do you think I could get away with whitewashing it and saying things like "during the school year most of my focus was on designing new experiments, writing my paper, preparing for presentations, and keeping up with new literature" that would be expanded of course.

Let me know what you think thanks, btw in case anyone is wondering why I would stick with this it is because the PI does afford me a great deal of freedom and support on my independent projects like my one from last summer and my upcoming honors thesis project.

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Spin it to win it baby. Mention you were in the lab for this time, talk about the highlights of what you did, future plans for what you will be doing, and understand what you and the lab has done/is doing/and will do very well for your interviews.

Don't put negative information on your app. Don't lie either. Find some happy medium on that, keep doing research, and it sounds like you'll be fine from this standpoint.
 
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