Hello!
I am a freshman finishing up my first year of college. I've been involved with research since the summer prior to my freshman year (so it's been ~8 months now). Speaking for myself, I do enjoy working in my lab, learning a lot from my mentor, or just simply helping out with lab tasks. Both my PI and mentors are very nice and supportive of me, resulting in me getting the cool opportunities to have attended a few national conferences the past few months. As for the research topic, I do find it interesting as it relates to my intended major so hopefully it'll help me later on when I take upper division courses within the major. My lab is not medicine/healthcare related btw.
As I'm planning for next school year, I've been debating whether I should stick with research in general, my lab in particular. My reasons are: 1) personally, I just don't see myself conducting research in the long run (used to consider MD-PhD but realized it wasn't for me), 2) my dream med school doesn't require research experience/have a research focus, 3) I'm not looking into research-focused schools, and 4) my research topic is interesting, but not too interesting to me.
Honestly, I've been really hesitating to make a decision because I feel like if I quit, I'd be ditching them after all these great opportunities they've provided me... (Does anyone ever feel this way or is it just me?) Also, my courseload for next year will definitely look a little more hectic than this year so I might be overloading myself if I decide to keep going.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
I am a freshman finishing up my first year of college. I've been involved with research since the summer prior to my freshman year (so it's been ~8 months now). Speaking for myself, I do enjoy working in my lab, learning a lot from my mentor, or just simply helping out with lab tasks. Both my PI and mentors are very nice and supportive of me, resulting in me getting the cool opportunities to have attended a few national conferences the past few months. As for the research topic, I do find it interesting as it relates to my intended major so hopefully it'll help me later on when I take upper division courses within the major. My lab is not medicine/healthcare related btw.
As I'm planning for next school year, I've been debating whether I should stick with research in general, my lab in particular. My reasons are: 1) personally, I just don't see myself conducting research in the long run (used to consider MD-PhD but realized it wasn't for me), 2) my dream med school doesn't require research experience/have a research focus, 3) I'm not looking into research-focused schools, and 4) my research topic is interesting, but not too interesting to me.
Honestly, I've been really hesitating to make a decision because I feel like if I quit, I'd be ditching them after all these great opportunities they've provided me... (Does anyone ever feel this way or is it just me?) Also, my courseload for next year will definitely look a little more hectic than this year so I might be overloading myself if I decide to keep going.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
