What is the First Day in a University Lab Like? 200
the_kanzure writes "I'm going to start at a university lab a few days after my high school graduation ceremony. The lab is an eclectic blend of computer science, evolutionary engineering and molecular biology, essentially it's research/development and — best of all — the research is worth something to me and my other pet projects. What I do know of science, tech and research has been gleaned from the internet. The open access research repositories (arxiv, PLoS, etc.) have been a life-saver. But showing up to get real, hard experience is not the same as those late hours into the night spent debugging software. In person, you can't just call up a favorite bash script to open up a few hundred tabs to do some quick research on feasability and past research ... how is this supposed to work — does anybody really get stuff done this way? So I've been wondering how Slashdotters have handled transitioning from learning in front of a screen and a good net connection, to actually showing up and getting stuff done. What's a first day like in a lab? Stories? What's the etiquette? Informal? In programing circles, you can always submit a patch and alternatives, but does this hold here? Is the professor still generally considered the PHB and the lowly undergrads are his minions to carry out his bidding?"
tea tea and more tea (Score:3, Informative)
my advice (Score:2, Informative)
Dont be afraid of being proactive. Academic types will assume you know what you are doing and that you are working when really you could be drowning. Ask them questions.
I also suggest bringing a jacket. Labs can be chilly.
Good luck.
Basic college lab expectations (Score:2, Informative)
My experiences with undergraduate CS labs weren't anything special. I would show up, get the assignment, listen to any info the TA had, and do a little bit of coding. If I wasn't making much progress, I'd leave and do the assignment at home later by telnetting into the university's servers using PICO.
As for engineering labs, they may provide you supplies or have you buy your own. While you're generally scheduled to be there for 3-4 hours, you might get done in an hour, or you might stay later. In any case, you finish all your work and record all your data there, as you won't have access to all that expensive equipment later when other groups are doing that same lab experiment themselves. You type up your reports at home, print them out, and hand them in the next week.
Don't get expectations built-up over first year labs. It's not until your senior project that you actually start doing your professor's bidding. You agree on a project, work with others in industry, and schedule lab time for your own uses however you see fit.
jfb2252 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Eclectic? (Score:3, Informative)
Beer? Nope. (Score:2, Informative)
Just make sure to drink only the 98% or 99% pure ethanol, without any denaturing contaminants. And bring plenty of mixers, 'cause that stuff is wicked strong.
Parent is right about the ass-paddling and wet t-shirt contests, though.
laboratory experience (Score:3, Informative)
Take good notes, keep a good, organized laboratory notebook. Become very familiar with the instruments and/or software that you will be using. If you know how to use this well, and you become well known as an expert at a particular experiment/procedure, professors will love you for it, and you'll be a valuable resource to them later on (they may even ask you to come back a year or two later, if you're available, and pay you to do a particular experiment or train someone how to do what you've done).
Don't expect to work in one lab too long. You'll probably end up working in 1-3 different laboratories as an undergraduate, move on to a different one (or different school) for graduate school, maybe another lab for a PhD, and another one for a post-doc. That's the typical route -- expect it. There's not too much advancement in laboratory work without some type of graduate school, unless you want to end up maintaining equipment or working in IT or something. But if you start undergraduate research as a freshman in college, there's no reason why you shouldn't have a PhD in 7-8 years, easily.
A lot of your coworkers will not be American. A good number will be from India, and more from China. Don't let this be a reason you avoid them. The US has some of the top research universities in the world, and we usually get the cream of the crop in terms of foreign students and researchers (even some of the smaller, less well known American schools can be well known and well respected overseas). Their English may not be all that good, but most of them do know their shit, and can be quite helpful. And most of them do want to learn more English and become better at it, so talking with them will help them out as well as you.
Anyway, good luck to you. I'm not sure where you're going to be, but if you're going to be here [pitt.edu], I might run into you,... Cheers!
Re:Well, as a first bit of advice... (Score:2, Informative)
For the rest of the day, I've bumped up the font size a bit.
timothy
If handling chemicals (Score:5, Informative)
HTH
Re:phdcomics (Score:2, Informative)
Your status as a lab noob. (Score:1, Informative)
So with all those blunt negative things out in the air, try not to be surprised by them when they happen. Go in there to have fun while learning and absorbing whatever knowledge you can. Find well-informed grad students to help you and guide you. In a university lab, most of the work is really done by grad students. Professors are intellects pulling strings at the top, but grad students are intellects doing all the detailed work. So get yourself involved with these grad students, and have an interest in the details of their work if they're willing to discuss it.
For your own project, identify the grad students and/or post docs which are most appropriate to ask each kind of question that could come up. Much of surviving a research lab is about knowing who to go to for help with each small problem you could face, because at that level, no one knows enough to answer all the questions. Depending on the professor, he might not want you to bother him with trivia regarding your project, but he probably will want to remain engaged in hearing the progress, and in providing pieces of guidance here and there. If your progress involves problems (and sometimes problems are progress), try to think of a plan of attack before presenting them to the prof. If you have questions, try to have specific ones, because your prof sounds like one who is managing a lot of people.
Remember that your prof is managing many people, and so may be detached from the specific details of your project. In most cases, the prof can probably comprehend it quite well though, and just doesn't have time to be up to speed on each project. To succeed on a longterm project, you need to become the expert on that topic, but you definitely won't start that way. So use the guidance of the more experienced people to lead you in the right direction toward gaining that expertise.
Short answer: it depends (Score:3, Informative)
I expect that you'll be assigned a PI and you'll be given a project/sub-project to work on, either by yourself or more likely with another student or grad student. What this project will be is hard to say. It will definitely involve computing in some way, though: simulation, data analysis, design.
Don't be too apprehensive. Most labs are fairly chill, and the people are cool for the most part. There's always a few bad apples, but you've got a long ways before bad PIs can influence your career.
Re:Eclectic? (Score:1, Informative)
"Glean" obviously makes more sense, and is the appropriate word for his sentence -- what the hell am I not see that all of you other slashdotters are?