<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm a sophomore and I began working in a new lab about 2 weeks ago. I'm working 20 hrs/week during this semester and full time during the summer. My PI is really great and takes time every so often to talk to the lab people, including me. I'm under a grad student in her last year (she's awesome!) and the project that we're working on invovles protocols that are completely new to the lab.</p>
<p>Now as of now, I'm only working on mastering techniques (larval brain dissections, making gene chips, microarray analysis .. etc) and though my mentor always gives great explanations for everything and I've learned a lot, I know I'm far away from creating my own project or whatever. The nice thing about this lab vs. my previous lab is that they have me starting on the "science" stuff right away and I will begin to do lab maintenance duties (washing, stocking, preparing food) in the summer once I'm familiar with the lab.</p>
<p>I know that for MD PhD programs, the "quality" of your research experience is important, especially how much independence you had. What exactly does this mean? I feel like my experience is a little different because I haven't really had to "earn my stay" in the way I expected, but I'm still just trailing my mentor. Am I on the right track?</p>