<p>I'm leaning toward a major in ES, but saw a huge research project thing was needed during senior year. Does anyone have any experience with this or does anyone know what this is all about? I'm not a big fan of research (who is? lol), and I would be going with the social science concentration, not the physical or biological science one. I'm just a first year, but this senior research already seems really intimidating.</p>
<p>Too early to be intimidated. It will start to work itself out in the second/third years. As you get more comfortable with your major, you should seek out graduate students/professors and express your willingness. Over summer, a lot of professors continue their work with graduate students and you can be part of this. In most colleges, they will give you guidelines on how to get this done. Really it is not as intimidating as it sounds. They don’t expect you to “discover something”, they do expect you to be involved in some ongoing research. </p>
<p>Also rely on peer support. In college, collaboration counts and make yourself some good friends in your major. If there are related clubs, join them so you can form a network of folks who could provide insight on how/where to look for these positions.</p>
<p>Don’t stress too much about it. Yes, it’s a required part of the major, but I know plenty of ES seniors who did the legwork over summer after jr year and basically just have to do the writeup for senior year. The hardest part is coming up with an idea and arranging everything, but only focus for now on creating professor relationships so you can come to them when the time is right. I’ll be doing mine in 2013 =]</p>