<p>I've been checking out these forums for a few weeks already. I thought I would post my dilemma to seek advice. I have currently spent 5 out of 10 weeks doing an engineering internship at a top 15 University.</p>
<p>This is my first time doing independent research, however, it seems like I was doomed to fail. Not only have I had a series of unfortunate experiments, even though I've seeked help from my lab members and my mentor, but it seems like I have wasted so much time and only, if only, I would have thought more about a few things earlier on during the internship I might have not been in this situation. </p>
<p>During the beginning of the internship, I was so determined and so motivated. I was always the first one in the lab, and the last one to leave the lab. I often stayed 3-4 hours after everyone left to do literature search and to practice lab procedures required for my project. I came in every Saturday and Sunday for the first 4 weeks for at least 5 hours to prepare for my experiment. I sacrificed nights staying up till 2-3 a.m. doing literature search because I was amazed and interested in my project. I did not have the materials required until the 4th week of the program, so there was not much that I could do that was related to my project (still doing the other 2 stages). The practice was mostly done on older equipment and chemicals, and I stayed longer to learn about other peoples projects.</p>
<p>Now that I have my materials, I realized that they are not sufficient. I literally need a few thousand dollars to complete the project the way my mentor had planned originally. Sure, there are one or two other methods, but those methods will take 3-4 weeks to complete and I'm still only on Stage 1 out of 3 on my project. (Not to mention that those protocols require different materials, which means an additional week will be spent waiting for them). Now, I'm left with only doing half of the first part of the project. The only problem with this is that I will not have much data for statistical analysis.</p>
<p>I suppose I just needed to vent, but it just seems like everyone else I met is making substantial progress in their projects besides me. I suppose what I fear the most now is not giving a good presentation about my project since I'm not able to perform it all the way. I really hope that it doesn't seem as if I am ungrateful that I was chosen for this internship. I have learned SO much about so many things I did not know about, and I am so grateful for that. This has truly been a learning experience since day 1. I'm just becoming less motivated.</p>
<p>Has anyone else done terribly during their internship whether it was something you did wrong or your experiments were just not successful? How did you manage to deal with it?</p>
<p>You should express these concerns to your mentor, they should be able to help you with the time line issues. It doesn’t sound like you’ve done awful, other than the fact that your efforts are in vain; work smarter not harder. The reason they are called experiments is because not all of them work, succeed, or give us what we want. If you can’t fail than I would suggest you not be in science, it takes many trials and trys and attempts before you succeed. </p>
<p>The good thing is you are generally interested in what you are doing and you are showing this to important people who can help you with your future. This is the real goal of an internship.</p>
<p>It sounds like you’ve learned a lot, which is great!</p>
<p>Don’t beat yourself up over not getting the timeframe/budget exactly right. It takes practice and judgment to plan and run extended experiments. Working in a ten week timeframe is pretty tight.</p>
<p>If you feel like you’re less motivated, perhaps you should spend a little time out of the lab and recharge.</p>
<p>I agree with Japher - the whole purpose of an Experiment is to see if it fails or succeeds. Maybe you didn’t “succeed” this time around, but at least you are that much ahead of everyone else in terms of acceptance of failure.</p>
<p>You can give a great presentation about how nothing you tried actually worked. Finding out that some method doesn’t work is often just as important (if not as glorious) as finding out that something does work. If we knew how these things were going to turn out we wouldn’t call them experiments.</p>
<p>For my Ceramics lab Sophomore year we decided on a pretty simple project, seeing how the density of isostatically pressed alumina varies with the pressure it is pressed at. All was well until we actually tried to press the stuff, at which time we discovered that the isostatic pressing machine didn’t go high enough to get the pellets to not break apart immediately when touched. We tried a couple different binding agents but nothing worked very well, and we had to finally settle on only having a couple pressure setting at the high end of the machine’s limits using water as a binder, and having to uniaxially press them before we put them in the isostatic press. One way of measuring density is to place the sample in water and measure the volume change, but upon placing the pellets in water all but the highest pressure specimens started dissolving. So we had to press more pellets and measure the density in other ways. </p>
<p>We also added hardness testing since we weren’t going to have a lot of data about the pressure/density coorelation, using a Rockwell hardness tester (it presses a diamond shaped indent into the surface of something then you measure how big that is through a microscope and stick it into an equation to get your hardness.) What we didn’t consider was that alumina is bright white, and it was going to be impossible to see the indent in the microscope using normal means. We tried putting a piece of paper covered on one side in Sharpie between the machine and the sample which kind of worked, but we finally figured out that we could take a flashlight and shine it at an angle, causing the indentations to cast a shadow which we could measure.</p>
<p>Were all of these things problems? Yes. But they were also results! We now knew that you couldn’t press alumina at a certain PSI and have it hold up. We also knew that you had to fire them before putting them in water unless pressed over a certain PSI. These are things we did not know before we started the experiment, which means that while we didn’t reach our original goal we DID have valid results. Science doesn’t always turn out the way you expected but that is half the excitement. It can be extremely frustrating I know, but the challenges, not the results, are what make the work rewarding instead of monotonous.</p>
<p>I was considering a topic like this in the parents forum to ask about how the internships are going as it is about halfway. I’ve been watching the group that my son is in - their progress reports are online as are project descriptions. From what my son has told me, there isn’t a lot of guidance and the professors and grad students are pretty busy with their own work.</p>
<p>I get the feeling that most of the students are struggling with their projects.</p>
<p>In undergraduate courses, you’re given problems and directions, processes or procedures for the most part. In research internships, at least the ones that I’ve seen, the guidance and resources can be minimal. If you’re not used to this, then you can get sunk without a plan because, as you’ve noticed, the time goes by very quickly.</p>
<p>It sounds like you’ve put in a lot of effort and you’ve made discoveries. They may be negative discoveries but those are important too. It’s often important to know that something doesn’t work.</p>
<p>I had a discussion with a coworker on the value of research internships for undergraduates yesterday. It seems that the external benefits are that you can put it on your resume. I think that most companies interested in hiring people aren’t going to do any digging on internships though they might ask you to explain your experiences or findings.</p>
<p>You also walk away with how things can work in industry. You can be given this type of assignment at work where you have a rather vague description of a project, some level of resources where there are power structures that aren’t externally obvious and a timeframe to do it in. It’s good to have the experience where you know that things don’t always work out so that you are aware of that possibility.</p>
<p>for which we are grateful that grad students/research students need DS’s help, who is a staff researcher and assistant. He’s pulling some long hours and missed last weekend in coming home. He’s in nirvana, doing a lot of challenging things rather a single task.</p>
<p>I’ve been there, and I think most, if not everyone, that has ventured into research has experienced something similar. In my case, I undertook a project in a field outside of my major so I had to learn the basics on my own in addition to reading research papers on the subject. I met with my research adviser two times a week for updates and to voice my concerns. I also kept a notebook where I wrote down basically anything related to the readings and my own questions, but most importantly experiment procedures and conditions. In the end, I didn’t get the results I sought, but I learned a lot.</p>
<p>In the end, I presented my results even if was not what I expected to find, and explained what we learned from them. I also explained future work. I noticed that there were a few others that were in the same situation. I’m sure there is at least one other person in your program that doesn’t have results they wanted or has not gotten as far as they planned.</p>
<p>It seems like you’ve done a lot of work and you’re very dedicated. Part of your research internship is to help you develop the skills to work independently. Remember, this is your first internship so you will feel overwhelmed and you will probably have more trouble doing experimental procedures and finding the right research papers.</p>
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<p>You’ve reminded me of CERN theoretical physicsts Alvaro de Rújula.</p>