I Am not sure if this is the right forum but I figured why not try. What occurs when a student does research with a professor? Do they simply pipette or do they also have to write reports and stuff like that? I enjoy being in the lab but ia solution DESPISE lab reports. Just curious. Any info would be appreciated!
Thanks
Typically you might spend your first semester learning the basic lab techniques and getting exposure to the lab’s main research directions, and depending on the professor and time constraints, you may be able to start a small independent project under a grad student or post doc. From then on, it really depends on your lab and your goals. You might continue working under a grad student, assisting them with their research, you might start working on a project of your own that could eventually result in contributing to or authoring a paper.
If you work in a research lab and all you do is pipette all day or do grunt work like washing dishes or just making stock solutions without doing actual experiments, then you need to get out and find a lab where you can actually learn about their research and learn how to contribute to the lab.
There wouldn’t be “lab reports” per se- you would be expected to keep a log of your experiments and results (which every lab member will do), and at my lab we are encouraged to summarize our work periodically. In the sense of a formal lab report that you would turn in for a high school class or even a college class, no you would not write those. However, there are papers, since the goal of research labs is to write and publish papers, and if you did substantial/important work for a particular project/paper, you would be acknowledged or called upon to contribute to the writing of the paper.
Hope this made some things clear! Feel free to ask questions: I’m an undergrad working in a lab right now, and I’ve seen my older sibling work their way up over the years to being a post-doc.
@silmaril ok thanks! Is there ever like stressful work you need to do?
Any job or anything you do will probably have stress associated with it at some lol. Can you maybe specify what exactly you mean by stressful work?
@silmaril yeah sorry for being unclear! I just mean like have you ever been rushed to turn in a multiple page research paper or something similar? Have you ever had regret partaking in research
I haven’t gotten to the point where I would be ready to write or contribute to a paper, so I can’t speak for that from my own experience. But there aren’t regular “deadlines” per se, like you would have in a class. Papers are written when you get the results to back it up, not the other way around; it’s very dependent on what you can produce.
There is less pressure if you’re an undergrad for you to contribute significantly. The majority of a college lab’s research is driven by the grad students and post docs- from my sibling’s experience and from talking to other grad students, yes research gets to be pretty stressful and high pressure as a grad student or post doc because you are expected to have something to show (and it’s essentially your livelihood at that point!).
If you are thinking of doing research in college, I would highly recommend it, if only for you to gain some experience and figure out if you enjoy it or not. It’s definitely a time commitment and you should treat it with the seriousness that you would have for any job or internship. It’s completely okay if you end up disliking research, but you lose nothing if you decide to go for some experience.
It really all depends on the professor you work for. That being said they won’t spoon feed you and just pass you along with assignments leading towards a paper. You have to tell them what you want to work towards. If all you want to do is work in the lab then they won’t mind having you come in 20 hrs a week to get their (and grad students work done). If you want to actually research you have to at least propose the idea to them.
I would say just start off in the lab for a semester or two as a student working and get paid while you are learning the ropes. Then when you are up for it have a sit down with the professor and hash out a plan for your research.
I started out sophomore year working in the lab as a student worker and eventually became the lab manager essentially. The grad students had to work out a plan with me to get there samples run. After that I went on to do actual independent research as well as contribute to ongoing projects.
Working with millions of dollars of equipment actually came up in multiple interviews down the road (being able to handle their complexities, keeping everything running, and most importantly knowing how they actually work). It was a great experience doing undergrad research.