Choosing a Mentor or Research Group

Summary

In this informative session, the speaker shares valuable insights into the process of selecting a mentor or a research group, particularly aimed at undergraduates entering the field of academia. The speaker, drawing from personal experiences, highlights the importance of finding a mentor whose style matches your preferences and the significance of choosing mentors for specific skills instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. Emphasizing the iterative nature of finding a career path in academia, the speaker reassures students that exploration and making mistakes are part of the learning process. Through a range of examples and scenarios, the talk offers practical advice on initiating contact, asking questions, and setting expectations in a research setting, all aimed at preparing students to thrive in their academic pursuits.

Highlights

• Understanding different mentoring styles can help you choose the right mentor for your academic path. 🤝
• Mentors might not always be your friends, they may push you to be the best version of yourself. ❤️
• Having multiple mentors for different skills and experiences can enrich your academic career. 📚
• Approaching potential mentors might involve waiting, but don’t let this discourage you from pursuing your academic interests. ⏳
• Active participation and asking questions in a research environment can unlock a treasure of knowledge and experience. 🏆
• Navigating the mentor-student dynamic is about mutual growth and respect. 🌱

Key Takeaways

• Finding the right mentor is crucial: they help shape your academic journey and support your personal growth. 🎓
• Different mentors have different styles; find one that matches your comfort and learning style. 🧑‍🏫
• Don’t rush your decision when approaching labs or mentors; everyone’s timeline is different. 🕰️
• Be proactive and choose mentors that can teach you distinct skills; you can have multiple mentors for various needs. 🔍
• Communication is key! Always ask questions, and clarify your role and expectations in any lab setting. 💬
• Mistakes are normal, and owning up to them can pave the way to better learning opportunities. ✨

Overview

Embarking on the journey of finding a mentor or joining a research group can be both exciting and overwhelming. The speaker, with a diverse academic background, sheds light on how essential it is to find a mentor whose style resonates with your personal and academic needs. They discuss how different mentors have varied approaches – some might be warm and personal, while others maintain a professional distance. Understanding these dynamics can significantly impact your learning experience.

The session delves into how to effectively communicate with potential mentors and understand the expectations within a research setting. It’s crucial to ask relevant questions about daily responsibilities, supervision, and future projects before committing to a research group. This proactive approach not only helps in making informed decisions but also demonstrates your interest and seriousness about contributing to the research.

Furthermore, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being proactive in your academic journey. Encouraging students to not just be passive participants, but to actively seek and choose environments that will foster their growth. By understanding and navigating the mentor-student relationship, students can create valuable networks and opportunities that will extend beyond their undergraduate careers.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Purpose of the Program The chapter titled 'Introduction and Purpose of the Program' likely starts with an introductory music segment followed by a welcome message. The speaker congratulates the participants for joining the program, emphasizing that it provides them with a unique advantage that past participants, including faculty, did not have. The chapter sets the stage for what they aim to provide in the program—valuable information for the participants.
• 03:00 - 10:00: Understanding Mentorship Styles and Importance The chapter explores the concept of mentorship, emphasizing the importance of guidance, especially for individuals who lack prior familial experience or support in certain areas, like first-generation college students. It highlights how mentorship provides answers to unasked questions and aids in better decision-making. The personal experience of navigating education without family guidance underscores the value of mentorship in offering insights and information one might not even know they need.
• 10:00 - 17:30: Choosing the Right Mentor The chapter discusses the speaker's unconventional academic path, highlighting that their journey was not the traditional route typically followed in academia. They did not proceed directly from a bachelor's degree to a master's, then a Ph.D. Instead, they experienced a more winding career path, which provides them with a unique perspective. The focus of the discussion is on finding and selecting one of your first research mentors.
• 17:30 - 26:00: Engaging with a Research Lab The chapter titled 'Engaging with a Research Lab' discusses the concept of mentorship in academia. The speaker shares personal experiences, revealing that they were unfamiliar with the term 'mentor' until late in their undergraduate years, or possibly even during graduate school. They acknowledge that discovering this path was a matter of luck and might not be an obvious or easy journey for everyone. The speaker relates their academic experiences and their work with students, including that they have mentored several dozens of them over the years.
• 26:00 - 37:30: Roles, Responsibilities, and Mentor Relationship The chapter discusses the achievements of undergraduate assistants who have worked under a mentor. The mentor takes pride in the fact that all of their assistants pursued advanced degrees, such as master's or PhDs, and some even pursued medical degrees (MDs). A key point of pride is that none of these assistants followed the exact same academic path as the mentor. Instead, they each ventured into their own disciplines, highlighting a diverse set of career paths and personal growth. The mentor emphasizes individuality and personal development within their mentorship role.
• 37:30 - 47:30: Interactive Engagement and Overcoming Initial Challenges The chapter focuses on the journey and insights of a behavioral pharmacologist whose academic background is in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. The narrative stresses the importance of mentoring students diversely, allowing them to carve their own paths rather than simply emulate the mentor's career. This reflects a belief that a mentor's role involves enabling others to discover their unique attributes and interests, particularly in how they engage with the world and solve problems.
• 47:30 - 58:00: Long-term Benefits and Career Advancement The chapter discusses selecting and understanding mentors for future career paths. It emphasizes the importance of identifying what one looks for in a mentor, acknowledging that mentors come in different styles and forms, and encourages introspection on the desired traits and guidance one seeks from a mentor.
• 58:00 - 70:00: Finding and Approaching Mentors This chapter explores different types of mentors and their varying approaches to mentorship. Some mentors form close personal relationships with their mentees, celebrating personal milestones and engaging in personal interactions. Other mentors maintain a more formal relationship, interacting in professional settings only. Mentorship styles also differ by intensity; some mentors closely monitor and guide every step in a high-intensity environment, while others provide only general guidance, allowing mentees the freedom to navigate their paths independently.
• 70:00 - 85:00: Communication and Contribution to Research This chapter explores the dynamics of communication and relationships between mentors (such as professors) and their mentees or students in academic research settings. It highlights the varied nature of these relationships, noting how some mentors prefer to be more like friends, while others maintain a more professional distance. The text acknowledges that not all brilliant academicians possess strong social skills, impacting how they contribute to and communicate within their research environments.
• 85:00 - 102:30: Leaving a Lab and Maintaining Good Relations The chapter discusses the often observed phenomenon in the sciences where individuals with exceptional intellectual capabilities may lack social skills. It highlights how even brilliant minds, who can offer excellent mentorship, may struggle with effective communication. The character Sheldon Cooper is used as a reference point to illustrate this type of personality.

Choosing a Mentor or Research Group Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] well hello and i'm going to congratulate all of you for actually participating in these programs because it gives you a jump start that i never had that a lot of faculty never had because what we're going to do is we're going to try to provide you with information that's
• 00:30 - 01:00 useful that that you can utilize at your will and it'll help you to make better decisions all right i went into this completely blind um i didn't come from a actually i'm a first-gen so i'm a first-generation college student and so i didn't have any family to guide me and i had to figure it out as i went along and a lot of these sessions are about providing you with answers to questions you don't even know to ask yet because i certainly didn't know the reason i have a interesting
• 01:00 - 01:30 perspective about universities is my because of all of that i don't have a tradition traditional career in academics so i'm not somebody who got a bachelor's degree immediately went on for a masters then a phd and then followed the academic pursuits my career was much more winding so i come at it from a very different perspective but today we're going to be talking about finding and choosing one of your first research mentors okay and this might be something you've
• 01:30 - 02:00 thought about this might be something that you're you've been that people have talked to about in high school i i don't know i actually never really even heard of the phrase mentor until i was probably a senior undergraduate maybe even headed into graduate school so i figured this out and i got really lucky but not everybody does okay so let me tell you a little bit about my academic experience and working with students probably the numbers have increased but when i made this slide i had worked with probably a couple dozen
• 02:00 - 02:30 gra excuse me undergraduate assistants my pride is that every single one of them went on for an advanced degree at least a master's if not a phd and many of them went on for mds okay so thing i'm more proud of is that not a single one moved and moved forward as a mini me they didn't follow the exact same path that i pursued in academics they all went into their own disciplines and just so you know where i come from my
• 02:30 - 03:00 doctorate was in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience i identify as a behavioral pharmacologist i study drugs through behavior and i did this in animals all right so if you look at the disciplines up there they diverge hugely from students that i mentored in the laboratory all right because that's one of the things in my opinion a mentor should do it's not about teaching people how to be me you're not me you're you it's about trying to help you figure out
• 03:00 - 03:30 what path you want to take now you're going to choose your mentors and mentors come in many forms so one of the things that you need to start thinking about is what is it that you're looking for in a mentor okay because they all have different styles does anybody have an idea of what they want from a mentor okay i didn't so that's perfectly fine so styles of mentors differ some mentors
• 03:30 - 04:00 are your best friend they take you to dinner they celebrate your birthday they get to know you personally other mentors might wave to you when they walk into the laboratory might not alright so some are very distant all right some push you hard it's a high intensity high energy competitive environment and they oversee everything you do very closely other mentors are laid back and they step back they give you general guidance and let you pursue the path
• 04:00 - 04:30 that they're giving you or what they're telling you to do or sometimes they let you choose your own path the reason that they differ so much these are people they're people that are very comfortable being best friends with their students or mentees other people are not comfortable with that has anybody ever observed that some of your professors who are brilliant are not the most social people skilled peop person they've ever encountered in
• 04:30 - 05:00 the world yeah this is not uncommon in the sciences brilliance comes with many things sometimes it does not come with social skills all right so sometimes they're not they're not the most socially strong communicators in the world all right doesn't mean they're not brilliant doesn't mean they're not going to give you good mentoring i like to bring the sheldon cooper image up here as a model of that there are people that are geniuses brilliant scientists
• 05:00 - 05:30 but the question is would you want to work for them i don't know if you guys are big bang theory fans but i'm a huge fan of the show it makes me laugh because i kind of see colleagues when i watch the show and you guys might see some of your professors when you watch the show because the sheldon coopers of the world there's people that want to work with them but they have to tolerate a whole lot of stuff to do so and it's one of the things that you encounter when you look for mentors a lot of times when you have people like
• 05:30 - 06:00 this though they kind of know and so they don't directly mentor you in fact when you're this brilliant a lot of times you have a lot of research funding and you have a large team all right and somebody else on the team with better teaching and mentoring skills is the one that leads students so people have different styles mentors have different styles i i know one friend she absolutely loves the mentor
• 06:00 - 06:30 who is your best friend i don't really do well in that scenario i like to be friendly with mentors but i need a little bit of distance from it okay i want somebody who's gonna be a little tough on me when i'm not doing great i want them to tell me if my performance is not great your friends don't like to do that teachers do because they're helping you to learn and improve so mentor a lot of these terms are used interchangeably mentor manager advisor
• 06:30 - 07:00 friend there's big differences and not only do some people not do well being friends with students when they're working with them because it's hard to give them bad news but sometimes students don't do well working for somebody they think of as a peer all right in fact i've i've had a couple times uh new new faculty members junior faculty assistant professors come in and they're going to
• 07:00 - 07:30 be friends with their team and all of a sudden this productive team member uh changes they go to a conference or they go to a meeting and they go out for drinks and they have a good time and they come back from the conference and all of a sudden the respect that was there is gone so some people can't be friends with somebody who is your supervisor who assesses you evaluates you and still take orders all right other people don't have a problem with it i've had students that no problem they love to invite me to
• 07:30 - 08:00 their parties or over for movies and they had no problems taking orders or criticism from me the next day but you really have to assess that and if you know you don't want to take orders from somebody you think of as a peer then that's probably not a mentor that's going to motivate you to move on to to grow all right so do you have to have one mentor if you're good you're going to recruit mentors for what you need if you're learning how to teach
• 08:00 - 08:30 you find the best teacher and they're going to give you the skills to teach you want to do a particular type of research you find that person alright if you want a mentor that's kind of a friend but you know you're not going to take orders from them that's the mentor that you choose down the hallway not the one that works in the laboratory with you and they can teach you about the academic world globally as a peer and you can still take orders in the laboratory so you actually can look for people that can teach you what it is you're looking for right now
• 08:30 - 09:00 when i teach i channel a professor that i had as an undergraduate he was probably arguably in my mind one of the best instructors i've ever had and it was his very interactive casual nature that he tried to portray that kind of drew me in and so i would go to i'd watch him teach i'd go to his lectures and i'm like how does he do that and and i try to emulate that because i see him in my head so he was my mentor
• 09:00 - 09:30 on how to instruct and how to engage a classroom okay so you're going to have different mentors and you don't have to have just one this is a very important part of your career some people make it right out of the park you you get working with a mentor as an undergraduate you're incredibly productive and you immediately know what discipline you want to pursue everything clicks right from the beginning other people try and it doesn't quite work out as well
• 09:30 - 10:00 and they have to try a few different things but when you find that really productive mentorship mentor mentee relationship the thing is it advances both careers both the career of the subordinate or student as well as that of the mentor why because they're teaching you how to do the disciplinary work that you have decided is going to be your career and they're doing it in a great way that that's allowing you to be incredibly productive
• 10:00 - 10:30 because of your productivity their publication their grants their data collection escalates all right so it builds their career as well and when you find these really good relationships mentoring relationships you'll wind up with that mentoring relationship throughout your career you'll continue to come back to them again and again for information guidance if you're changing career paths if you're looking at a new disciplinary new discipline area
• 10:30 - 11:00 you'll come back to them and get their opinion i actually still have students i have a student i guarantee you actually not guarantee you i can tell you his career has exceeded my own and yet he still comes back to me when he's making changes to bounce his ideas off me and get my input all right but here's the kicker when i was training him when i was working with him i knew that his career was going to exceed mine all right and i wanted him to do that
• 11:00 - 11:30 because he had the talent to go in that direction all right and that's what you should be looking for not somebody's going to hold you back somebody's really going to say go go get it all right i didn't want that he did all right so with all of this how do you find a mentor all right so when i did most of my mentoring oddly enough i was not a professor i was a lab manager all right and generally this was my experience so this
• 11:30 - 12:00 was a large research group okay and i ran the group and it's actually one of my favorite jobs that i've ever had in my life because i got to work with all the students in the lab and so what would happen is the students would go to class with the senior scientists and they'd say wow her research sounds fun and they'd send her an email okay saying hey i'd really like or they'd stop by after class and say i'd really like to come work with your research team or could you give me a chance and so generally she'd get the email and
• 12:00 - 12:30 she'd sit on it for a couple of weeks and eventually she'd send it to me and it would come into my inbox and i would sit on it for a couple of weeks and eventually i would email the student and the student would generally respond right away yes they'd like to come in for an interview all right then they would come in for an interview and i would talk about the research that we do and i would walk them through the many projects this is a large lab the many projects that we had going on almost always they were completely silent during the
• 12:30 - 13:00 whole process kind of looked at me really really scared and the more i talked about the projects and was excited about the work the quieter they got all right and then we would i'd say hey if you want to come to the lab let me know you know this is what we're doing so if you're interested and they would leave and i would have dead silence for about two weeks no email no response eventually an email would come in and they'd say yeah i'd like to come work for the lab and they would come
• 13:00 - 13:30 into the lab okay one of the things that i learned when i first started doing this is for whatever reason when students first came into the lab they were scared to death of me okay generally after they work for me for two weeks they were not anymore in fact students who came into our laboratory as freshmen or sophomores tend to tended to stay until they graduated and went to grad school all right but for whatever reason they were intimidated by it was either me or the whole process and according to them it was me okay so i tended to scare them and i'm
• 13:30 - 14:00 not really sure why other than the fact that over the course of my very winding career i've developed a very forthright way of speaking that can kind of scare people a little bit okay and in fact one of the people that work for me in the office she's kind of new i had a meeting with her yesterday and she basically told me the same thing i'm like i don't i don't know why i'm so scary because other people stay with me forever but she's she's pretty new to the office and for whatever reason she's afraid of me so let's talk about this in
• 14:00 - 14:30 more detail about how this can be done better so undergraduate takes the course they hear about the research that the professor's doing and they decide they're interested and they email them is it a good or bad approach what are your thoughts you know a little bit about the research you're already interested okay and so you email them good very very good approach the reason i bring this up is that we used to have students just show up at the lab do you think that's a good approach
• 14:30 - 15:00 no it's really not all right one there's hazards in the environment that they're not trained to deal with two were very very busy and and well in our particular laboratory every lab has hazards uh dangers things like that we actually worked with controlled substances so somebody knocking on our door was never somebody that we welcomed because we didn't know who they were and we had drugs in the lab so when you do this when you send that first very first email to that very first mentor are you
• 15:00 - 15:30 deciding on your career no you are not deciding on your career all you're doing is trying this on you're young you're going to try many things on before you decide what your career is but sometimes students put so much pressure on themselves to make a right choice that early that it's absolutely silly you're not making a career choice you're saying this sounds interesting let me see what it's like okay
• 15:30 - 16:00 however sometimes mentors don't see it that way i realized over the years when the students were going in many directions that they were trying things on and even when they decided they were not going to pursue the research that we did they stayed with the laboratory because it was research experience even though they were going in a completely different direction there are some mentors that don't really get that okay you don't have to say i'm coming into your lab to try this on all right but even if the mentor has an
• 16:00 - 16:30 expectation that you're going to follow their exact path it does not mean you have to do it keep that in mind a lot of times the other thing that happens with undergraduates especially talented undergrads they go into a lab and they start to really produce data your mentors mix you up with the graduate students okay so at some point they stop thinking of you as an undergrad because you're such a productive and experienced team member that see graduate students come into a
• 16:30 - 17:00 lab and they kind of are choosing a career undergraduates are not but at some point when you're that productive as an undergrad assistant you kind of get meshed in with the graduate students and every once in a while when you have obligations that grad students do not you have to say hey remember i'm an undergrad i have finals this week i can't do that experiment all right so sometimes you have to speak up and it's not that people are trying to push you to do stuff you can't do it's that you're doing so well they've lost
• 17:00 - 17:30 track of the fact that you're you're an undergrad not a graduate student all right summon the courage to send an email um all right we talked about that about two weeks later she forwards the email to me and about two weeks after that i may email you all right so we got weeks to month here between you sending the email and us responding now as the person who sent the email
• 17:30 - 18:00 what are you thinking when you're not getting a response right away you're thinking oh they don't they're not at all interested in me and and you kind of get your feelings has nothing to do with you it has to do with the fact that email is a blessing and a curse email enables us to do a lot of work but we get so much of it that you send your email and it goes and we're always dealing with what's up top first and trying to catch up all right so it's just a matter of being busy so if there's a time lag between
• 18:00 - 18:30 you send that you're sending that email and them responding it's simply because they're busy so then the student replies quickly to set up an interview that's a good response is it a good response to say well they made me wait so i'm going to make them wait no absolutely not all right the students are too scared to speak during the interview they're overwhelmed
• 18:30 - 19:00 and then they disappear for about two weeks now too scared to speak i get it all right this is a brand new thing you're going into a laboratory with somebody that you've already identified as interesting and brilliant and you want to learn how to do that so what i'm going to provide you with today are some rudimentary questions but also insight how do you develop a question you want to develop a question before you even go into the interview if you've had a class with the person
• 19:00 - 19:30 you already have some questions you already have a basic understanding of what they do use that information when you ask a question do i think that you're going to be a disciplinary expert no of course not you're coming in as a brand new student so generally the questions are uh basic but here's the interesting thing a lot in most areas of science your most basic questions are the most difficult
• 19:30 - 20:00 to answer so for example one of what we studied was drug drug abuse so almost always the students would ask questions like what causes drug abuse and i'm like okay you got an hour because we're still studying it we're still figuring it out or they'd say well how do you treat this can you can we cure it all right we got another hour going on here because these are such broad questions they're not bad questions they're our primary questions and in fact they're probably our most important questions and a lot of times
• 20:00 - 20:30 we get dragged so much into the details of our research that it's very effective for students to pull us out to look at the big picture again okay what undergraduates bring to a laboratory more so than grad students more so than faculty is idealism creativity because you're coming at this brand new we have done our work for a while we kind of fall into ruts and limited
• 20:30 - 21:00 vision with our expertise it kind of throws us into these alleys and when the students come in it pulls us out all right so those are good questions to ask you can also go to uh almost any professor they'll have a website at the university that will provide publications that they've um that work that they've published or their research interests and from that you can establish questions all right now overwhelmed with the lab
• 21:00 - 21:30 so we give the tour and we say well this person is doing this and this person is doing that and this project does this and it's it's a lot of information okay and you're new to this so the overwhelm again completely normal are they trying to overwhelm you no it's they're ever it's their every day that's what they do they don't think it's overwhelming at all in fact they think it's very mundane all right so when they're walking through this if you don't understand
• 21:30 - 22:00 something assay say i'm not really understanding how this applies to drug abuse can you can you make the connection for me and you bring them out of their alley and they're thinking about this fresh again all right so those are really good types of questions to ask and they're not trying to overwhelm you like i said to them this is their boring everyday mundane activities all right disappear for about two weeks it could be that that introduction to that environment
• 22:00 - 22:30 the first time it's a standard reaction just because there's so much going on you don't have to disappear all right because one you guys are going to ask good questions all right and two we know that you're brand new to it all right we're not expecting you to be experts that are going to understand all the minutia associated with it all right so don't do that although i got so used to it that i i became you know i'd say okay i'll hear from them in two weeks all right
• 22:30 - 23:00 so here's the big secret and i kind of already revealed it to you a talented interested motivated undergrad assistant is extraordinarily valuable to a lab because you learn you bring your creativity when you learn how to conduct experiments or procedures you produce data you do it reliably when you're well trained and in fact i have had undergraduates in the laboratory have to train the new graduate students because
• 23:00 - 23:30 the undergraduates knew how to run our procedures and the brand new graduate students did not and this happens with well-trained undergrads you become leaders in the laboratory you don't have to wait for graduate school for this to happen many of you are going to go to work with mentors you're going to publish manuscripts with them all right even if you don't you might have opportunities to present at conferences so these are your first steps and you get to do it as an undergrad and the great thing about doing it as an undergrad is if you feel
• 23:30 - 24:00 like you're tripping a little bit during a presentation or a talk or when you're asking you get to say be nice to me guys i'm an undergrad all right and they're gonna and their audience is gonna back off a little bit you don't have to if you're rocking it you just go ahead with it but if you if you feel like you're slipping or hitting you with hard questions you can ask them to back off and a lot of times i went to a it wasn't really a conference we used to have a lab exchange there was a research group in san antonio
• 24:00 - 24:30 and so we would get together as labs and share the research that's going on in the laboratories and it tended to be a very fun event very relaxed very casual and the majority of our lab were undergrads because we required a lot of labor to do our research and so they all wanted to present i said sure you guys go ahead and present i won't you guys can but i got your back nobody realized that they were undergraduates until i told them after everybody had presented
• 24:30 - 25:00 all right so you guys will have the skills very quickly but based on this now that i've told you the secret what i'm trying to motivate you to do you guys uh when when you go into a lab and you really want it to happen you really want to be accepted you want you really want to be chosen you're too afraid that you're going to step on your words and you're not actively choosing that environment now that's not unusual for a first mentorship but as you develop those skills when you start realizing what type of mentor you want
• 25:00 - 25:30 you have to become more active in selecting the environment that you want to work in all right in other words choose don't just be chosen all right so what questions do you ask now these are not scientific questions whoops these are just basic questions about the work environment that you're going to be joining all right so one of them is with whom will i be working
• 25:30 - 26:00 will i be working with the senior scientists will i be working with the other undergraduates who will be supervising me it's a legitimate question because you were in a class with a professor you emailed the professor because you wanted to work with them then you go into a laboratory and you never see them but it's a large laboratory now a lot of labs smaller labs you'll work directly with a professor larger labs the post stacks work with the professor the graduate students work with the postdoc the undergraduates work
• 26:00 - 26:30 with the graduate students there's a hierarchy that happens a lot of times everybody sees each other at lab meetings but your direct supervisor is the person who's immediately above you which can come with some challenges i will say and the challenge is if you're an undergraduate and you're working with a grad student if anybody has this scenario sometimes that graduate student this is the first time in their life they've ever supervised somebody so they're not a great manager
• 26:30 - 27:00 all right so sometimes you have to tell them i'm really trying to learn here but you're not being clear all right because they don't know that they have to break down the steps of a procedure of a research project to the very basic steps because it's not that they don't know the steps they just do them automatically and they don't pay attention to what they're doing all right so sometimes you have to ask them to bring it down a little bit okay
• 27:00 - 27:30 all right i'm new to this how much supervision instruction will i be given hopefully a lot when you start all right undergraduate assistants um the reason i worked with so many students over the years and i actually started doing this when i was a grad student remember that weird career that i said i started off my life in um restaurants i was a professional chef okay so i had managed people very young okay and then eventually got sick of that and went back to school and got my
• 27:30 - 28:00 bachelor's master's ph.d and moved it quickly so i was a graduate student who had skills in managing people and quickly the senior scientist recognized that and so every time they brought undergraduates in the laboratory she would assign them to me and i would get them trained and as soon as they got really good at doing all of my work she would take them away and give them to somebody else more senior and bring in another new student that i would train okay so i had done this quite a bit
• 28:00 - 28:30 because i had done it in a previous career all right so when students are brand new you have to work with them a lot you have to supervise them a lot you teach them i said my strategy was first you watch me then i watch you and i watch you for a while and then when you're reliably doing everything i need then i stop watching you when i stopped watching them they take them away and i have to start watching it so it was a labor-intensive process but the students were well trained if you walk into a laboratory and nobody is teaching you anything or
• 28:30 - 29:00 you feel like you're not getting good instructions one of the things that i did periodically do when i was dealing with multiple undergrads is i would forget who i taught what to so i'd say oh you're doing this project today and i go to walk away and they're like i don't know how to do that you have to t and and i'd like please tell me if i do that because i forget i have so many projects going on okay so all right um does the lab work evening's
• 29:00 - 29:30 weekends all right this is important if you're not going to work evenings or weekends to let them know up front if they're expecting you to work evenings or weekends our lab was a seven day a week lab because we worked with animals which means we had to take care of animals on the weekends as well we had to feed them so people had to come in on weekends so you want to know this is a very basic question but you want to know in advance if for some reason you can't work weekends or you can't work sundays or you can you have to tell them up front they're like well that's the only time
• 29:30 - 30:00 that we have if you can't work it we we can't use you fine you move on to the next opportunity all right the other thing that i recommend undergraduates do is remind everybody when finals week is coming up all right because a lot of people graduate students have finals as well faculty do not if they're not teaching they're not paying attention to it lab managers don't pay any attention to it it is not on their radar they're not giving finals they're not taking finals but they're constantly planning experiments
• 30:00 - 30:30 all right so when experiment comes up and you know wait a second that's finals week tell them because they simply don't remember it's not on their calendar it's not on their radar but you guys you have to do well in your classes to take that next step they know that if they don't respect it that's a problem because you need your grades to go to graduate school which means you need time to study for your finals all right so it's a red flag if they say we don't care about your finals wait a
• 30:30 - 31:00 second this is an academic environment you're supposed to care all right ask to speak to other students in the laboratory if they have other undergraduates say can i spend a few minutes talking to them and ask them about their experience ask them do you like working here do you not like working here specifically ask what don't you like about it now you could have a very jaded undergrad or graduate student for that matter that are very grumpy and so when when you go to talk to them they tell you that it is the worst environment they've
• 31:00 - 31:30 ever encountered in their life does that mean you should not take the position now because what's bugging them might not bother you at all all right when i was applying for graduate school i was working in a developmental psychology lab and one of my mentors was a graduate student and he knew the grad student from the lab where i was applying and he goes she wants to talk to you bad okay and she called me up and told me it was the most horrific environment the mentor was impossible that and and i'm
• 31:30 - 32:00 like i said what you're describing isn't something that bothers me i come from a pretty rough environment if anybody anybody ever worked in a restaurant you know that's a little that can be a little contentious environment so i don't think what's bothering you is going to bother me and it didn't i actually loved my graduate studies okay so just because somebody else doesn't like listen to what they're saying but assess do i think it's that they're just angry right now would some would bother me okay or is
• 32:00 - 32:30 this something that i'm not intimidated by grumpy people so it's not going to bother me all right uh what will i be doing when i start now when you start in a lab the first rotations you're going to be given some menial tasks perceivably menial washing glassware entering data into computers are these menial tasks they're really not and in fact the primary reason you're given those tasks when you first start is that you're
• 32:30 - 33:00 being assessed for whether you're going to reliably show up to the lab you don't walk in and they say welcome we're going to give you a project all your own you start off small because what they're really assessing is well they said they'd be here thursday at three are they here thursday at three okay go do some wash some glassware and then i want you to read this manuscript all right and then they'll say let's talk about that manuscript and to find out did you read the manuscript are you interested in the main so all of
• 33:00 - 33:30 that is assessment of are they going to be reliable when i do invest money time resources into giving them an independent project but you don't walk in and immediately be bestowed a project you've got to earn it because if they count on you and you fail they've lost they've lost money they've lost time they've lost resources sometimes animal lives have been wasted okay so they're not going to do that right away okay
• 33:30 - 34:00 um some of you might be going to graduate school hopefully all of you i liked it all right but others might want to go into industry so specifically what you're looking for are skills that could be marketed to industry if that's what you're looking for look for a laboratory that will provide you with skills that you can market so a lot of um bio research biochemistry research you're looking for very particular lab skills that you can go and work in biotech or pharmaceutical
• 34:00 - 34:30 companies all right and you want to look for a lab that provides you with that there's and i would actually say i'm looking to develop as many skills as i can because i don't really at this time think i'm going to go the grad school route i want to try to market myself as a technician when i graduate all right but kind of know that and you might still be figuring it out but talk to them do they know anything about working in industry that they might provide you with some insight or guidance okay we talked about the independent projects
• 34:30 - 35:00 that the urn's not bestowed authorship okay now you don't walk into the door on your very first day as a brand new undergraduate and say i want to be an author okay but what will eventually happen you're going to be assigned a project and it's going to go really well whether it's in your first lab or your second try and you're like the research you're enjoying the research and it's going well and what happens when that occurs is all of a sudden you start to feel
• 35:00 - 35:30 territorial it's my project it's my project because it's going really well and that's not a bad thing it's actually a great thing it's what's called taking ownership of research all right now when that happens i want to make sure that you know what the authorship policy is in that laboratory all right because if you're producing to that extent where you're taking ownership of the work you should probably at that point expect to be listed as an author now most
• 35:30 - 36:00 mentors will discuss this with you at some point but if they haven't i want you to initiate the conversation in a very nice way and just say hey this project is going well is there a possibility that i'll be able to be listed as an author on this research project now most the time if it's that type of contribution you will and they say of course but if they say absolutely no undergraduates are never listed as authors in this laboratory does that mean that you have to storm out angry and leave
• 36:00 - 36:30 no you're developing skills and knowledge and insight that you can market okay authorship policies are hugely diverse across the university campus all right one lab can be different than the lab next door alright so you have to assess am i still getting something from this appointment or do i need to move on okay questions to ask yourself when you start off what kind of research
• 36:30 - 37:00 do i think i'm interested in all right now a lot of times if you say i want to do whale research you don't want to be a texas tech all right you're limited to the research that's going on on the campus if you want to work with wales you probably need to go somewhere else all right does your undergraduate research have to directly apply to graduate studies now what you're doing is you're initially just learning how research is conducted that's the first step all right so you do that assessment and
• 37:00 - 37:30 you're like well even though i want to do something completely different like i said my students did i'm still learning things here all right what kind of environment do you want to work in and this is something you're going to learn over time do you thrive in competition or cooperation they're very different dynamics all right do you want to work for somebody who is a micro manager that's going to watch everything you do or you want to work with somebody who's going to tell you the basic instructions and let you
• 37:30 - 38:00 move on with it do you want high pressure or low pressure high pressure you produce a lot of data very fast and you move on with things very quickly all right you guys will learn where you thrive and that's the type of environment it's a very general concept of the environment that you want to work in all right what do i want to do with my research experience we already talked about some people want to go into industry some people want to go in academic route become professors some of you might go to med school the question is what do you want to do with it and then how much time do i have to give
• 38:00 - 38:30 the lab because that's one of the questions they're going to ask you how many hours a week can you give us be honest if you do not have 20 hours a week to give the lab do not tell them that you're going to give them 20 hours all right if you only have five hours tell them i have five hours i have a full schedule and it's all hard sciences i have five hours on this day and if they don't have a place for you you move on to the other lab but be honest because if you tell them that you're gonna do 20 and you can only do five you're going to disappoint them
• 38:30 - 39:00 okay all right should i stay i'm okay all right so you're going to go into a laboratory and all of a sudden you're going to be an environment where you are not the focus of the environment now a lot of us have experienced this in our lives some of you never have in high school the primary focus are of course the students an undergraduate the professor's focus is of students you go into the laboratory what's the
• 39:00 - 39:30 primary focus the research is the primary focus you're going to go into a lab and people are busy and they're doing things all right so you go and they say here sit at this desk and read these papers and you sit down for an hour and you read some papers and then you go to leave and you want to say bye to somebody but nobody's around they're all in different rooms doing different things and you're like i don't know so you uncomfortably leave and then you come back the next time and they say have you read those papers yet and you go no i haven't finished them
• 39:30 - 40:00 read those papers and this happens a few things you feel really uncomfortable nobody's really engaging with you and it's because it's not about you all right it takes time it takes time to people to realize what you're capable of but here's the thing once you demonstrate yourself you can ask hey can i shadow you on an experiment ask somebody in the laboratory they'll probably let you do it unless it's something that will be disrupted by multiple people
• 40:00 - 40:30 all right so you want to engage but once people learn what you're capable of then you're in trouble because everybody will want your help with everything but you've got to go through those first phases of discomfort of being in an environment where you're not really feeling hugely welcome and it's not about you okay let's see i made a mistake and i'm afraid to tell my supervisor so i'm just going to disappear okay do people make mistakes
• 40:30 - 41:00 yes high achievers like to think that they don't make mistakes and when they do they're hugely embarrassed we make mistakes number one never hide a mistake from your supervisor whether it's a graduate student or a senior scientist the reason is if you hide the mistake bad data can get published so if you make a mistake you tell them now if you're working for somebody who screams at you they shouldn't be because people make mistakes all right but we
• 41:00 - 41:30 talked about this mentors are people their styles are many all right but most of all don't psych yourself out all right don't be the high achiever that can't make a mistake all right i made a mistake i broke a beaker and now i'm going to disappear and never come back you made a mistake go and tell no one will give me meaningful work we talked about it eventually they will they will recognize they'll see you they sh that you show up regularly and they're going to say hey come work with us on this project the
• 41:30 - 42:00 work is mundane it's boring welcome to research all right really good research is about following a protocol the same way over and over and over again the work is mundane we love designing experiments we love starting new experiments running an ongoing experiment can be extraordinarily boring very dull headsets ear earbuds
• 42:00 - 42:30 great great for helping you to maintain your productivity listen to music if you can but if you're bored you're probably doing it right you've learned the steps you're following the steps and it's dull but when you see your analyzed results you get to get excited again all right that's when it gets fun and then you move on to the next project it's a new project it's fun again i'm not interested in the research after all okay
• 42:30 - 43:00 that's when you're deciding to leave i'm not interested okay i'm gonna go i really don't like this work i thought i would i didn't realize what it was really about if you tell your mentor this are they gonna be devastated no they've been through it before it's not horrible to say i thought i'd be interested in this but it's not not really my thing all of my students did that i was just fine with it all right so now they might ask you in more detail why don't you like working here because
• 43:00 - 43:30 it might be a situation that they can resolve but if it's not simply i tried it i tried it on it doesn't fit i want to try something else it's okay all right now there's some researchers that will be mystified how could you not enjoy this i love this all right the other thing is if you talk to them about it they might say what are you interested in and you're like i'm going to try this on next they could have a colleague that they know who does that type of work and they can get you an appointment
• 43:30 - 44:00 or if you've done good work for them if you've been reliable they're going to want to help you out so having that conversation could be beneficial to you all right you want to leave the lab on good terms all right the reason is if you leave on bad terms faculty and research personnel they talk all right so they're like oh the student is applying to our lab and i'm like oh they were no good in our lab okay so you want to leave on good terms if you said you're going to finish a project finish the project make sure that the data is complete and everything is as complete as possible before you go turn over all research
• 44:00 - 44:30 data to somebody all right don't stick it in a desk drawer and leave hand it to whoever is supervising you here's the data okay the let the data belongs to the laboratory all right and you shouldn't ever take data home by the way the data belongs in the lab for the lab all right so fulfill your obligations this is actually just good life skills good training it's called integrity and you want to you want to conduct your your life with integrity the other thing
• 44:30 - 45:00 that i've run into is undergraduate senior undergraduates they have gotten accepted to grad school hey and they say i'm broke i want to work till the very last day before i leave okay that's fine over the years i learned it's also not true because what happens as they approach their departure date for graduate school they realize all the stuff they have to do to move possibly across the country sometimes across the world and that date starts stepping back
• 45:00 - 45:30 stepping back stepping back stepping back all right so communicate with regard to your departure foreground