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What is the First Day in a University Lab Like?
the_kanzure writes "I'm going to start at a university lab a few days after my high school graduation ceremony. The lab is an eclectic blend of computer science, evolutionary engineering and molecular biology, essentially it's research/development and — best of all — the research is worth something to me and my other pet projects. What I do know of science, tech and research has been gleaned from the internet. The open access research repositories (arxiv, PLoS, etc.) have been a life-saver. But showing up to get real, hard experience is not the same as those late hours into the night spent debugging software. In person, you can't just call up a favorite bash script to open up a few hundred tabs to do some quick research on feasability and past research ... how is this supposed to work — does anybody really get stuff done this way? So I've been wondering how Slashdotters have handled transitioning from learning in front of a screen and a good net connection, to actually showing up and getting stuff done. What's a first day like in a lab? Stories? What's the etiquette? Informal? In programing circles, you can always submit a patch and alternatives, but does this hold here? Is the professor still generally considered the PHB and the lowly undergrads are his minions to carry out his bidding?"
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Keep an open mind as to how you'll be put to use. Lab work is not always glamorous.
Build cred by being competent and getting stuff done. Try to find someone competent who can get you up to speed and answer your questions. Ask lots of questions.
Once you have some cred, if you have ideas on how to do things better, bring them up in a respectful manner. Professors worth their salt value initiative.
Huge YMMVs. Any idea of what working in a lab will be like will probably last 30 seconds once you get there.
Be excited, smart, and ready to get things done, and good things will happen. If they don't, find another lab. Seriously.
I haven't worked in university labs but I have worked in labs affiliated with them. I suspect there's no real difference. You're probably going to have to put up with safety training which usually is a joke that drains a couple hours of your life. Then if you're lucky you'll get a computer which IT might take its sweet time to set up for you. But in the mean time I highly recommend you go around and introduce yourself to the people there. They are the ones that will be teaching you the most and can be very helpful, just try not to be too shy. Get acquainted with the people, equipment and where the best places to eat near there are located.
My first real "day" at a "lab" was a beamtime at a synchrotron. So thats hardly representative.
If you dont know _exactly_ what you want to know (and search for corresponding review papers), arxiv & co are worse than wikipedia for a basic knowledge background. You can very easily run into missconceptions, glorified pet theories, or just get lost in (for the big picture) unimportant details.
About professors: I cannot speak for the US, but over here, the professor has better thinks to do than playing tyrrant in the lab. In fact, many will hardly ever be there. They have to spend their time for teaching, and getting money to finance their (and that also usually means _your_) research.
Etiquette can be drastically different. I am in physics, and in one other chair of the institute i was back then, attentance at 8:00 was required, and people had to do their quarterly reports, ect.
While where i was, you just had to do your stuff (even if that means comming at 1pm and leaving late at the evening, ect). Tone was usually very informal. Just remember: For you its your Great First Day in the Lab. For the others, its just work/doing what is done every day. So you will just experience a normal work enviroment (well, a gernerally more relaxed one than in the industry, but still), with all the variations that this can include.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
is that communication is really important here - talk to people - listen more - remember that the most important communication happens in unstructured places - coffee breaks, having a beer, waiting for meetings to start etc etc - if you aren't hanging out with the other people you're working with you wont get the really creative group thing you're there to do working
There will be a set of formal rules, some of which are never followed and others the violation of which will get you fired instanter. You may or may not be told which are which - and certainly not told all of the distinctions. There will be an informal set of rules that you won't ever be told about but will have to discover on your own or face the consequences. These will include everything from standards of break-room refrigerator etiquette to which buttons you don't dare ever push (both literal and figurative buttons).
There will be several types of people there. There will be the ass kisser who is always sucking up to the bosses - and who may in fact be your boss. There will be the stickler for rules, and there will be those who don't pay any attention to the rules but still get a lot of work done. 20% of the people there will be highly competent and professional (for certain values of "professional"), and about 80% who are bumbling morons that make you wonder how they keep their jobs. There will be one guy who everybody looks to for guidance, decisions, and ideas, and who will almost definitely not have any formal authority. There will be some who you become fast friends with almost immediately, and some who will hate you on sight. There will be a guy who loves any opportunity to help you out, another who will help you out, but only as an excuse to rub your face in what you don't know, and one who you'd better not approach with any question that he thinks is beneath him (i.e. one he can't answer). One or more of these qualities may be present in the same individual.
There will be cliques and power structures that you will not be told about, yet you will be expected to find your place in them, possibly including taking sides. Choosing wrong could affect your entire career, but will at least substantially affect your success at that particular workplace. You will be expected to exercise more authority than you actually have, but no more than the unwritten rules allow you. You will have to discover that upper limit without crossing it by enough to have serious consequences.
You will be expected to put in extra effort, and perhaps extra time above what is supposedly expected, but will be looked down upon, and possibly resented, if you give too much. You will be expected to do what the boss actually wants, regardless of what he says he wants. You will be expected to do what the rest of your team wants, and expected to figure out what that is. The expectations of your boss and those of your co-workers will not always be compatible, but you are expected to meet both. You will be responsible for following policies which are counter to the purpose of the job, and which may even contradict each other. That will not be an allowable excuse for not getting the job done.
Your continued employment will be subject to seemingly arbitrary decisions of the boss and/or your co-workers. These decisions will not be based solely on your performance or compliance to policies and rules, but those will be the stated reason for your termination should that ever occur. Your promotions and salary will be subject to the same constraints.
The good news is that (most) everybody else already knows all this, accommodations will be made (within limits), and it's possible to successfully negotiate this and actually get real work done.
And, no, I've never worked in a lab.
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
Right on the money. Your experience in the lab will be a combination of what you make of it (25%) and the quality of your lab mates (75%). To be a successful volunteer/student, pretend that you are going to be a student chef. It takes many years of experience to be a really good scientist, and you aren't going to learn even a handful of the tricks that professionals use over your summer. All you need is to have good hands, get along with your lab partners, and have lots of patience. There is a lot of hurry up and wait sorts of things that can be frustrating for someone new to the game. Ask questions, be curious, but be humble. Be enthusiatic but back off with the questions if you sense you are annoying someone. Do not attempt to thrill us with your genius; learn from those who are competent, and once you get good, you can THEN innovate and develop your own techniques. But not before then. We've seen far too many students who think they are too smart to be bothered with mundane techniques, and never get a single experiment to work. Above all, have fun.
1. Take an interest in what other people are doing. First of all, most people love to talk about what they're doing. (provided you aren't asking at a bad time) Second, what everyone is doing may actually fit together and be motivated towards a common goal. Understanding that goal and how other people are working towards it can help you understand and motivate your own work. 2. Some labs will have extracurricular activities. Show up. Once you have some experience with the group, consider organizing extracurricular activities yourself, even if its just a trip to the bar. 3. Everything takes longer than you think it will. A lot longer. Try not to get frustrated. 4. If you think you are going to need parts that have to be ordered, work your ass off until they're in the mail. Then, while you're waiting for them to arrive, you can catch up on your other work. 5. There are going to be times when you need equipment that others are using. Don't sweat it. If they know you need it, they'll try to free it up for you. It might take a while though. Likewise, try to free up equipment other people need. 6. Don't panic.
As a computer science undergrad I really enjoyed my lab time, it was great way to socialise as well as work. Most of the time there wasn't much pressure.
As a post grad though I found that the lab, which I shared with six other people, was a distraction. Within a few months I'd changed to working from my lodgings over ssh. That way I got the resources I needed from my lab, but the peace and quiet I needed to get things done.
Labs can be great, but unless you can be certain of being undisturbed, they can be quite hard places to innovate.
I did my best programming work from home, and my best thinking whilst walking alongside our local river.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
You're a dick...
The first day will probably be boring. Showing you where the stuff is any safety concerns you may do a simple experiment that you already did in high school. Or just a Hello World type of Application. The thing about colleges and university that freshmen believe is what their high school teachers say that things will be so much more difficult then in high school They Scare you with things like 100 page readings and 6 hours a day of home work, which is true but you normally have classes spread out threw the day and you may have a class every week or 3 times a week. Not like the every day stuff in high school. It makes it possible to get that amount of work done for a class possible. And have more time to hang out and make friends then you ever did in high school. You could dedicate yourself near 100% academics but that would be a waist it is the only time in your life where you have the most freedom do what you want without major repercussions (To an extent).
On the other side you need to take you academic work seriously, this is really important the first few years, The most common mistake I see from smart people who fail out of College is that when they take the intro classes they seem really easy so they let them slide then they realize at the end of the year they failed because they didn't take the classes seriously.
When I started college in my CS degree I knew how to program in 6 or 7 languages at the time C being one of them. So taking C++ was a piece of cake. There were other students in the same boat I was in knew the same stuff. I took the intro classes seriously they took it as a joke and had to take the class over again. Because the intros classes teaches more then just the topic, but the style that you need to work on to complete college. If the stuff is easy use the extra time to take the extra step.
It is really a balance that you need to learn and figure out what your real mental schedule is. Mine was waking up at 5:00am and do the work and be done by 11am. Others pulled all nighters work from 11pm and get one at 5:00am. Others took the practical approach of doing a little bit each day, while some went to the other extreme did the entire work the day it was due to get it out of the queue.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
2. There usually is not an official hierarchy, but the unofficial hierarchy generally runs along the lines of PI -> Postdocs -> Graduate Students -> Research Assistants -> Undergraduates -> Others, modified by time of residence and area of expertise.
Very much modified by time! God help you if you treat the 25-year Research Assistant who runs the lab as "lower" than some Johnny-come-lately postdoc. You will be a marked man.
If the school is anything like the one I went to, it seems like you will be leaps and bounds above your classmates. Most first year classes are a joke. My advice is be careful because it does get harder real fast.
I did almost nothing in my first year and a half of Uni, and still got really good grades. I partied pretty hard, and next thing I knew my edge was gone. I went from being way ahead to being behind and it was hard to become a 'good student' again.
I've been a prof (biology), and therefore obviously also a grad student. Good profs are not PHBs. That's around 0.05% at a wild guess. Tread very carefully until you're *sure* what species of prof you have. You depend totally on him or her, and there's no real appeal against anything they do. (Start appealing, and you're a troublemaker and dead meat anyway.) It's a feudal system.
If you find out you can't stand your prof, change topics somewhat, make some plausible excuse, and go work with someone whom you've vetted more carefully. As an undergrad, you're probably not going to be seeing that much of the profs anyway. Post docs and grad students are going to be your main mentors. Post docs are wildly overworked, so never ever ever waste their time. You may find yourself squashed like a bug if you do. (Did I mention that it's not a democracy?)
As for learning, techniques, and all that straightforward, non-political stuff: that's the easy part. Just do whatever works.
"Of course, industry would have more excuses to use Microsoft software, so with a University job, if they use Microsoft stuff that is a red-light, "something's not quite right here"."
What a load of closed minded twaddle. You will get nowhere being an O/S zealot in the workplace, actively trying to avoid MS in either a corporate or an academic environment is like trying to avoid death and taxes.
The rule is 'use the best tool available for the job', as a low-level newcomer to the lab the submitter can hardly be expected to know how the lead proffesor has defined 'best'.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.