I’m an introverted (to an unusual degree) student who enjoys diving in depth into topics that interest me. But as I’ve tried-and failed-to find an academic niche, I continue to come to the realization that there are experiences that self-learning cannot account for. Typically, the way things go is that I become obsessed with some obscure topic for one reason or another (like neuroscience), search up resources, peruse them for awhile, then sink into a trough of disillusionment as I hit a wall. Most biology textbooks are very dense and require a lot of mindless memorization-which is why they’re used as supplementary materials to actual coursework found in universities (where the real connections are formed). So, even if I resolve to brute force a 1000+ page textbook, I still can’t develop the intuition that an actual student would. Is there some sort of organization, or mentorship opportunity I can look for to take a more structured, academic approach to my learning?
note I am not talking about those summer camps or anything related to that, especially if they’re one of those pretentious, highly selective programs where you have to prove you are “worthy” to count bacteria from a petri dish or organize lab equipment. I seriously want to learn about my subject in depth. This isn’t just a college admissions thing either, just a genuine desire to give me something to actually look forward to.
Yes, it’s called college. If your current HS curriculum isn’t challenging enough, do you have Dual Enrollment options where you are? Check out the reading list/course selections for any colleges near you to see if there are options for you to either do a DE or perhaps a summer class? If you’ve already fulfilled (or are on the way to fulfilling) grad requirements at your HS, see if you could audit a college class just to scratch your itch for a more structured approach???
Don’t reinvent the wheel! You don’t need a mentor, you just need to take a college class (or two or three) in areas that interest you- the professor will provide MORE than enough mentorship!!!
There are likely a lot of online materials, discussion groups, academic journals/papers you can read - either online or perhaps by looking on professor websites. Find one who is on a subject that interest you and see what they publish on their faculty page.
Occasionally, if you are a very talented student, you may find an individual university professor who is willing to take on a high school student.
My SIL is full professor (and director of a research institute at a major university in his subject area). He’s currently mentoring a high school student. He’s mentored other promising high school students in the past.
But the thing is, the student needs to demonstrate to the professor why it’s worth their time to tutor the student. The student needs to bring a demonstrated deep interest, a strong commitment to do the work, and a pre-existing knowledge base and to the table.
(FWIW, jumping from one topic to the next doesn’t signal to any potential mentor that you have a deep and profound interest in the field. No one wants to mentor/tutor a dilettante. Well, at least not unless they are paying you an awful lot of money to do so…)
SIL was contacted by student who wanted to do a summer internship with his research lab. His first question to her was: do you know linear algebra? He asked because there are zero research topics in his field that do not require this type of mathematics. It’s fundamental to even understanding what those in the research field are talking about. He suggested a couple of textbooks for her to get and assigned her about a dozen LA problems. He scheduled a follow up session with her in 2 weeks. During that follow up session she had the opportunity to ask about any parts of the problems she got stuck on. He answered her questions, assigned her a few more problem sets and scheduled a follow up in 2 weeks. And so on. She’s not quite ready to start tackling the big topic questions she wanted to learn about, but she’s getting closer.
IOW, a mentor isn’t there to be your private lecturer on a topic. Or to give a simplified answer any interesting questions you may run across. A mentor is there to direct you toward finding the answers yourself. You need to to willing to put in the time and effort to resolve your own questions. And yes, that means reading those incredibly dense biology textbooks and journal articles that are filled with jargon and unfamiliar terminology. A mentor isn’t going to pre-digest all that stuff and spit it out in small, easily understandable bits.
To use your example of neuroscience—you will need a strong background in human antomy & physiology, chemistry, biochemistry, physics (you gotta be able to understand the physiology and physics and neurochemsitry of how electrons jump across nerve junctions to make nervous system signals) at the very least. If you don’t already have this basic background, you’re just wasting the mentor’s time and your own.
I’ll third the recommendation to take a college class if you are finding your high school classes too elementary.
Thank you for the detailed response, but I believe you misunderstood some parts of my post (or perhaps I didn’t communicate them well). I am not afraid of dense material or rigor, it’s just that I feel that memorization does not contribute well to understanding, so reading a textbook in its entirety with no plan of how to reinforce the material doesn’t bode well in a cost-benefit sense. If that really was the case after all, academics would simply buy textbooks instead of paying money to attend programs. There seems to be some vaguely defined measure of competency that one must show to do meaningful research, and what I was trying to ask in the OP was what those requirements were, and what resources could I use to meet them.
Second of all, when I briefly described my interests, I did not mean to imply that I approached them on the same level of engagement. Rather, I was using examples of some of my casual hobbies to explain the frustration that occurs when knowing that more must be done but being unsure on how to proceed. I am not too convinced that giving up on python has significant implications for my academic propensity, but you seem to think otherwise.
Lastly, (and this is perhaps where the most miscommunication comes from) when I said I would like a "mentor, " I didn’t mean a “private lecturer” (there are plenty of lecture videos online). I meant more like a person I could ask for advice on how to properly navigate this process. At the beginning of this post, I said I was fairly introverted, so I don’t exactly relish the idea of someone breathing down my neck while I try to learn, especially since I know that real researchers sometimes teach classes of their own, so of course I would be placed under artificial time constraints so that they could justify their unpaid labor (there is no magic sauce that university students have that warrants a person forcing themselves to learn linear algebra in a week to prove themselves on their level, I assume the reason that they did that in this instance was because the researcher didn’t want to have to bring the student up to speed themselves, which is certainly understandable.)
If you are bored with your HS offerings, or they don’t provide enough rigor, or they aren’t focused on the areas that excite you, as I suggested before- figure out if you can do a Dual Enrollment program right now. You won’t have someone breathing down your neck- you’ll have a professor who develops certain ideas and themes and analytic approaches over the course of a semester, building on what you already know and introducing you to what you don’t know!
Don’t reinvent the wheel!!! Take a college course in an area that excites you!
There are some things you are simply going to have to memorize in biology (or chemistry or physics), at least until you have sufficient knowledge base to actually understand how the underlying science works. Organic chemistry is a prime example of this. Most people find ochem very challenging because of the unfamiliarity of the concepts and the “messiness” of the material. (There are no one size fits all formulae. Or rather there are rules, but they have dozen and dozens of exceptions.) However, if you learn quantum mechanics first (and not the simplified quantum you might get in an intro modern physics class), then all the seeming messiness of Ochem goes away. The chemistry obeys the rules of quantum mechanics quite well. This has been noted to me by several people, including several PhDs in organic chemistry I know and one of my daughters who switched career goals after taking both undergrad and grad quantum mechanics and decided to go into medicine, which required her to learn ochem. She said that she didn’t even need to study for ochem exams because she could reason the answers from quantum mechanical principles.
Auto didacticism is perfectly valid way to learn. And one that still employed by truly brilliant people even today. IOW, learning directly from the textbooks works for some people. They don’t need the lectures–which organizes and, in some ways, simplifies the material for the rest of us. If you need other resources to help you dig deeply into an area of interest, consult a librarian. Not a s generalist librarian, who will not have the specific subject matter knowledge you seek, but a subject area specialist. Like a material science librarian or a biomedical research librarian. (HINT: these are found at university and academic libraries. Also at private corporation sand research institutes…)
Research does require a level competency. Some of the competencies are academic–you have to have an adequate knowledge base in order to be able to have a fairly good understanding of what a journal paper is talking about even if you don’t get all the details. Each lab and every PI will have a different set of academic criteria. You will need to ask what those are before you ask to join a lab. There is simply no other way to find out this information.
Additionally, besides the academic competencies, you need to have the appropriate interpersonal competencies (teamwork, strong oral communications skills, teachability, willing to accept criticism/correction, ability to follow directions precisely-- even there’s no apparent reason why you should do things a certain way, good time management, appropriate prioritization of conflicting agenda, respect for the lab’s hierarchy, a strong work ethic, and about a dozen other things)
While the academic competencies will vary from lab to lab and from PI to PI, the interpersonal competencies do not. This is true even for theoretical research. I had always assumed that theorists work alone, standing in front the proverbial chalkboard and staring at equations all day long while pondering great questions. But now that I’ve seen the day-to-day of how theorists actually work, it’s not like that all. Even theoretical scientists are quite collaborative and spend hours in discussion with other scientist.
There are no general resources for finding a mentor. You need to reach out to individuals, particularly those whose work you admire/follow. College professors are one potential source for mentors , but scientists in government or industry are also worth asking if you’re looking for mentorship. Send an email; send a couple of dozen. Who knows, you may get lucky.
I have to say I found this quite rude. No where did I say my SIL “forced” his high schooler to learn linear algebra in a week. That’s unreasonable. Nor did he ever “breathe down her neck”; he assigned problem sets (which is how math is taught at the college level) to her. She had 2 weeks to do her homework, then had an opportunity to review her work one-on-one and ask for assistance/corrections before moving onto the next topic. She was free to cancel her biweekly review sessions at any time. No harm. No foul. (This high schooler had already finished Calc 3. LA is next math class in the sequence so it wasn’t like he was trying to intimidate her or get rid of her. He was directing her thru her next level math class so she would be able to participate meaningfully in his research lab this upcoming summer. She had offered to enroll in linear algebra class at the local university if it would be easier for my SIL if she did that instead.)
Thank you for the feedback. As for the part in my reply that you found rude, I agree that I could have been a lot less blunt with my wording. I didn’t see anything wrong with the tone as I was writing it, but in retrospect I should have been more careful not to imply that your SIL was some type of stereotypical academic curmudgeon, and I apologize for any unintended offense. Your reply certainly has given me a lot of information to put into perspective. Part of the reason I was hesitant to get into the textbooks was because I feared that I might misinterpret a part and come out as some sort of crank, or even worse, that I might complete the book but the details might get mixed up when I go on to the next volume. But I suppose if I am serious about this commitment, I have to be willing to constantly update and refine my memory, especially by being able to make connections between different concepts. Some textbooks/journals are kind of locked by price/membership though, but I suppose there are ways to get around that. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.
I’m a neuroscience professor and I agree with everything @WayOutWestMom and @blossom have said.
Take some college classes.
Go to a university library and ask to talk with a specialist librarian.
Most of these librarians will have compiled libguides that are freely available online. That would be a fantastic place for you to start. You can google the name of the university, plus the word “libguide” and you’ll be directed to amazing resources. That’s also a good way to find out who the specialist librarian is.
Here are libguides for two colleges I picked at random: one a small liberal arts college, one a huge research university.
The type of “mentor” you have in mind is going to be super busy with mentoring people they’re actually paid to mentor.
If you really want the kind of mentoring you’re seeking, there are a few ways you could get something like it:
• Apply through a formal program
• Take college courses in your areas of interest
• Learn so much by yourself that you’d actually be an asset in a researcher’s lab (this is unlikely without you taking college classes)
• If there is a research university nearby, find a PhD student in your area of interest and offer to pay them hourly to talk with you.
I’ve got to be honest with you. I take undergrads into my lab as a service. Only occasionally do they contribute more to the lab than what they cost me in terms of time and other resources. Even PhD students don’t tend to reach that “break-even” point with productivity until a couple years into their program (some never do). High schoolers usually aren’t going to rank high (or even at all) on the priority list of the type of mentors you’re seeking.
That scihub link won’t render here, but the rest of it is just wordpress dot com.
Textbooks are amazing, if you find the right ones. For an approachable general biology textbook, I recommend BIOLOGY by Campbell and Reece. The most approachable neuroscience textbook, in my opinion, is Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain by Bear. You can go to ebay or amazon to get cheap used copies of older editions. Those would keep you busy for a while. The narrative prose is good and they don’t have a ton of superfluous stuff in them.
This is NOT what you are asking for but if you have this in your area it’s for high school students and you almost work one on one with a mentor. More for engineering students but these students tend to be all stem. It’s free if selected and fun. You learn in a group and need to learn and work together. Any stem field you will need this. Mentorship can look at you in different ways.
As a note. Lots of college have a program to set you up with a mentor that is usually a junior /senior at the college. There are lots of programs to like that can be involved with this. Just look up some colleges and see if it makes sense for you. Being proactive is great and your getting great advice. Just giving you a different perspective
I’m a biomedical research librarian. IOW , a subject matter specialist.
If you’d like a some articles and discussion about topics in neuroscience that are written for the layperson (IOW, that don’t delve too deeply into the underlying science which you aren’t at level to understand yet) on SubStack:
Simply Neuroscience’s Newsletter
Synapse
ReWire with Virginia Vicola
The Neuroscience of Everyday Life
When Life Gives You a Brain.
There are others which focus on various different aspects of neuroscience. It depends on what your interests are.
Also there are FREE neuroscience classes offered on Coursera, EdX and YouTube
Duke’s Medical Neuroscience is very thorough and free. (You’ll have to pay only of you want a certificate of completion.)
MIT has a free YouTube series on neuroscience-- The Human Brain.
Harvard offers a 3 classes series on EdX called the Fundamentals of Neuroscience.
But again, I will reiterate, these are supplemental materials and aren’t an adequate substitute for an actual college level class. I also suspect you will need a more thorough background in biochemistry, neural anatomy & physiology, human antomy & physiology, cognitive psychology, behavioral psychology, neurochemistry, and biophysics to fully comprehend the materials.