Research after undergraduate.

shades_children
Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:43:03 +0000

Ky-anh Tran:



Many of you guys on CC claim to do research



Are you calling me (and the rest of us who did research) liars? I doubt anyone here is misrepresenting their experiences.



but a post from Norcalguy (can’t find it anymore) clarified to me that you are basically doing the work of a “lab slave.”



There are those kind of jobs out there. I did that for a year and got fired 'cause I suck at mindless work. It turned out to be a great thing for me. I was so motivated to find a better research gig, and I did.

What you define as a “breakthrough” is a little unrealistic, I think. As an undergrad, you’re not going to cure lung cancer or unravel the true cause of Alzheimer’s.

However, that doesn’t mean that undergrads don’t make breakthroughs. My work required that I find an effective fluorescence quencher. I went through the literature and came up with a best candidate. I had to argue my case against a 5th-year graduate student, who didn’t think the chemical I’d selected would work in our conditions. We resolved our disagreement by running tests of efficacy and solubility - I was right, he was wrong. Turned out to be one of the most effective quenchers for that line of work, replacing previously used quenchers for its ease of handling, cheap price, and heat and light stability. That meant that our lab now had another valuable tool in our arsenal.

So, don’t despair of doing useful work. You have got to prove your chops through hard work and good communication. Then, you can expect good stuff to happen.