Research as an undergraduate is confusing. I’ll say it again, because I don’t think I even believed it the first time: research as an undergraduate is confusing. Pipetting looked like it was easy, but in reality, it took a lot of time to avoid air bubbles and become more precise with the technique. For the first week, I kept on forgetting what trypsin did, even though it was something that everyone else in the lab used routinely. It also took me hours to parse through a single paragraph of a journal article in the field I was studying.
However, I think the best part of the research journey is being lost and confused, and then being able to pivot and adapt, eventually building confidence in concepts and skills we were once shaky on. Naturally, everyone’s research journey will look different, so certain tidbits of advice that helped me may not help everyone. Yet I wanted to share what I’ve learned so far – beyond the nitty-gritty science.
Do: Writing (and rewriting) everything down
Walking into the lab, there were many methods and procedures that began to unfold around me – whether it was cell culture or plate-reader based assays. There’s many steps involved, and I scribbled every word that my PhD student mentor said. In the moment, it felt like I had an understanding of the steps; it was just trypsinizing the cells, quenching the reaction with media, spinning the cells down, and so forth.
However, when I looked at my hastily written notes in my spiral notebook the next day, I realized that I had forgotten a couple of parts or had some lingering questions (such as, how much media is supposed to be added after the trypsin)? Thus, I found that retyping everything the same day I wrote it down – while it was still fresh in my memory – helped me fill in gaps and truly understand what was going on.
Don’t: Think that it’s all easy to remember
Everyone else in the lab seems to have procedures memorized, and when they run the experiments, it seems like it’s effortless. But that type of expertise only comes from doing the procedures dozens of times. Initially, it’s tempting to try and perform the procedures without referencing notes. Yet there’s many things that I didn’t remember the first time when I was doing an experiment, such as where the serological pipettes are kept. Eventually though, I found myself reading my typed up procedure less and less, and the steps became more like muscle memory – where I wasn’t consciously thinking about what I needed to do.
Do: Read scientific literature and ask questions
The biggest part of understanding any subject is asking “why.” The same mindset applies to working in a lab. Truly understanding an experimental procedure involves asking questions: for example, why do we seed cells at certain densities, or why do we screen this particular subset of nanoparticle formulations for transfection? A lot of these initial “why” questions could be answered through Google searches and visiting protocol websites such as Thermo Fisher. But the open-ended, more ambiguous questions – such as, “what if we delivered a different nucleic acid, instead of mRNA, in a lipid nanoparticle formulation?” – require deeper dives into scientific literature.
Parsing through papers leads to the development of more questions, though getting accustomed to the jargon and learning the prerequisite concepts applied in scientific literature often takes more Google searches or scrolling through Wikipedia pages. Asking questions could also involve talking to PhD students in the lab, which is helpful when trying to understand a scientific paper.
Don’t: Rely solely on what’s being said in lab
To fully get the most of all the ideas being discussed in the lab, it’s key to continue reading a bunch of papers on our own time – whether it’s articles the lab (or collaborating labs) have published, or current news in the field. This helps with forming ideas, which can then be brought up in conversations. And who knows, maybe that idea can turn into an interesting experiment…
Most importantly: Go in for the experience, not the outcome
A lot of us enter research for numerous reasons. Maybe it’s to prepare publications, deliver talks at conferences, or the like. These are all great achievements; yet sometimes, it’s easy to slip into the trap of becoming purely fixated on the outcome. Research is a risk – there’s no guarantee that an idea will work out or give way to a tangible product, or that an experiment will yield valuable insights.
For me, the best parts of research have been embedded in the daily routines of the lab: the triumphant smile at the realization of my error bars becoming smaller (meaning that my experimental technique was becoming more precise); learning about the goals of PhD students in the lab; being able to contribute to a conversation about novel lipid nanoparticle formulations being developed by other researchers; the time when someone ordered pizza to a lab meeting.
It was these fleeting, easily forgettable moments that made – and continue to make – the research experience fulfilling.
