Expect the Unexpected
Coming into this program, I had no idea what to expect. I had never done research in a lab before, so I really didn’t have a clue what it would be like. Even so, I had certain impressions of what lab would entail. However, it’s way different than what I expected. Firstly, it’s a very relaxed atmosphere. The researchers can create their own working hours, it isn’t the typical 9 to 5 job. They are in the lab for as long as they need to be to finish what they are working on. Also, I had the impression that research would be very fast-paced, racing to find the answer to a research question. While it is in a way, a lot of procedures take days to complete. I’m currently doing an in situ hybridization, and I won’t finish until Thursday or Friday. Some of the steps involve waiting for hours until continuing, or even incubating overnight. Because of this, I’m generally working on several things at once. Even so, there are some slow moments in lab, but there are also moments when I’m juggling several things at once.
Now that I’ve seen how research works (at least in the limited amount of time that I’ve been here), my expectations have formed in a different direction. Impressions created by labs in school lead a student to believe that if you follow the procedure you’ll have everything you need to figure out your question. Real research, however, is very different. It’s much more of a guessing game, trying different things out until something works and you can take the information you learned from that to ask new questions. For example, we’re running probes now to detect the layers in the cortex of both mutant and control mice at different ages. There isn’t a formula to determine what we’re looking for, no calculations to do in advance to save us time. It’s just a matter of patience, waiting until we find our answer.
This summer I hope to gain experience working in a lab and an accurate perception of what lab life is like. My goals go beyond learning how the equipment works or what protocols to follow for different situations. I’d like to learn how to ask the questions that lead to great research, to be able to interpret results and then take them to the next level. It isn’t as simple as following directions with guaranteed success, but more of a blind searching in hopes of finding what we’re looking for (or what we aren’t, that can be just as interesting). In other words, I’d like to experience what it means to be a scientist.
