Pre-Med Series: Working in a Laboratory

Working in a lab. Ah, for most of us this is completely useless, uninteresting, and only serves the purpose of filling out our medical school applications saying we contributed to the science community in some way. For others, this provides a truly unique experience that may have started as a pre-med journey, that turned into a passion to either continue to do medicine or go down a phD route.

And then there is the route I chose: I didn’t do it. I hate working in a lab. Despise it truly. If I wanted to do something tedious and confusing and be stressed out, I would at least choose something that I could pretend I liked. Lab work is just soooo (add another bajillion o’s) monotonous. Which is why I chose to scribe instead!

But this post is not about scribing (boo hoo for me). Instead I decided to grill my boyfriend who did work in a lab for many years (and actually enjoyed it?!?) with the hopes that if you are interested in doing this, how you can go about doing it, how it is helpful, why it may suck, and so on.

Strap yourselves in, this may get long.  

Part 1: How to Get into a Lab

Okay so before you even try to get the volunteer hours, or possibly get paid to be in a lab, you have to figure out how you are going to even get your foot in the door. This was where my struggle started and stopped, and I didn’t go on from here. Lucky for you guys, you aren’t following my advice on this subject. My boyfriend was in charge of a lot of the new blood while he helped run his professor’s lab, so here is what he suggests!

1. Get to know a professor. You will have many different professors in undergrad. Get to know them as this will only help open doors for you. Maybe you have a professor who teaches you lecture, maybe you have a professor who teaches you lab, or maybe you just happen to know a professor that you decided to drop in on and chat with in order to get to know them. You will need to find a professor with an actively funded lab at the university/college, and get to know them first.  It’s easiest though if they have taught you in a course, so they can judge what kind of student you are from their class.
2. Go see them frequently. Don’t get discouraged about being shot down; professors want to see that you are at least determined enough about being in the lab (so they know you are interested in investing your time). Basically they want to know that if they spend their own time training you that you will actually be of benefit to them, before they are willing to invest time into you. The better the relationship you establish with them, the better chance you will get to work in their lab; especially if you do well in their course.
3. Show up. The #1 worse thing you can do is show up the first time and then be flaky after that. Show up when you say you are going to show up. especially if they are expecting you to be there. Not showing up could cost them lab time, the experiment, or if expensive materials were needed to be used or accounted for that may go to waste. The professors work hard for grants and need to use the money wisely, not showing up could cost them mucho $$.
4. When you do show up, do not be high maintenance. Understand that every lab is different and every lab operates on their own internal rule system/ way of doing things. This means the way that specific lab teaches you to do something is how you need to act or perform the procedure, even if a previous lab you were part of did things differently. So don’t automatically try to impose your own way of doing things as this will only slow things down and possibly piss off the professor or lab techs, or even your direct superior in some way. Remember! Realistically you are a college student working with those who have phD’s in the field. So be useful, be open to being trained how they would like you to work in their lab, use the knowledge how you were taught, and try to absorb what you can.

Part 2: How Do You Know How Often You Should Be There?

1. Make yourself as available as possible. Remember how you wanted those volunteer hours and that experience? Well it’s not useful to put only 10 hours of lab time on your medical school application, and you won’t learn jack shit that way. So open up your schedule and be flexible. If you want the credit for doing something, you have to be available to do it.
2. Be there when major or high priority experiments/projects are being done. That is when the interesting shit happens.
3. If help is needed, always offer to be there. Trust me, this is something that you should carry with you to any future job as well (to a reasonable amount mind you). If you aren’t interested in helping out when it is needed, you won’t be contacted when cool shit happens.
4. The longer you are a part of the lab, the higher up you move and you will likely take on more responsibility. Did someone just say leadership role? Because I think I just heard that in the above sentence… The more exposure you have being in the lab, the greater chance you will move up the food chain and get to have more responsibility,  obtain your own unique projects that you are in charge of, and help design your own experiments. You will thus have more access to the professor allowing you to learn more, and may even be able to put in your input into how you feel the lab should be operating or what direction the lab should move in next. This is big stuff! By this stage, the professor will have gained your trust and appreciate your intellectual input as you have worked with them in their lab for a long enough period of time. (Aka, they don’t think you are a pointless undergrad student that they can easily replace).

Part 3: How is This Beneficial?

1. Networking. This is a great benefit to you as a student. Working with someone in the sciences (your professor heading the lab) will provide you with someone who knows you both personally and professionally.  You will likely know other professors who are on either side of your lab or other professors that your professor associates with that can also be of benefit to you. Working in the lab may also allow you to meet interesting people in that field should you get to go to a conference. On top of all this cool stuff, you will have a great, high quality LOR! (I bolded that for you kids here because we all know that’s what you are truly after).  Should you get to attend said conference(s), you can also add this experience onto your CV/resume/medical school application. Additionally, should you move from volunteer to paid work in your lab, you will have professional work experience you can use in addition to the many previous volunteer hours you had!
2. Learning to present. At conferences, you may be an author on a poster. You may be presenting that poster to anyone who comes by- so this could be other students, other possible professionals that you may decided to work for in the future, other professors, other phD’s, etc. This is also a great way to start learning to speak professionally for your future interviews and possible conferences as a phD, MD, or DO.
3. Gaining those skills. You will be practicing with techniques which are variable given the field of work that you will be under. With this knowledge, some future classes you take may be easier if you already understand how to conduct these research practices. (For example, in molecular in the master’s program I took, we had an entire 2 lectures associated with conducting techniques that we got tested on. I sucked at this, but my boyfriend and friends who worked in a lab did very well with this because they already knew what it was!).
4. Can you say possible publication? You may actually get to be an author on a publication. WOO!!!! This is big points. Mucho points. GINORMOUS POINTS. Most people aren’t authored on any papers. My boyfriend currently has 6 published with the possibility of a couple more should they decide to publish their data, all from working in his professors’ lab for a few years. (Let me brag a little about my man okay? Okay thanks). This looks hella good on your application and shows that you can put in the work to get a good outcome.
5. Practice applying for grants. So this may only be of interest if you decide to go down the phD route or the MD-pHD route, or even if you decide to become a physician and then run a lab on the side. But, my boyfriend gained some valuable experience by having to apply for a grant. It also apparently looks great on a CV if you end up getting this chance. And if you decide you are interested in going the phD or MD-phD route, you’ll have practice doing it already.
6. Competency in something. Feeling competent in something by the time you apply and feeling like a professional are things you will gain by having this experience. You will have a higher likelihood of being looked at as a peer when speaking with phD’s due to the fact that you worked on research. This can additionally help you out on your interview, where you may be interviewed by faculty who have a phD’s, MD/DO, or other science degree.
7. Other academic routes. If you decide not go to medical school or cannot get it in, you’ll have a great starting point at getting into phD programs. OR, you can decide to go straight into the workforce with your experience from working in the lab. Apparently you can get a job as a lab tech, working at a research institute or university as a lab coordinator, can work for a biotech company, or even a pharmaceutical company.

Part 4: Cons

1. Time. You have to be able to juggle putting the time in for lab work, with studying and keeping up your GPA and other activities. As a pre-med student, you should already be learning how to juggle multiple things anyways.
2. Choosing the wrong lab. If you are in the wrong lab, you are not going to get the experience you want or the opportunity to have your own project. You may even be working with people who are obnoxious and its going to make it difficult for you to continue to work. Both of these options may make you feel like you are interacting less with your professor or lab techs. Unfortunately, you need to make sure you can get along with others and that you can jive well overall, because most places don’t give a shit if someone is obnoxious or hard to work with; you are still expected to do your part.

Culminating Conclusions:

1. Volunteer hours. Lots of them. (Maybe even getting paid down the road).
2. Possibly having your name on a publication (and or getting to attend a science/professional conference).
3. GREAT letter(s) of recommendation.
4. You’ll have multiple things to talk about in your experience portion of your application and to speak on in your interview. It’s tedious, but you’ve shown that you’ve stuck with something, and it likely has some sort of science/possible medical association to it.

 

Thanks for sticking around with this long post. Let me know what you think of this post in the comments and what sort of topics you would like to see!