What nobody told me about undergraduate research opportunities
If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, just scroll all the way down to the bottom for the summary :P
I love to research. Research projects have always been my favourite part of school (besides recess haha!), and even at university always look forward to research projects rather than the textbook-based stuff. I find research projects to be more insightful, where I have control of what I wanna do. It’s challenging, but it’s fun! (although many of my friends would argue otherwise).
Throughout my freshman and sophomore years at university, I looked up ways to do research as an undergraduate, but the information I found online wasn’t as helpful as I hoped.
Many of the articles suggested things related to academic credit, which is stuff that I can’t really wrap my head around (my university’s credit system is quite different from western universities).
Because of the lack of information, I felt like there was no way I could do research, unless if I was the golden child with a 4.0 GPA (which is definitely not me. My grades are decent, but not too impressive). I spent most of the summer of 2018 on my laptop, in crisis, browsing for internship opportunities, but I didn’t qualify for many of them (mainly because I’m not a US citizen, ugh).
But that got me thinking. There must be local opportunities in my own faculty, right? There has to be! At first, I didn’t think of looking into my own university because I thought my university didn’t have any. They pretty much never announce research positions on their website, except for students in their senior year. Turns out my scope was just too narrow — the website wasn’t the only place to look for research opportunities.
Fortunately, now I do have a very awesome position as a research assistant in one of my faculty’s laboratories. I’m so grateful for this opportunity. I’ve learned so much and everyone is so kind and welcoming.
I know that many of you out there want to experience something similar too. So, here is what I’ve learned about doing undergraduate research!
Opportunities will come, but only when you take action first.
Opportunities are everywhere. Opportunities to befriend someone new, to apply for your dream job, or even to bump into someone new who would end up being your spouse. But when you don’t take the extra effort to make an interaction with that cute girl at the coffee shop, she’ll slip away and you might never see her again. But what if you did make that interaction? Two possible things could happen. 1) she thinks you’re a weirdo and doesn’t want anything to do with you. No problem! You’re never gonna see her again anyway, or 2) you two could actually get along, and with time, something more could develop.
Now, it’s the same thing with looking for undergraduate research opportunities, sort of.
Unless if you’ve already established a good relationship with your lecturers and professors, chances are you don’t have a link to any research opportunities at all, especially as a freshman. So it’s important for you to get to know your lecturers and professors, and pretty much get on their radar.
Have the courage to personally approach your lecturer or professor whose research specialisations interest you. Be straightforward about what you want. Tell them that you’re looking for research opportunities, and ask them if you could contribute to any of their current projects.
Now, don’t expect them to say yes right away, though. Some of them may not have anything going on at the moment, or some of them may be too occupied to accommodate you. That’s okay. Just tell them that you are open to learning about new things in scientific research.
Another tip: if you do get an opportunity to do research, don’t expect to be given the fancy stuff, like data analysis for instance, right away. You would most likely start with doing basic data entry.
Doing data entry doesn’t mean that you’re only doing basic or useless things. You could learn a lot about data entry, especially in psychology. Personally, because of my data entry gigs, now I have a much deeper and comprehensive understanding of how psychological tools and measurements work — this will come in handy when I’ll be working on my thesis next year!
During your data entry gigs or other simple gigs, you could also take this opportunity to get to know more about the people you’re working with. It’s important for you to be nice here. You would probably be working with graduate students, PhD candidates, and even some alumni. This is your opportunity to ask them all your burning questions about academia, university life, or just life in general. I now have an abundance of academic resources, and life advice, thanks to them. Getting along with them is a huge plus point.
In my sophomore year, I toughened up and finally had the courage to approach one of my lecturers to ask for research opportunities. He was very kind, but there were no ongoing projects at the moment, but he wrote down my number and informed me a couple of months later about a project his team was doing and encouraged me to get involved! That was my first undergraduate research project. At the time, my task was just data entry. A lot of data entry (I got paid for it though!).
On the next semester, my friends and I decided to make our own research project about littering behaviour (which I will write about soon!) and presented it at the Asian Undergraduate Research Symposium in Tokyo, Japan (this is a fantastic event for those of you who’ve never been to an international conference before. You should check it out!). Because it was our own idea, we looked for a supervisor on our own and approached her to ask whether she was willing to supervise us throughout our project. I’m so grateful that she was willing to, and thanks to her help and guidance, we were able to successfully present at the conference. What an experience! None of that would’ve happened if my friends and I didn’t have the initiative to try (it was our first independent research project. We were terrified, but we pushed through).
Then, during the summer of 2019, I realised that I was passionate about terrorism psychology research (I know, it’s very, very niche). Now, I do not have any links whatsoever to people who deal with these kinds of things at all. Absolutely nobody. Nada.
So, I went to my faculty’s website and pretty much stalked all the staffs’ profiles to find the ones who specialised in terrorism studies. Lo and behold, there was one! I was so excited to meet her and ask her about all these things and whether I could get involved with her research. On the first week of this semester, I just knocked on her door at her office and was just like “can you adopt me?” (just kidding, that’s not really what I said).
On that day, the universe blessed me with the answer I had hoped for! She did have ongoing research projects and I was welcome to join! I couldn’t be happier! I remember squealing about it to my friends
She actually works at the Political Psychology Laboratory, so I came by every now and then. After a couple of weeks of assisting her with her research, the actual head of the Lab offered me to be a research assistant for the Lab! I was so happy I felt like I could fly! I finally got to be a part of a team with similar interests as me! Everyone was so welcoming and always kept me up to speed about whatever the Lab was doing.
My work at the lab is pretty fun too! I revamped the Lab’s website and, with the help of a fellow researcher, launched an Instagram account! Isn’t it exciting?
In case you just scrolled through the article, here’s the summary of what I’ve learned about undergraduate research:
- Have the balls (courage) to approach your lecturer or professor with research areas similar to what you’re interested in, and ask for any form of research opportunities, whether it be data entry or translation.
- Try to get along with other students (especially the graduate students and PhD candidates). Chances are that they’re super nice, and will guide you like a little sister (or brother?).
- Even if you don’t know what area of research you want to partake in but you still want to do research, then just do it. Find lecturers or professors who are opening research positions. You will learn a lot, even if it’s not your particular field of interest.
- Read a lot. Seriously. As an undergrad, chances are you don’t know shit about the research you’re doing with your professor, and your head will probably explode. So, read up, buttercup.
