Hello, So right now I'm a 2nd year Genetics student...about to start prepping for comps and I feel totally lost. I chose a lab that I thought had a really interesting project, PI seemed nice and had a good track record, RA in the lab and although the lab has no grad students, just undergrads, I was told that the PI and RA would be around to help at all times. So My first year has been great-data-wise...I've learned or trouble-shooted techniques and and was able to accumulate enough data for a co-first author paper we are writing. My problem is, I feel like I'm becoming a work horse in the lab...there is no one to talk to about science here. The undergrads don't care when I bring up models or pathways, and I've discovered that the RA is grouchy and tells me, "you should know this, you;re a grad student" about complicated crosses when I ask questions or doesn't have great insight on where experiments are going. The labs around me have no graduate students so I have no one to really interact with and bounce ideas off of. When I ask my PI questions about where the project is going, her response is...lets get this data first, or this manuscript in then see, but she's more interested in me spending time writing grants to get outside funding since our lab has little to no money now. I've learned through the year that our funding is out next year, that her most recent masters student failed out of the Phd during comps and had to opt out with a masters and the phd student before that failed her dissertation and never came back to continue it. I'm worried this is going to happen to me because I'm so immersed in gathering data, generating figures and writing grants that I'm not spending time on comps, classes or developing my science. I've now been put on to work on the other undergrad projects so I'm getting pulled in different directions. I just feel like I'm more of an RA right now than intellectually growing as a scientist. Does anyone out there feel this way or have a solution? Thanks!