GreenDoor

Hello, I am a first-year MS student - the school quarter started a few weeks ago, but I arrived to campus in August to begin research. I was immediately paired up with a PhD student who is the lead on a great project, and over the past 2 months he has taught me how to run experiments and I have been producing some data. Normally I've waited for him to call me/email me to come into the lab when he needs me. Last week, he did not call me into the lab at all. On Sunday, I reached out and he said that he is helping train other students from another professor's group and I will probably not come into the lab this week, either. This troubles me - I read on GradCafe that most people are spending at least 30-40 hours in the lab/week, and I'm not putting in many hours. I'm unsure about my timetable to graduation, does this mean I need to start going off on my own to run my own experiments? Or is it possible for me to approach another graduate student in our group and ask to help him out (he's also doing some interesting research)? Or should I embrace this down period and focus on my classes, and not worry about it? Thank you all for your advice.