Question about Research/Going from RA to conducting own study

[duhnay]

So, I have a weird situation going on. I have been a Research Assistant for about 2 years now in a cardiovascular psycho-physiology lab. I started out being a part time RA and then moved up to working on a study for a year now with 1 other RA, now, we have RUN THE ENTIRE STUDY (the Principle investigator is never there, literally, never.) She left it all up to us, to run the study, get the papers/materials, enter in all the data, basically everything except writing her dissertation for her. She emailed us the other day because we are done with the study next week (YAY!) and me and the other RA were wondering what she was going to have us do next, or if we would be included in anyway since we did everything except for come up with the hypothesis.

She told us, "I wanted to extend the offer to both of you to partake in future data analysis/publication/presentation.I will need to score the data and write my dissertation myself. However, if either of you are interested you can be involved in the write-up for publication or presentation at conferences, you've earned that in my mind"

"Also if you can think of any other interesting hypotheses/analyses that you would like to run outside the scope of my dissertation, Im happy to support you in that endeavor as well. I can send you the variables I have measured and you can come up with hypotheses/data analysis ideas that interest you."

So what does this mean? How can this effect me in grad school when I am going into counseling (rehab and mental health counseling) or Applied behavior analysis? Doesn't have a lot to do with either of those if its cardiovascular psycho-physiology?