General reservations about grad school

[mushaboom]

I'm currently a sophomore at UT Austin, a pretty great research university. For years I was sure I wanted to be a physician assistant. However, this past semester I finally realized and accepted that biology/health just really don't interest me that much. What I instead developed a love for is organic chemistry. I enjoyed the class immensely and talked to my professor during office hours about his research. Unfortunately by the time I got around to asking him for a research assistant position, he was unable to find a spot for me in his lab.

 

I'm just a bit stressed and frustrated because I feel like I'm behind everyone else here. UT offers a lot of great research initiatives for freshmen and I passed them up because I was so focused on becoming a PA. I have perfect grades (for the time being), but absolutely no research experience. I plan on contacting other professors after break, but it seems kind of bleak with all of these other experienced undergrads around. I was really hoping to get started on research right away so I could a) figure out if I'm willing to commit the rest of my life to chemistry and get into a good grad school if a) is a 'yes.'

 

Those are my concerns as of now... I'm sorry that I don't have any concrete questions; I just felt like I needed to get that out of my system. If anyone has any tips, insight, personal experiences, etc. that they'd be willing to share, I would greatly appreciate it!

[danieleWrites]

When I got done with undergrad, I had 196 credit hours and two BAs (this is usually 160 credit hours). I took a lot of unnecessary courses before I figured it out. You're a sophomore. You have time. This spring, look into internships related to organic chem. Go back to your professor before the next semester starts and talk about the research assistant position. If you have to go through human resources, or financial aid, or whatever hoops before he can hire you, it's better to do that right away, right? Join the organic chemistry club (if they have one).

 

Sure, you missed out on freshman opportunities, but there are many other opportunities still available. Sure, you're behind (in terms of time to graduation)  the people you started college with, but you're aren't behind the people who are just starting out in organic chem. You're actually ahead because you've got some general coursework completed. Don't think of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior in high school terms. Your standing is a measure of how many credit hours you've successfully completed, not how close you are to graduating. There is no "catch up" to this. There is just changing your major, which many, many people do every semester, and not kicking yourself for not realizing that you preferred organic chem before you actually got to do organic chem on this level.

 

You can start research right away, actually. Log onto JSTOR or Web of Science, or EBSCO, or whatever other databases UT's library offers, and find journal articles on organic chem. Find journals. The Journal of Organic Chemistry is one of the big ones. You should find access to it online via the library's page. Read it, cover to cover. You're not doing primary research, but you are doing some research. Read what the organic chem professors have published by sticking their names into JSTOR. You can get some ideas about what people are doing in organic chem and maybe whether or not you'd be interested.

 

Do a web search to see what kinds of jobs are available for people with degrees in organic chem. Just because you get a BS that doesn't mean you have to go to grad school. Maybe there are jobs you're interested in that don't require grade school. You can do research with a BS in industry. The good thing about looking at what kinds of jobs there are is that you can make some choices about a minor (or double major) that would help your future. Wanna travel a lot? Language. Do the job ads seem to mention communication skills? English. Do they work with animals? Biology. You can see how this works. A lot of people in industry are interested in mentoring in some way. Find the organic chemist association/society and see what kinds of things they offer in terms of helping you make decisions about the field and how much of a degree you need. Maybe they have a mentoring program. Maybe they have information on the various types of research going on. And so on.

 

Don't think about what didn't happen or compare yourself to others. Think about what you can do over the break to figure out your future.

[loginofpscl]

I'm currently a sophomore at UT Austin, a pretty great research university. For years I was sure I wanted to be a physician assistant. However, this past semester I finally realized and accepted that biology/health just really don't interest me that much. What I instead developed a love for is organic chemistry. I enjoyed the class immensely and talked to my professor during office hours about his research. Unfortunately by the time I got around to asking him for a research assistant position, he was unable to find a spot for me in his lab.

 

I'm just a bit stressed and frustrated because I feel like I'm behind everyone else here. UT offers a lot of great research initiatives for freshmen and I passed them up because I was so focused on becoming a PA. I have perfect grades (for the time being), but absolutely no research experience. I plan on contacting other professors after break, but it seems kind of bleak with all of these other experienced undergrads around. I was really hoping to get started on research right away so I could a) figure out if I'm willing to commit the rest of my life to chemistry and get into a good grad school if a) is a 'yes.'

 

Those are my concerns as of now... I'm sorry that I don't have any concrete questions; I just felt like I needed to get that out of my system. If anyone has any tips, insight, personal experiences, etc. that they'd be willing to share, I would greatly appreciate it!

 

The purpose of undergrad is for you to gain experience. Starting as soon as possible will tell you whether you like it or not. Moreover, there are applications for summer research that have deadlines coming up in January-- look into those, as they are specifically designed to expose undergraduates with no prior experience to research.

[TakeruK]

You are not "behind". Right now, this is the perfect time to look for research experience for this summer, but don't feel bad if you don't get something in your sophomore year. I did not start as a full time paid research assistant until the summer after my third year. But I was in a program where we did 16 months of pure research after our 3rd year so by the time I graduated, I had a lot of research experience! The program is a 5 year program but I think the year spent doing research is well worth it. There is no hurry to finish, as others have said!

 

In my 2nd year, although I talked to a lot of people to try to get positions, no one would hire me for the summer because I did not have enough background courses yet. Eventually, I just sent emails to professors I would have wanted to work with, one at a time, asking if they would consider taking me on as a volunteer to introduce me to the research. I kept emailing people until I got someone to agree to let me basically mess around on their computer cluster (our equivalent of a "lab") and I taught myself a lot of things that summer (the prof was away for more than half of the time too). 

 

So, it might be too late for you to work with that particular prof, but there are probably others! Also, just because you are interested in organic chemistry does not mean that you have to work in organic chemistry! I am now in grad school to study planets. In undergrad, I was hired to work in groups studying medical physics, cosmology, and asteroids! The point of undergrad is to get research experience. So talk to all chemistry professors that might interest you. Eventually if you do intend to go into organic chemistry, you would want to do a thesis in that or some other larger project. But for now, you have a lot of years/time to just explore research and figure out what you like. The diversity of experience will help you get into grad school and also discover what you like. I'm going to repeat this: this is the perfect time to be asking professors about working with them in the summer. Look up profs over the break and talk to them as soon as you get back next month!

 

Finally, daniele's advice about reading is good. I am very bad at reading though, and I am certain I would be a better scientist if I am better at keeping up with the literature. Personally, I find it very difficult to get started reading papers because they can get incredibly jargony and technical. I have some pieces of advice.

 

One advice is to just power through it. You don't have to understand everything--actually at first, if you can understand like 1 key point the article is making that is probably good enough. But the more you read, the more you are exposed to and the more you will start finding patterns and key themes in your field.

 

Secondly, you might want to have a strategy other than just finding the latest literature and reading journals cover to cover. That is still a good way to expose yourself, but you may find that your field/topic may have some fundamental papers that most modern work now cite. If you find out what these papers are, they can be a good start. I would recommend starting with the journal "Annual Review of ______" (where ____ may be Chemistry, or Physical Chemistry, or whatever you are interested in). These reviews are lengthy but they are epic. They get the leaders in the field to write about their area of expertise and they assume very little prior knowledge from the reader. The reviews tend to cover the history of what we know about a particular topic, outlining past theories and why they are good/bad, bringing the reader up to speed on the current knowledge and usually ending with a prediction of where the field will go next. 

 

Thirdly, I found that discussing journal articles with others really help. A lot of programs have discussion groups where grad students meet weekly to talk about an article. See if you can join in. There are also usually "reading classes" at the 3rd and 4th year level for undergrads where a prof will meet with the class to discuss some key papers in the field. Definitely take one in the future, but for now, you can try to google to find class websites for these types of courses at your current school and other schools around the US/world. Find these websites and see which articles are assigned for reading, then go and read them!

Edited December 21, 2013 by TakeruK

[mushaboom]

Thank you for the comforting replies everyone.

 

As far as my degree plan goes, I'm on track and I'll be able to get all my courses done in 4 years with room to take other classes of interest (barring any other changes of heart). I think I'm just frustrated because I've been used to knowing exactly what I wanted to do and how to get there. With the PA route, I had to get a ton of patient care experience, shadow PA's, keep my grades up, and I was set. I'm not saying that those are small feats by any means, but they're more, for lack of a better word, straightforward. Research is a whole different ballgame where you have to be innovative and up to date as you're responsible for producing new knowledge. These are some things I definitely need to get exposed to. Then if I do choose to go the research route, there's the issue of having enough experience/publications to get into a good graduate program which I know takes a lot of time. For those reasons, I have been feeling behind.

 

Typing all this up, I do feel that I'm overreacting a bit, haha. I think you all, particularly daniele, hit the nail on the head when you said that I should just focus more on finding other research opportunities and less on what I could have done differently in the past.

[TakeruK]

Research is a whole different ballgame where you have to be innovative and up to date as you're responsible for producing new knowledge. These are some things I definitely need to get exposed to. Then if I do choose to go the research route, there's the issue of having enough experience/publications to get into a good graduate program which I know takes a lot of time. For those reasons, I have been feeling behind.

 

This is true, but in the sciences, the whole point of the PhD program is to train you to be an independent researcher, producing new knowledge. You don't have to be at this stage to get into the grad school. You just need to demonstrate ability and potential to be an independent researcher. One step at a time!

Edited December 21, 2013 by TakeruK

[loginofpscl]

Thank you for the comforting replies everyone.

 

As far as my degree plan goes, I'm on track and I'll be able to get all my courses done in 4 years with room to take other classes of interest (barring any other changes of heart). I think I'm just frustrated because I've been used to knowing exactly what I wanted to do and how to get there. With the PA route, I had to get a ton of patient care experience, shadow PA's, keep my grades up, and I was set. I'm not saying that those are small feats by any means, but they're more, for lack of a better word, straightforward. Research is a whole different ballgame where you have to be innovative and up to date as you're responsible for producing new knowledge. These are some things I definitely need to get exposed to. Then if I do choose to go the research route, there's the issue of having enough experience/publications to get into a good graduate program which I know takes a lot of time. For those reasons, I have been feeling behind.

 

Typing all this up, I do feel that I'm overreacting a bit, haha. I think you all, particularly daniele, hit the nail on the head when you said that I should just focus more on finding other research opportunities and less on what I could have done differently in the past.

 

Motivation driven by experience and personal growth, I think, is better than 'I have always wanted to do this.'