Zero hours in the lab this week

[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.

[St Andrews Lynx]

I'd just go into the lab of your own initiative, don't wait for him to call you. 

 

Part of being a graduate-level student is that you learn how to conduct independent research. Your PhD buddy has taught you how to run the experiments to the point where you can produce data, I don't think you need his summons any more. 

 

How is the project structured? Do you have a clearly-defined goal of your own (i.e., make compound X, optimise reaction Y), or are you doing whatever your handler requests you do? In the case of the former...just go ahead and keep at it, chatting to fellow students and your supervisor for advice when necessary. In the case of the latter, try your supervisor to send you a short To Do list for the week ahead that you can work your way through (1. Make compound A. 2. Test using Z equipment. 3. If 1 works then make compound . That way you don't need the supervisor to actually be around to know what you need to do. 

 

This may be field dependent, but I don't think that completing a fellow grad student's laundry list of experiments is enough to warrant giving you a Masters thesis - that is more what a technician would do. To get your thesis you need to do some degree of (original) research under your own steam. 

[sciencem]

I'm late to give you any reply regarding this, i appreciate the reply of St Andrews Lynx.