My time at MIT

[LaSombra]

So, this is more of me letting my thoughts out/ranting, ...here goes. 

I work in a certain lab at MIT, my official title is "technical assistant" and boy if things could not be more true and vague! My work is within the realm of cognitive neuroscience and thinking back on everything, I can't imagine how difficult my first year in a graduate program in cognitive neuroscience would have been w/o the experience I've had. 
 

What I'm in charge of as a technical assistant....I run fMRI experiments as the "primary" person in charge at the moment of data acquisition, this means I'm in charge of setting up the scanner, getting the participants in and out, running the experiment and everything in between. The above also applies to an MEG study I'm part of. I'm also in charge of various types of analysis, and while I may have hoped to say at the start of my work , that this would only be simple t tests, this couldn't be more far from the truth. I've been handed the tasks of doing everything from simple correlations and t -tests to full, from start to finish analysis of fMRI data. We're talking directory structure set up, preprocessing, post processing, PPI analysis, ICA, PCA, & MVPA analysis. I've had to learn python, R, javascript(and consequently html, css, & php), matlab, & the unix shell & so much statistics!. I'm not a programmer, in fact my undergraduate degree was purely in psychology. I trouble shoot for pretty much everyone in the lab, other techs, post docs, grad students, the under grads, you name it. I've created and implemented analysis pipelines which are now widely used by my members of my lab, I've written a good number of the scripts we use to make life less of a pain (when you're dealing with fMRI data, programming skills are a must, else you'll hate yourself for spending so much time on button clicking). 

I've presented a poster at SFN, & I'm proud to say that on a handful of papers that have been published, by members of my lab, the primary fMRI analysis was done by me. I've definitely had a love / hate relationship with this job. Never have I been challenged to such an extent! Thinking back, I realize just how much faith was placed in me! & I must admit I'm a bit baffled, one by the fact that the faith was actually there and two that I was  able to get the work done. Which leads me to a conclusion I had not considered before. Often I see people say "it is the work you do that defines you" to undergrads partaking in research before they apply to grad schools. But for you to do great work, you have to be afforded the opportunity to do so! This means that a lot of trust has to be placed in you, and your PI / post doc has to be willing to take a big chance on you. If the demand for great work is not there, it seems difficult to supply it, simply out of pure will and desire. Therefore, if I have some advice for undergrads looking for research opportunities, find a place that is willing to give you big tasks, I'm not talking about scoring behavioral responses(although that may also be a part of your job), but rather coming up with experimental paradigms and implementing them, handling the full spectrum of data analysis, drawing conclusions from your results, etc. Essentially a place where your supervisor is willing to say "hey X, I'm going to essentially treat you as a colleague and not a cog in the wheel towards the end goal of getting my grunt work done" 

This entire experience has changed a few of my outlooks of graduate school. The most significant change being my view of prestige, I now care far less about where I go, simply because I know I have a bit of a start and know how on how to use the tools in my field which are necessary to do great work. Perhaps people may say this is obvious, and that really only pretentious people would think otherwise but I suspect this may be an implicit bias as to why we so often gravitate to more prestigious institutions  when it comes to the application process. 

To reiterate my sentiment at the start of this, I can't imagine being a grad student with little experience of the technical side of things. And trust me there are plenty of those in every program, regardless of program rank. Why can't I imagine it? Well simple, you're expected to do well on all of your demanding as heck course work while learning the ins and out of the technical side of dealing with fMRI data. I surely wouldn't be able to pull it off! 

This experience has been great, and I owe so much to my PI & post doc & lab. I'm now very much excited to tackle graduate work in the field I've been working in. Before this, I would probably say that having "research experience" was simply a check on a list of things one should have before applying to grad school but now I see carries a lot more value. 

I think my brain is mad at me for having it work so hard these past years, but my future is smiling(maybe lol) at me for taking on the challenge. ;]

The end. 

P.S..... There is always free food on campus...like always, there's actually a myth that someone was able to go a full year w/o having to buy any food on / around campus because of this. 

Edited October 20, 2015 by LaSombra

[Edotdl]

Thanks for sharing, I'm also interested in cognitive/computational neuro. Out of curiousity, how long have you been working there? Seems like you were able to accomplish a lot.

[TakeruK]

Thanks for sharing! Indeed, what you said about doing all these little tasks that combine a large number of different skills (e.g. people management, directory structure setup, programming, doing complicated data analysis, presenting and writing papers etc.) are all normal graduate student responsibilities! Research experience is definitely more than just another thing to tick off---it's so valuable in the application process because it shows you have at least experienced (and maybe are also proficient) at some of the key skills required to become a successful researcher

[LaSombra]

Thanks for sharing, I'm also interested in cognitive/computational neuro. Out of curiousity, how long have you been working there? Seems like you were able to accomplish a lot.

over 2 years now.... Hopefully I can stay longer (as a grad student). And haha, thanks...I don't know how common this is, but during my first year, my second week on the job, my pos doc calls me to his office and says he wants me to take on a small project. He said I was to complete a DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) analysis that would be the basis of a second paper that was coming from the data, and that he needed the analysis done so that he could start writing within 3 weeks. This was a lie, and I was too naive/worried/scared to think anything other than "holy shit I have to get this done and now". Looking back that was a bit of a messed up thing to do but, at the end of the 3 weeks there I was stressed when he comes into my office, asks about the progress and then tells me he didn't really need the results (although later on he did actually need me to do this, but it wasn't until the end of my first year). I'd say that maybe 30% of everything I know now I picked up while I was scrambling to get that done during those 3 weeks ?