Getting into research
Being new to research and committing to the thought that “undergraduate research is right for me” is hard. It's even harder to follow through and confidently decide, “this is the career I want to spend 10+ years working in”. This feeling is amplified if you do not come from a background exposed to academia, or are traditionally underrepresented in any form.
I think that feeling is broadly underserved and underchallenged. If you're new to undergraduate research, especially if you fall under those categories I described, and you don't have an obvious person to ask your questions, please ask me. My email is always open, and you don't need a reason, any super long introduction, or any well-formed question before emailing me. I myself am a first-generation student and absolutely did not have a straightforward path into academia, whether that was finding research opportunities or conducting research itself. I want to minimize that “lost” experience for others in any way that I can, and I hope I can be a resource to anyone who is looking for help in getting started within their own research career.
Especially today, the world needs far more people in science. We need them to come from more varied backgrounds, offering different perspectives compared to what we already have. Research answers problems that affect real people across every region of the world; the great part is that you get to decide what problems are worth investigating, and figure out how they should be solved.
Consequently, that means for every passionate student who talks themselves out of research, we lose not only the problems that they would have thought to ask about, but also the unique answers from insight that their perspective would have allowed.
Oftentimes I feel like there's a sort of stigma that new researchers may feel in academia about needing to always do things correctly. Generally, that feels like having things be perfect or “figured out” on their first few tries towards some goal. It doesn't help that everyone and everything can feel unnaturally serious. Still, some of that feeling is fair, since the entire point of scientific advancement is to compound on findings that are (ideally) sound. That should be the standard for experimental results, but it gets mixed in far too easily with novice students trying to find those outcomes. Early on, failure could read as an indicator that you aren't cut out for this, and if you've never done research before, this feeling could easily get pushed onto you, of always chasing to “convince others that you belong” without having convinced yourself first, fueling imposter syndrome.
Additionally, everyone has questions they might be embarrassed to have, and that in the context of research may seem “taboo” to ask about. These questions are usually the ones you rarely see anyone actually talk about out loud, and usually, none of the answers are obvious or clearly written down. I find that people love to give “easy” surface-level takes on what to do, but in my opinion, very little modern advice exists on topics regarding how someone finds their way into successful research. I think a lot of good advice gets discussed informally, or even by chance. If you are not already close to those conversations, it can feel like everyone else received “an invite” that you never got.
Nobody's path is perfect, and I promise you no one has figured out exactly what they are doing. If your own academic path doesn't look like what you envisioned, that doesn't mean you're behind. And if you're the first in your family to think about graduate school, if you're at a school without much research output, if there don't seem to be many people like you in this field, or if you simply don't know a single person to talk to about any of this, I hope I can provide you with some reassurance in the fact that it's not a unique thought.
I believe one of the only reasons I've been able to pursue a PhD today is because of a select few peers I could ask my “embarrassing questions” to, and I want to repay that debt to any others who might have been in a similar situation to me.
If you're ever looking for someone to talk to about the research process, please email me. You don't need to have everything figured out first, and you don't need a question that makes you seem impressive. Whatever you're thinking about is very likely something that I, or someone else, has thought about too, and I'd want to help.