Photo by Marika Washchyshyn. Taken 10/19/2011. Cropped and badly compressed by yours truly.
One of the great things about the Cognitive Science department at Carleton is its size. It’s large enough that you don’t lose anything by majoring in cognitive science and specializing in your area of interest, but small enough to host events for the entire department. When I was starting my first year in 2010, the department organized an event for professors to introduce their research to undergraduates (and I believe this is an annual event). Basically, professors sat at various tables (in person and via Skype) as groups of students went from table to table, getting the elevator pitch and asking questions. By the end of the day, I’d decided to contact Professor Masako Hirotani of the Language and Brain Lab, and set up a meeting with Professor Jim Davies of the Science of Imagination Lab.
Initially it was all volunteering, because I didn’t have a whole lot to offer as a first year undergrad except enthusiasm. Getting involved with research so early paid off, though, when I received the I-CUREUS award to fund a part-time research position at the Language and Brain Lab (LBL) for the fall of my second year in 2011. I continued my work with the lab through the winter term, and now for the summer I’m applying the same skills in my work with Carleton’s Hotsoft lab.
The moral of the story is this: investigate the research being done in your department, whatever it may be. Send an e-mail to one of the administrators and ask about what kind of work is being done. Gather your courage and send an e-mail to the people who are doing things you’d like to be a part of. Offer to work for free in your spare time, and you’ll find a lot of doors will open.
You literally have nothing to lose by sending some e-mails, because there’s essentially two outcomes:
- the professor is happy to have your help in working on one of their million research ideas
- they forget about you five minutes after deleting your e-mail/sending a kind rejection, and go back to working on one of their million research ideas
You don’t need to obsess over finding the perfect place to work. Just do something that sounds cool! You can start out by attending lab meetings, if there are any, to test the waters. You can move on if it turns out you don’t like it as much as you thought you would. Just get out there, get some experience, and connect with your professors and the faculty in your department.
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I’ve learned a number of things from being part of the LBL so far, including:
- how to create highly controlled research experiments using Neurobehavioral Systems’ Presentation software (initially just with their “Scenario Description Language,” now working with the more advanced “Presentation Control Language”)
- the basics of EEG research within neurolinguistics
- programming with Python for processing and organizing data
- how to run experimental participants (mostly as an assistant, but being the lead experimenter is similar)
I’m certainly not an expert in any of these things, but it’s all valuable experience for an undergrad to have. Pretty much any experience is valuable as an undergrad, truth be told. Also, working with Python is way more fun than doing assignments in Java/C/C++ ever was.
Oh, and I also have the first two things to put on my CV, because I’m listed as the third author on an upcoming paper! We received the award for best paper at the Institute of Cognitive Science Spring Conference in April. Second, the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. though I wasn’t present for the conference. While I was thinking “journal article” when I said I wanted a publication in 2012, that was before I really understood that there are a lot of intermediate steps along the way. Technically, presenting a talk or a poster is also a “publication.” That’s not to say that I’m going to stop being involved, though! It’s hard to give time estimates, but I’d really like to get first authorship on something. So that’s the next (or is it current?) step - taking a lead role on a project of my own. Exciting stuff.
[those of you with particularly good memories may remember not one, but two minor remarks I made promising this post would come “soon”]