I can’t Find Research
By Joyce Chen
Disclaimer: this is purely based on my own experience and may or may not be an entirely incorrect extrapolation from those experiences.
It’s freaking hard to find research at Cal. As a freshman, I didn’t even think to start applying to labs until spring semester, and since cold-emailing intimidated me, the only thing I applied to was URAP. That…went as well as you could expect for a Midwestern, suburban freshman whose only experience in bio research was reading papers in BioE 10 and AP Bio. However, by the third time I applied to URAP, I had more classes under my belt and even a sprinkle of summer research experience. And…I still didn’t get in.
Later that semester, while I did join a lab, my post doc was pregnant, and the work that I did was mainly literature review. So I waited patiently for the spring, when I would be able to start Real Research!
Oh boy. And then guess what happened. The Spring of 2020. March 2020. Literally the same week that I was slated to complete safety training, we were notified that all in-person classes were cancelled. I guess back then they were just called classes though. If you don’t believe me, I have the exact email where my postdoc said “Hm, looks like classes are cancelled. Let’s try to meet in April.” APRIL.
Anyway, so does this story build up to some sort of happy ending where I’m now working in my dream lab doing Real Research? Not really — I still haven’t held a pipette since Chem 3AL. But I promise this piece isn’t just a 5 paragraph essay lamenting my inability to get research.
Over the summer of 2020, a couple BioE and MCB students and I came together to talk about this concept of having some sort of inclusive space where any student can come and do bio-related research. While UC Berkeley is an amazing research university, and there are plenty of opportunities for students to get involved, most methods of getting research at Berkeley are still fairly selective, and there is just no way for every student to get the experience that they want. While our club, iGEM at Berkeley, isn’t an all-encompassing solution to this problem, we do hope to help make research more accessible for students by reducing the barriers to entry, providing training in lab techniques, and giving the chance to work on student-led research projects.
Lastly, this piece is not intended to be some sort of success story with a happy ending that either makes you feel inspired or inferior. After all, I’m only 20, and I’m fairly sure anyone reading this will probably also be pretty young. In general, whether it be research or internships or classes or social life, my one piece of advice would be: don’t worry. I am young, you are young, and in the grand scheme of things, our undergrad career is only a small sliver of what our career will look like in 5, 10 years. Work as hard as you can, but don’t beat yourself up over rejections and failures. Everyone has their own timeline, and just because the people around you are getting internships or working in labs does not mean that you’re any worse off for not doing so. Slow down, take time to appreciate how far you’ve come, reflect on where you want to go, it’ll turn out okay :)
