06.26.06

10 Best Things About Being an Undergraduate Researcher

Posted in commentary at 12:01 am by Trevor

1. You get to do a lot of the work, and get ~~none~~ very little of the credit.
2. There’s no reason to worry about trying to get your papers in “high impact” journals.
3. Living from paycheck to paycheck is always exciting.
4. Undergraduates get to repeatedly run the same assays over and over again.
5. You get to offer up ideas on a project that someone else can take credit for later.
6. I’ve never had a job before where talking about sex passed as productivity.
7. Undergrads get to play stupid when they accidentally order $1,000 in primers, and nobody questions how it happened.
8. Working with a model organism that would love to sink its teeth into you.
9. You don’t have concerns about who will ever hire you after the hack job you just pulled on your latest study.
10. The big job perks: splashes of fixative and inhaling chloroform.