Summer undergraduate research fellowship (SURF)
Pre-approved experience, Summer 2016
The Reflection
The summer between my junior and senior years of undergrad, I participated in a research fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center; SURF. I spent ten weeks as a paid research fellow and worked on my own research project of which I presented a poster on at the end of my experience. I was housed in the divisions of Child Psychiatry and Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics with my long-time research mentor, Dr. Craig Erickson.
I applied to SURF in the hopes that I would have ownership of my own project and get a deeper immersion in research design. I could go into detail about the timeline of my project and how each obstacle provided a new lesson, but in order to be concise and to avoid being esoteric, I have constructed a list of some of the big take-always from my summer as a SURF fellow:
Outside of these lessons, something else I loved about SURF was the many workshops available to the fellows. I attended workshops on how to create a LinkedIn, how to market myself to employers, and how to be successful in scientific writing (the slides from which I keep in my desk drawer and reference often when writing manuscripts at work or finishing lab reports for class). SURF was a tiring but rewarding experience, and I am glad that I was awarded the opportunity to participate in this prestigious program. I am leaving with a much deeper and more mature awareness of the research process and a renewed interest in a research-related career.
I applied to SURF in the hopes that I would have ownership of my own project and get a deeper immersion in research design. I could go into detail about the timeline of my project and how each obstacle provided a new lesson, but in order to be concise and to avoid being esoteric, I have constructed a list of some of the big take-always from my summer as a SURF fellow:
- In order to conduct data analysis, data needs to be present, complete, and accurate. This is probably the biggest lesson I learned and it surprised me how those three requirements as not as easy to achieve as they sound—especially in a clinical lab, when you rely on multidisciplinary (read: different skill sets and training levels) staff and parent-reports of data.
- Choosing variables for analysis is much harder than it sounds. Deciding what is important and what is not—and balancing this with fears of either including a confounding variable or leaving out an important one—takes a lot of time and consideration, especially when you are just starting out on your first big girl study J
- Research is not a one-person ordeal. It is critical that you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and that you rely on others to assist you in your work within reasonable time constraints. By extension: it is a blessing to be surrounded by people who are smarter than you.
- KEEP TRACK OF CHANGES THAT YOU MAKE ALONG THE WAY TO DATA CAPTURING METHODS OR THE DATA ITSELF, BECAUSE YOU WILL REGRET IT IF YOU DON’T DO THIS AND NEED TO CHECK IT LATER.
- Always keep sight of your goal and the implications that the numbers on your page have for real-life people. Working in a numbers frame for so long (I took a nice long break from SPSS after this project) at times left me disconnected from the importance of my project. At the end of my analysis, I struggled to zoom out and see the importance of my work. In my next study, I will remind myself to do periodic checks and reflections on how the data can affect the real world.
- Above all, I learned that research is NOT linear. It is not a continuous, upward trajectory to communicable and important results. Just a ten-week study required a lot of energy, time, training, and collaboration; in the future, I hope to use this knowledge to be more patient and understanding about this complicated but rewarding process.
Outside of these lessons, something else I loved about SURF was the many workshops available to the fellows. I attended workshops on how to create a LinkedIn, how to market myself to employers, and how to be successful in scientific writing (the slides from which I keep in my desk drawer and reference often when writing manuscripts at work or finishing lab reports for class). SURF was a tiring but rewarding experience, and I am glad that I was awarded the opportunity to participate in this prestigious program. I am leaving with a much deeper and more mature awareness of the research process and a renewed interest in a research-related career.
The Poster
Below is a PDF file of the culmination of my summer with SURF: My research poster.
fox_surf.pdf | |
File Size: | 423 kb |
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