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It also sounds pretty unbelievable. You can't really just walk into some research hospitals and somehow find yourself talking to the right person who will get
by pen2l 7y ago
It also sounds pretty unbelievable.
You can't really just walk into some research hospitals and somehow find yourself talking to the right person who will get you in as a research intern. In my experiences, sadly, virtually all research interns are basically just the PI/member-of-lab's daughter/son or a collaborator's children/relatives.
One reason I can think of as to why this is is that you do really need a filter, because not having a filter will cost you immense time. It just turns out that references -- which are bound to be from your close friends and relatives -- are a signal one tends to trust.
- icelancer 7y agoIt's happened at my research institution. Then again, I run a pretty unconventional one. I took a high school student in who just had the initiative to email us and make an unscheduled visit. Science should be for us all. Not the crony system we have right now.
- shard 7y agoI didn't just walk into some random lab and find someone, I went to several places and spoke with some administrators who asked around for me before I found one which wanted an assistant. It wasn't any cutting edge or sexy research, maybe that was why they don't have enough interns. I don't remember it being particularly difficult to find, though. @koolba, I don't recall how many months I worked there, somewhere around 3~4 months, maybe? It was Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in the 90s, maybe things are different now.