Out of the Classroom, Into the Lab

The school year is ending, and you have accepted a research position for the summer, either at your school or somewhere else. Pause for a moment. You don’t want to wander blindly into it without thinking ahead about how to make the most of this opportunity.

I was fortunate to work on different research projects every summer I was an undergraduate student at Rhodes College. Those experiences taught me a great deal of physics, helped to clarify my interests, and led me to what I currently study in graduate school.

However, it was certainly not an easy path. Science never is. There are many things I learned during those summers and later on that, had I known them at the time, would have helped me make the most of my undergraduate summer research. Here are a few tips:

THINK about whether the project you’re considering has a well-defined beginning and end. Depending on your situation, you will either be given a project to work on, or you will get to decide between a few different projects. Either way, it might be helpful to work with your advisor to write a few paragraphs about the project’s motivations and goals. You want to understand the project before you get started. Try to plot the path you will follow.

If you get to choose a project, do not immediately choose the one you know the most about! Remember, one of the primary benefits of undergraduate research is learning something new. If you choose a project you know very little about, it will push you in a new direction, and you might discover something new you enjoy.

Read up on the subject you will be exploring before you get started. Reading abstracts of papers or sites such as Astrobites (

Want to publish the results of your summer research project? Consider submitting it to the Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics, a peer-reviewed online journal of SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma. For more details, visit www.jurp.org .