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Department: ILR Social Statistics More Information A Day in the Life of an Undergraduate in the Bunge Lab“The research is very confusing”, that is what I had initially thought coming into Dr. Bunge’s lab after only reading the webpage about his research and the material he sent me before coming to Cornell. However this view of the research is from the point of view of someone who has not taken a statistics class or been particularly good at math, but was surprised to learn that those problems do not really matter as they can be overcome through training. Dr. Bunge’s lab is located in Mallot Hall and the lab is part of the statistics department, which as you can guess is a computer lab. Coming into this lab was quite a shock, because unlike most biology labs which can tend to deal with molecular biology techniques like PCR, making clone libraries, and making dilutions this lab is all computer based. I know that students and undergraduates who go for bioinformatics will think this lab is basically like that, where you spend your days researching Genbank and using DNA databases and doing blast searches on sequences of DNA. I was surprised to learn the work I was doing in this lab involved a bit of computer programming such as learning how to use an entirely new software package and write programs in it, this may seem hard to some people and it can be sometimes but luckily Dr. Bunge is a very patient and helpful person. Although he did seem very busy with his own projects sometimes, but then again I suppose every one is sometimes. A typical day for me is to get up about 6:00 or 7:00, take a shower, get dressed and go eat breakfast at the Robert Purcell dining hall and then get to the lab by 9:00. Although typically during the beginning, Dr. Bunge would set times he wanted to meet me each day since he was the one training me, since I work by myself generally without any lab members with me. I honestly did not really expect to get into this lab since my overall technical abilities were not that great to begin with, but I think I got into the lab by demonstrating my overall computer skills and showing that I can learn relatively fast if necessary. I spent the majority of each day just going over with Dr. Bunge what he wanted me to do that day and just training my self in general in the use of the software I was using and just reading up on things. The techniques I use in my work involve the statistical software package SAS for analyzing data sets and the program DENSITY, which is a program for capture recapture field work type stuff like in ecology. My project involve getting outside data sets and writing a SAS program to analyze and alter the data into a different form that can be entered into the supercomputer at Cornell for analysis. I have learned from doing this project a lot of self discipline in regards to focusing on your task no matter what people say or the distractions you have around you, since I essentially trained myself by reading and learning the software intense discipline was needed to focus on what I was doing and resist the temptation to goof off and do something else. I found that same concept is important in anything such as business for instance, also I found that you must try new things and see what happens in regards to your computer program and not be afraid to fail at things. The kind of students who are interested in this type of lab should not be afraid of a potentially steep learning curve, must be willing to try new ways of thinking and doing things, and should not be afraid of failure, and you should also keep the broader picture in mind when you are doing your work as some tasks you do may be considering boring or tedious sometimes. Work in the lab during the summer is different than the school year since during the year you have to worry about classes and work, although during the school year you may work with more people generally than you do by yourself. |