Tomorrow I meet with several researchers who have seen my CV and are open to me doing research with them. I pubmed’ed some names and found out they’ve done incredible research that I actually know about. And after 3 months of not knowing anything, that tells me that they’ve got to be pretty well-known in their field.
My gut instinct is that this is awesome and I really hope it goes well – although to be fair (or maybe just cynical), I’m offering to provide them with free labor – so it’s probably going to go well even if they hate my educational background, my reasons for wanting to do research, and my sweater.
Downside: I’m scheduled to talk to each researcher for about an hour. That leaves a pretty sizeable gap in my “knowledge”:”time to speak” ratio. Here’s hoping the conversation sticks closer to “when are you available” than “what are your thoughts on these repurposed methodologies?”
Action Potential 
Good luck!! And if you run out of real knowledge, there’s always sucking up as a fall back, haha.
Thanks! Haha, yep, I think the wise social choices are either “sucking up” or “talk about sports”.
And I don’t know anything about sports…
Let’s switch places!
I’m an MD/PhD student just finishing up my PhD and heading back to clinic. I have no idea about medicine!
I enjoy your blog very much. Bern reading it for a little while be.
In all seriousness, though, remember that researchers are a special breed. They’ll spend most of your “interview” telling you about their research. That’s just what they do. You won’t have to fill too much awkward silence, I promise.
Haha, thanks – sounds like a good trade to me!
That makes me feel a lot better – thank you! It makes sense that they’d want to tell me about their research. I’m glad I read this comment beforehand, I feel like I can go in more relaxed now. 🙂