Vanderbilt Undergrad Research, and You Can Too!
This semester, I had the amazing opportunity of working in a research lab at Vanderbilt, something I never would have imagined myself doing only a year ago. Being involved in a research lab as an undergraduate has been an extremely valuable experience for me, especially because now I appreciate the methodologies and experimental designs in the rather lengthy journal articles my professors often assign as reading. Now, instead of banging my noggin against the table repeatedly when I read the words “statistical significance,” I smile! (I realize that I am being quite dramatic.)
I worked in the Language Development research lab on Peabody campus, under the supervision of our advisor and head researcher Meg Saylor. Professor Saylor likes for us to call her Meg, and I had taken 2 classes with her already when she asked if I would like to work in her lab. The Language Development research lab is in the Developmental Psychology Research Department, which deals mostly with social sciences in children.
When I was visiting schools my junior and senior year of high school, I didn’t realize how cool it is that Vanderbilt offers the opportunity for undergraduate students to do research, because at many universities, this is something that only graduate students can do. Science has never been my strong suit, but after interning in the market research department at the American Heart Association this summer, I was more open to the idea. Meg needed another student in her lab, and when I found out that I could get class credit, I was “all over dat,” as they say. *I don’t think anyone says this.
Twice a week I work a few hours in a room in Hobbs, which involves scheduling 2.5 and 3.5 year olds to come into the lab and running simple studies with these precious little kiddos. This semester, the few studies I have been assisting with deal with how preschoolers learn words for novel objects and how children think about other people’s preferences. I walk the families up to the lab whenever someone is scheduled, have the parents sign a consent form while I play with Legos and blocks with their children, and then run a study involving a picture book, boxes of toys, and someone hiding in a closet. At the end, the kid gets to pick out a toy to take home. I bet you want to come in for the study now too. Well, you can’t. You’re too old.
Research isn’t just for chemistry majors and people in white lab coats. If an HOD major who doesn’t have her life figured out yet can do it, anyone can.