It isn't easy, it isn't glamorous
It takes time and perseverance, teamwork and guidance.
Sometimes it leads nowhere, and you have to start over. With a new Idea. A new approach.
But the time and work are never wasted.
Because sometimes when you least expect it you find something new. It can lead to a cure or an innovation.
Or just a new understanding of the world around us.
It's called research. It's not easy to talk about.
Even the titles of our projects can be difficult
Sounds complicated, I know. But let's take a closer look.
My name is Yannai Kashtan. I'm a Physics and Chem Major.
Over the summer and past couple of years, I've been
studying Charge Carrier Transport in Organic Field Effect Transistors.
I always thought that I would want to be a research scientist
so it was kind of a natural question ask well gosh, how does research
differ from class work.
It doesn't have the same structure as a classroom,
so we're a-lot more...independent.
And we do quite a bit of interpretation on our own.
Which is a little different.
History research is literally sitting down and just... you have your primary sources
and you have your secondary sources and so you just look at what the scholarship
what is out there about the topic that your interested in and then you look at the primary sources
with your own interpretation and you try to see what is the narrative.
As a historian, your job is to sort of piece together that narrative in a way
that flows or just makes sense.
You know, what I love to do is be outside so, I do spend most of my days outside
Here in the park. I think that's different from a lab because it really gives me the
opportunity to, you know, make my own plans.
So, on the first day of work, Professor Taylor introduced
my lab partner, Joseph and I to the GCMS and then
he showed us how to use it, and said "Ok, here you go."
"Explore with this $500,000 machine. But don't break anything."
My day typically starts at 8am, and it's primarily in the wood-shop where
I go in there and if it's dirty I'l maybe clean it up sweep around a-lot because theres dust
that always gets generated and while preparing stock, I use all the machines in there:
so, joiner, planer, table saw, chop saw, all that stuff so I'm well versed in all the machinery in there.
I have to come up and ask a lot of questions. What I'm finding though is
is it's really nice that Professor Whittaker is open to those types of questions
and the questions that I'm asking, sometimes, he doesn't know the answer to either.
Which means I assume I'm asking the right questions
It makes me feel much more of a peer or an equal in this idea of research.
In terms of what I'm learning right now, theres there's some sort of pragmatic stuff.
I'm learning how to code better, I'm learning how to work with certain types of technology
Like one of the projects I have right now is to build a trap camera
So how cheap can we build a camera that is durable to be able to survive
in the jungles of Costa Rica that can trigger based off a certain sound and
only that sound and can give us video of the Hura Crepitans in their native environment.
I chose this project because I had Eric as a teacher last semester for volcanology.
And I thought that that was just one of the coolest classes I have ever taken.
So I kind of wanted to continue looking at volcanoes.
And this was a really cool opportunity to do so.
I'm really interested in Linguistics and Language Production and discrimination as a whole.
So when I heard about this project and Nicole emailed me I was like, "Yes! Yes please."
"This is exactly what I want to look into. This is exactly what I'm interested in."
Research really gives me a background in learning more about things that I'm interested in.
This is really pushing the boundary
right? Professor Whittaker made this comment to me the other day where he was like,
"No one has ever studied this in the slow motion capacity you are right now."
"No one has ever seen a video like this before." And there's something really unique
about that to the scientific process. Knowing that you are one of the first people to examine this closely
with this type of methodology. I think that's a really cool thing.
Well, I...I think I am becoming increasingly clear that research is a pretty good fit for me,
and so I always thought I was going to go to grad school but it's kind of making me more confident
and it's shaping the places, the programs that I'm thinking about and the types of work that I'm thinking about doing.
Regardless, I think research is a really really important skill to have. So it's just a good experience
even if you don't go into it in the future.
The questions we are trying to answer are difficult. That's why they haven't been answered yet.
And each time we find an answer, it leads to a whole new set of questions.
That's how new knowledge is created.
And that's how we learn things no class can teach.
How to be apart of something bigger.
How to collaborate effectively. How to persevere when we fail.
How to make a difference, a real difference.
In the real world, that's research.