Vanessa Lim
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

Research Internship — Reflection 2

I can’t believe it’s nearly week 6 already…! Time has indeed flown by so quickly, and life continues to be demanding. To my psych friends out there… we’re in this together; keep at it! We’ll make it through somehow J

We all have different ways of responding to and dealing with stress. For me, when I feel really overwhelmed, stressed and anxious, I find it helpful to write my thoughts down (well more accurately, type them up, because my mind is racing at 100km/h and writing is too slow for that!). From there, it’s helpful to type up/make a to do list. It’s important that this to do list is specific. For example, don’t just say, “do research proposal” and leave it at that. Specify what it is about the research proposal that you want to get done. Also be specific in when you want to get certain things done, so that you’re prioritising and enabling yourself to actually invest 100% in a task without having to worry about whether you should be doing another task.

Something else that I find helpful in de-stressing is listening to music, taking a walk or jog, making sure I’m still getting a decent amount of sleep (so that my mood and energy levels are kept in check and not affecting my academic performance).

I’m actually surprised at how I haven’t felt overwhelmingly stressed like I have in previous semesters (no emotional/mental breakdowns this semester… yet! — that’s a record). There are still many things to be done, no doubt about that, but I feel like I’ve gotten a better grasp of how to do assignments and how to be a bit more efficient with them.

I found the research internship workshop on how to plan for and start writing a research proposal really, really helpful (I wish they taught us this in first year!). I’m usually a really slow and inefficient worker mainly because of my perfectionistic tendencies… e.g. making sure I have the ‘best’ research to cite (and so I’d read and read and read… and keep reading and never actually begin writing), and being really pedantic about my words and sentences such that I often have a writers block. But thanks to that workshop, I’ve seen myself work through these hindrances and actually get work done. That being said though, writing my research proposal hasn’t been smooth sailing. I’m about 3 weeks into working on writing my proposal and I’ve experienced set backs (having to change the outline of my introduction, having to ditch articles I found and find new ones), and lots of confusion and misunderstandings (I had so many questions about my honour’s student’s experiment). Given the time I’ve spent on it, it’s been a bit frustrating that I’m only happy about how my procedure is sounding. I’m also finding it difficult to tie various fields of research together to build a convincing and logical rationale for my study. It has, however, been the least stressful and confusing report I’ve had to write, and I’m continuing to learn a lot about writing as I do this. Looking forward to getting this done, and receiving feedback so I can improve it!

I’ve had the privilege of shadowing my honours student as she runs her experiment, as well as getting insight into honours and masters from chatting to the people in my lab. Last Friday, I actually got to test my very first participant! I feel like at this point of my degree this isn’t really a big feat, but this was something I was really nervous and anxious about coming into this research internship. To my surprise, it went quite well — I didn’t stuff up like I dreamt I did (I literally dreamt about the worst case scenario the night before…). I’m feeling more confident to test more participants and help my honours student out in this way! It’s unfortunate that sign up for SONAs has been really slow this semester. Hopefully we’ll be able to get enough participants to analyse data and get some results.

Journey of a Psychology Research Internship

Students completing a research internship

)

    Vanessa Lim

    Written by

    Journey of a Psychology Research Internship

    Students completing a research internship

    Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
    Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
    Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade