- First I looked at, or I did a self-reflection and I looked at an aspect of myself that I definitely wanted to improve. And so with academics, of course, I mean with scientific academics, so like biology, chemistry, you're exposed to like labs. So like the wet labs and pipetting, et cetera. And it's then definitely with being on campus or just being a college student, you're exposed to other college students 24/7 and not really like people younger than you people older than you. So that's definitely an aspect I wanted to focus on was a large range, range of age and definitely culture, because what I feel like was taken away sort of in being a college student is that you're so enclosed in this bubble and you don't really get exposed to like the outside world and like what's going on in reality, regular day life. And so, I definitely wanted to look at a social science lab because I feel like oftentimes science is really disregard the importance of culture and well, for me, its impact on neuroscience and the cognitive sciences as in like psychology and also just biology, every other science. So I definitely wanted to focus and bring the culture aspect the most social science aspect to the hard sciences.

- I identified opportunities at Brandeis through professors, through friends and advisors that I have at Brandeis through the Martin Luther King Fellowship and the Student Support Services Program. And I know that my research is important and many times social sciences research students are made to feel like this is not research because it's not in a lab. But it is research. Anything that is posing a question and you need to answer is research. And the professors and the students and faculty at Brandeis are really great at making it clear to students that your research is that valuable and that you should be taking a leap and taking advantage of all the sources that Brandeis has to provide for students.

- Yeah. So I think I went about one... There's like two ways. So one way is like, if you don't... If you're not in the class with the professor, I usually emailed them if I didn't really know them yet just to make that initial introduction. But the lab that I actually work in now I was in Professor Gutchess' Intro to Psychology class. So I went to her office hours and I think I was just like really straight forward. I was like, I really think your lab is interesting. What do I need to do to get in? So I read a couple of the papers from the lab and then I met with Professor Gutchess to discuss them. With the other professors that I emailed, it usually turned up being... Setting up an appointment to come in and talk-- speak with them. Before going in to speak with them I definitely read a couple of the papers that the lab has published so I do have something to talk to them about, say a couple of things that I'm interested in, but also to ask questions. I think a really important thing when you're looking for a research opportunity I think the professor wants to see like your ability to ask questions and be curious in the topics that they're interested in as well. So definitely go into that meeting with a couple of questions. So yeah, it was as easy as sending an email or going to an office hour and just starting that initial discussion.

- Well, for my friends that are also in labs they did as Emma did. They connect with professors that they had class with or they directly emailed professors. However, the way I got into the same lab as Emma was that there was an online application. And so I completed the online application which was like the relevant coursework and then experience like why you wanna be a part of the lab. Then I met with someone who works in the lab for an interview and we talked about just a general rundown of the procedure of the lab. And definitely in that interview, I showed my passion for the contents of the lab. And so I talked about a TED Talk that I had watched and then I sent her a link to the TED Talk. And so I showed my passion, why I was interested in a lab, in an interview, but I feel like very uniquely or very uniquely the way I got into the lab was via a separate application. So sometimes it's a separate application, other times you email professors.