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Anna and Amelia completed a one-week placement in the Signalling and Transcription Lab. They were interviewed by Arsema, who completed a one-week placement in the Research Management Support team.
What made you want to come to the Crick?
Anna: Getting experience before university — it means that you’re more prepared. I’m not really sure if I want to go into research or do other things, and it’s nice seeing what some of those options look like, so you have a better picture of your future.
Amelia: For me, this is probably what I’m going to be doing later, hopefully. So it’s good to be able to see if I actually want to work in a lab.
Anna: If you work with a PhD student, you obviously see what doing a PhD is like. It’s also a way of networking… it’s going to help you so much. And it’s actually really good fun — I'm really enjoying it!
What have you learnt so far?
Amelia: We’re terrible at pipetting, but we’re hopefully getting better!
Anna: As a workplace, the community is really nice — you don’t necessarily expect coworkers to be really nice to each other. But we sat with them at lunch breaks and stuff and it was really nice and comfy. The atmosphere is really relaxed. Obviously people still do a lot of work, but…
Amelia: But it’s not like mad scientists, you know?!
Could you explain a bit about what your placements have involved?
Amelia: Western blotting, transformation of bacteria. What I assume is just basic techniques, that you’d use to research more specific things. So there’s a lot of pipetting liquids into other liquids, preparing things. You also learn how to, maybe not use all of the equipment, but what it’s for. So for example, what has to go into the cold room, what has to incubate.
Anna: We’ve only been in the lab, but you can apply for anything. I’m sure that if you would like to do bioinformatics or something like that you could.
Amelia: I was positively surprised that we’ve actually been in a lab.
Anna: Yes, we’ve been doing a lot. I thought we’d just be watching people.
So it’s really practical?
Anna: Yes, really, really practical!
Amelia: It feels like what you’re doing would actually be close to what maybe you’d be doing at PhD level, but obviously, very closely mentored and guided.
Do you think you’re getting good guidance and everything’s well laid out?
Amelia: Yes, very much so! It feels very planned out. Sometimes you show up at work experience things and they don’t really know what to do with you.
Anna: We know what experiments we’re doing on what day.
Amelia: And we have protocols to read up on. So it all feels very, very well structured, well beyond other places.
What do you hope to gain from this? Or what do you think you’ve gained so far?
Anna: I think skills, practical skills.
Amelia: How to behave in a lab. I think if you went to university without ever doing anything like this or maybe if your school doesn't have a lab or something, it’s really helpful just to kind of know the basic rules, basic procedure.
Anna: Also I’m learning what a lab work environment looks like.
Amelia: Yes. I mean obviously, this placement is for students, but you are surrounded by everyone in the lab. You’re doing the actual work, so you are witnessing exactly what it would be like.
So you in a couple of years time?
Amelia: Yes, it’s very interesting.
What advice would you give to someone who’s potentially thinking of coming in for work experience?
Anna: Definitely come. I’d say… a thousand percent go for it. I don’t think there’s any downside.
Amelia: It’s very impressive on your university application, and this isn’t one of those extracurriculars that’s really tortuous. And people need to know it’s really chill, so calm, so it’s fine. You get walked through every step. Be confident, people are nice, and they don’t really expect too much of you.
Anna: I thought before coming, because the Crick is really prestigious, I was going to have to revise lessons we’d been doing at school. But looking through the emails to see if there were things you need to read up on, there wasn’t.
If someone's worried and they’ve been accepted, what would you say to prepare them?
Amelia: I think that they walk you through everything you need to know. You don’t necessarily need a lot of prior knowledge. There are some things that at least I didn’t understand, content wise, but I just asked.”
Anna: I think you should be okay with meeting new people and having to talk to them.
Amelia: But if you’re really shy, I’d still recommend coming, but trying to really put yourself out there, because you’re going to get a lot more from the experience.
Anna: I think you do have to respect the fact that you got this position. If you’re here, don’t spend your time on TikTok… don’t just not work or anything!
How did you both feel first coming into the Crick?
Anna: A lot of security! I was surprised by the amount.
Anna: On the first day, what I noticed was that everybody was like… I'm repeating myself, but everyone was really nice. We sat at a table with a bunch of PhD students and postdocs, and I felt they all understood what we were there for, and made us feel really comfortable.
