A few nights ago, my fellow CSEP scholars and I had dinner with faculty from STEM fields all across the UCSB campus, and we chatted about this very question: what is research good for? From these conversations, I got a lot of insight from people extremely well-qualified to answer such a question. So I am here to share this expert advice so that you may learn these lessons sooner than I did.

There is the more obvious answer to what the benefit of research is: resumé booster. Whatever it is that you want to do in STEM, research experience is helpful. Whether you want to go on to get your Masters, go to graduate school, or go straight into industry after your undergraduate education, previous lab experience, in my opinion, is an unspoken requirement for admission. This was reinforced by a conversation I had with a professor at dinner. He told me that research experience is often used as a filter to narrow down the pool of applicants. Therefore, many smart and capable candidates are not even given a chance—a sad reality. However, this is not done in malice. It is done because the amount of qualified candidates is so large (and growing every year) that they must narrow them down somehow. Now, I am not telling you this story to scare you or to say that those without research experience have no chance of progressing in their careers. I am telling you this as advice to seize all of the opportunities you can so that you are not tossed aside when you really are a smart and capable candidate. Therefore, research in your undergraduate career gives you a leg up, which is nothing but helpful in the competitive world we live in. Many of the skills and techniques that you need in both grad school and industry are taught through lab experience as an undergraduate, such as how to set up, purify, and analyze reactions. You learn what the research process is like and how to move forward when your reactions either do or do not work. It even teaches you what lab culture is like and how to navigate within it. This, among many other reasons, is why previous lab experience makes you a more desirable candidate.

While this may be a good enough reason to jump on board the undergraduate research train, it is not the only or most important answer to why research is good. Research (at all levels) teaches you about yourself. Personally, it has taught me what my passion is and, as a result, what I want to do with my future. It has forced me to carry on in the face of adversity, whether that adversity came from a project failing or from lacking role models for my education. From the people I have met and the experiences I have had, I strongly believe that research helps produce people that are driven and strong, as well as guides them to careers they love. At dinner, Professor Joel Rothman told me that he loved his job and would not want another one, and I believed every word. Not only because of the conviction in his voice but also because of his story. He had taken time off during graduate school and found his way into winemaking. After a few years, he had made it to the top of the winemaking industry. However, once there, he looked around and saw what his future would be like, and he saw a life that could not give him the excitement and gratification that research could. So he went back to graduate school, and although he did not take the typical path to get to where he is, Professor Joel Rothman is now a successful professor, mentor, and researcher. Therefore, I would like to leave you with this remark: while research makes future employers happy, it should, first and foremost, make you happy.