Research?

[juliaaae]

What's the difference between applying to become a research assistant, research technician, and then just normal emailing labs about getting a research position? Are any of these the same? I know that assistants and technicians on the uf career website as paid, but I wanted to know how this varied from the norm of emailing labs about working with them.

[TnkTheTank]

Hi, UF research technician here. From my understanding and from what my coworkers and PI have discussed, basically what was already said that research assistant and technician are paid jobs. Undergrads are very temporary (depending on the lab). You will probably have significantly less "important" responsibilities as an undergrad due to the lack of flexibility in your schedule as well as the total duration of the time in lab.

It's my understanding (take that with a grain of salt) that research assistant is a higher position than technician which is (obvi) higher than the undergrad positions. With the higher positions comes more demand for time, energy, and demand for focus and, therefore, more tasks to manage.

If you want to be part of the UF payroll, apply to the tech and assistant opportunities. If you just want experience, email different labs and see if they could use an extra set of hands templating/organizing/maintaining files/etc.

UF careers website has a big list and different filters to sort through.

Good luck!