Hi, I'm Millie and I'm a 3rd year psychology student on placement at the Harvard lab for developmental studies. As I go into my second semester here, I thought it would be good to wrap up my first semester- giving an insight into the progression I took from a complete newbie to feeling like I've worked here for ages!
Highlights; work focused
• EEG training and running studies
• Running eye-tracking experiments with 4-and-5-year-olds
• Attending interesting seminars by well-known professors
• Auditing a Harvard undergraduate class
• Designing stimuli for online studies aimed at understanding language comprehension in children with ASD
• Building positive working relationships
• Hugely expanding my knowledge in developmental psychology, psycho-linguistics and many other related fields since being here
• Developing communication skills both online and offline with parents, children and faculty
Here's a picture of some of us from the developmental labs on halloween!
Highlights; Boston focus
• Going to my first American football game (Harvard vs. Yale!)
• Snow!
• Trying lots of new food and local specialties
• Meeting new people (everyone has been so friendly!)
• New York trip (great time to explore other parts of the US while you are here!)
• Beautiful city and feels much safer than I'd anticipated
• Unexpectedly meeting other placement students from different UK universities (Bristol and Exeter !!)
Myself and other Bath students enjoyed the Harvard-Yale football game - they are on placements at Boston College and the Dana-Faber institute!
On moving to the states, I honestly did not expect the number of opportunities to arise as they did. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone moving abroad for placement- it would be to immerse yourself into the student culture as much as possible. Whether that's joining a running club, a sports team, auditioning for the band, planning meet ups with the student research assistants in your workspace, attending sports games etc...
Working full-time is a big adjustment, and to make the jump less scary it definitely helps to have a good work-life balance, although I know everyone will probably do this in different ways and that's totally fine!
My housemate and I took part in a charity 5k with Harvards running group called "Harvard on the move!"
The first semester working as a Research assistant here has surpassed my expectations, there's always something different going on every day and you are truly exposed to every stage of the research process. I'd say the most rewarding part has been actually running child participants in our eye-tracking study, and wrapping up data collection because it is so fascinating to watch theory translate into practice and be a part of collecting novel data that may frame the way for thinking about developmental trajectory of language comprehension.
Equally, learning new methodology such as EEG has been exciting as it's something I only ever thought I'd read about, let alone be able to conduct myself. I hope that later on in the semester I'll be able to run these types of study as a primary researcher along with the other Bath intern in the lab. This has given me a completely different perspective on neuroscience-based studies and I think will allow me to think more critically when it comes to evaluating papers using neuroscience methods in my later academic life. Neuroscience was by no means my strong suit in first and second year so I feel like it's helped me develop my understanding and expand my knowledge in this area.
I can't believe how quickly the first semester has gone and I can't wait to see what next semester has in store!
A snap of the Charles river near campus back in September!
If you are a second year who has secured a Harvard placement for next year, or a first year who is only just starting to think about potential placements- feel free to drop me an email at ah2780@bath.ac.uk with any questions!
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