The Purpose of Lab Rotations During Your First Year as a PhD Student
If you’re considering getting a PhD you might have heard the word “rotation” be mentioned and you probably know what it means. In case this is new, universities have two types of PhD programs: you either know the faculty member whose lab you would like to complete your PhD in and set that up before your interview at the university, or you join a program that has a rotation system. Programs with rotations allow you to be interviewed by many faculty members whose lab you might decide is right for you. In other words, rotations let you spend around 10 weeks in (usually) three different labs of your choosing. In this blog I will dive deeper into how a rotation works and the purpose they hold.
Rotations are awesome (I’m biased because UCSB has a rotation system)! They let you start grad school without the pressure that you should know exactly what you want to study for the next half a decade. It’s possible that you already know what you want to commit to and met a faculty member who is a good fit, but those who already know and are ready to commit at the start of year one are pretty rare. That’s where a rotation comes in.
By the time you start your PhD you will probably have different research interests and, assuming you are in a rotation program, you will select faculty whose research aligns with your interests. Then by the end of your first year, you will have experienced working in three labs with different Principal Investigators (PIs) on different projects and hopefully one of those is the lab for you. Now that might sound stressful because the rotations you pick will be the only ones you choose from for the rest of your PhD, but I think rotations should be looked at as the less stressful option.
Rotations give you the opportunity to get hands-on experience to hopefully learn new skills, but they aren’t there for you to produce a bunch of data. At some point, many first years (myself included) think that they need good data to impress the PI so they can assure that that lab is an option for their PhD. The reality is that yes, while getting data is exciting, the PI isn’t going to think less of you if your rotation project doesn’t progress very quickly. When you are rotating you will be adjusting to a big change, possibly a new city or state, new graduate level classes, and possibly TA-ing. It is more important that you get a sense of the lab environment and mentoring style of the PI than getting a lot of data.
When choosing a rotation, I think there are certain things to keep in mind:
The research interest of the lab and if it interests you
If there is a specific technique that you want to learn from that lab
The environment of the lab; what is the size of the lab? Are lab members collaborative and nice?
The mentoring style of the PI; are they involved or more hands off?
Is there funding available? Or are you going to have to TA every quarter/semester?
Can you see yourself working in that lab?
At the end of the day, rotations give you a chance to sample different labs before committing to one and are a great time to learn more about the labs and new skills. Try not to get too stressed out about your specific project’s data and think more about what joining that lab would be like. Of course this means you should have an idea of what you are looking for in a lab, so make sure you take the time to reflect on what you want.
Ultimately, PIs will want you to pick the lab in which you will be happiest, even if it isn’t their own. Best case scenario is you like all of your rotations and after selecting one lab, you will have two other faculty members who know you and might be good potential committee members or letter of recommendation writers.
