Plan your lab work and then follow through. Balancing your research work with your school work and other commitments is difficult. The base level expectation is that you work at least 10 hours/week. Please communicate any academic conflicts in advance to your research lead. For certain social science coding projects, there is high variability in weekly hours depending on what is needed.
Part of our practice as a lab is to reflect every week/month on our work accomplishments and plan for the month ahead. Take this time to reflect on what you set out to do last week/month and plan for the upcoming week/month.
Research does not have a syllabus that lays out the semester plan. There won’t always be a clear next step or a documented way of approaching a task. So be open and ready to think through your tasks. Try something out, ask another RA, talk to a lab staff member or your project lead. Our general guidance is to give an earnest effort first and then ask for help. You can communicate "I did x and want to confirm this is on the right track" or "I did x and got y result, would like to talk about this with you".
...your work, code, analysis (and your timesheet!). Some of your work will be done on your personal machine or in your personal workspace. As a lab we prioritize open science, which includes making the process of our science visible. These two can be in tension. So part of your work as an RA is to ask - how is this personal work I'm doing being made open/documented?
Any presentations, code, analysis, etc. should be archived in a shared space. We currently use Github and Drive for this purpose. If you have a lab-related product - even of seemingly little significance - take a moment to find a place for it where someone else in the lab can get to it.
We're all working on a part of a much larger picture. Jumping into a project can feel overwhelming, whether you've done research before or not. Your project lead is an experienced researcher. They should communicate with you how your role fits in. What is this project designed to uncover? What questions is it asking? How is it contributing to the field? How is what I'm doing connected to the bigger picture? These are all important questions as you explore working in research. If any of these are unclear, your project lead should be able to help provide clarity.
We use many tools as a group. Some of these you will likely be very familiar with, others may be brand new. If you have questions, a member of the staff or a researcher should be able to offer support and/or training.
Expect regular check-ins - either through Slack, email, Zoom or in-person - as the project progresses. These might come from your project lead or from a staff member. Sometimes they will be sychronous meetings and other times they will be asychronous check-ins (Slack post, email with updates).