Reply to Rant: Tell Kids to Stop Bugging Professors for Internships

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a professor and regularly get emails from high school students who ask for research internships.  They haven't finished high school, much less basic undergraduate courses in my field.  I don't know who encourages this, but obviously those kids didn't think up this idea independently.

[i]"Dear Professor X:

I am very interested in your work after reading [one of my obscure papers from a web search].  I would like to help you with research because I want to have a career [making a lot of money by doing something I know nothing about]."[/i]

This is insulting to their high school teachers, who have a lot to teach them.[/quote]

We (both DH and I run research groups at universities) get such emails all the time. It is hard to discern whether this is genuine interest or a college app gimmick (the money part, we've never seen). Our response is always -- thanks for your interest but our research may not be best suited for high school students. This is in part because however advanced, most high school students do not have the preparation to meaningfully contribute. Moreover, we are already mentoring undergraduates (in many cases freshman who are not much farther along than these high school students) and it is difficult to ask the graduate students/techs/postdocs to baby yet another person. Finally, for experimental labs, all personnel need to undergo mandatory safety training -- these can only be done by individuals with university access credentials.

That said, if they clearly articulate their capabilities (e.g. I am a python/MATLAB wiz!) and these might be useful to the lab, then we certainly will take them on. 
When I was a postdoc, we had a high school kid code a gaming environment experiment for a study that was published in Nature. The kid in question is a leading researcher now. [/quote]

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