RA Insight – An Interview with Research Assistant Bertrand Sager
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Synapse
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2012
1) What is your personal story? I was born in Europe and raised there and on the east coast (Montreal). I returned to school as a mature student shortly after moving to BC. It was a scary move, but I’m glad I did it. In my free time, I ride my motorcycle, paddle around in my kayak, or play computer games.
2) Where have you worked in the past? I have a background in computer science and worked as a software developer for too long. When I couldn’t handle it anymore, I became a driving instructor; I’ve been doing that for about ten years now.
3) How did this work interest you in Psychology? Did you have any prior interest in Psychology? I became curious about how we learn, how we learn under stress, and especially about why we crash the vehicles we drive. Psychology seems like it holds most of the answers, because vehicles rarely crash without human intervention.
4) What is your current role in the Psychology program at Kwantlen? How far are you in your education? I am involved with the Kwantlen Psychology Society, and I work as a research assistant (RA) in Dr. Bernstein’s la, as well as with a newly formed research team. I am currently in my third year of a BAA Psych program.
5) You acquired a grant for a new research team at Kwantlen. You work with Drs. Bernstein, Dastur, and Froc. What is the project? Did it spawn from your previous work experience? I work with a team that received an internal grant (Katalyst) for a two-year research project. Working with Drs. Bernstein, Dastur, and Froc is a lot of fun and I am learning a lot: How to write a grant proposal or REB application, how to design an experiment, and most importantly how to think critically about a research question. We are investigating a particular type of traffic collision where a car driver turns left in front of an oncoming motorcycle that they did not see. This type of collision is quite common and obviously very serious for the motorcyclist. We are exploring possible mechanisms that causally contribute to this failure to perceive the motorcyclist. Dr. Froc and I are motorcyclists; everyone who has been riding for a while can recall at least one near-death experience involving a driver cutting them off. It is a very interesting project that brings together human factors, cognition, and neuroscience. You could say we’re really looking at the problem from every angle.
6) What do you hope to find from it? I’m hoping to find answers that lead to more interesting questions. Ultimately, I hope that results from this research can be used to make the roads a bit safer for motorcyclists, but we’ll have to wait and see what the data say before predicting what shape that increased safety might take.
7) What is your experience working as an RA? In Dr. Bernstein’s cognition lab, we have lab meetings regularly where we discuss the status of current projects and brainstorm about new research ideas. The rest of the time, I run research participants through various studies; I spend about a dozen hours a week doing that, but participants too often fail to show up, so I just end up hanging out in the psych lab a lot. The Katalyst lab is just getting started really, but we’ve already brought one other RA on board and we are co-writing a literature review at this time. We’re also involved in the design of some additional experiments.
8) What do you find is the most valuable experience gained from working as a Research Assistant? There are so many; I can’t just point to one thing and say “that is the most valuable”, so here are a few in no particular order: I am interested in research, and this experience confirms that I like working in a research lab. School suddenly got very interesting; I learn a lot more than I would by just going to class, and a lot of the course work actually became easier because of the better understanding of how research is conducted. The lab attends conferences regularly, and I really like that. One learns a lot by attending the right conference; experts in their field present their current research and it is very interesting. I hear that experience working as a research assistant is a nice thing to put on a resume and makes for a stronger graduate school application. The camaraderie with other RAs is really nice.
9) Lastly, what is your favourite part of doing research? I like asking questions, and research is all about asking questions. I’d like to one day dream up elegant and clever experiments; seeing how the experts do it and sometimes participating in the design is really cool. Watching the answers to a research question trickle in one datum at a time is pretty exciting too.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com.
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