Tips for getting post-bac research positions in psychology/neuroscience (besides the obvious work your connections and checking job boards)? Feel like I am swinging and missing!

I recommend speaking to as many people in that area as you can: IOW, professors of psychology and neuroscience at BC and beyond, to ask what they did. Don’t be afraid of cold-calling (or emailing), but be sure to personalize them in some way: speak about their specializations & your interest in them. It’s probably somewhat akin to sending early-career fiction manuscripts for publication; one writer said “you’ve sent almost enough when you can wallpaper a room with rejections.” I’d also talk to the career center: bit.ly/BC-career.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.