As you journey along your education path, you may want to get some real experience in a lab working on your own project. This is beneficial for helping you learn real scientific and laboratory skills, get you experience in a real research enterprise, and also help you network a bit more in the academic department with students, professors and staff.

A common practice is to find a professor who has interesting research and a good reputation mentoring students and ask to meet with them about the possibility to join their lab to do a research project. Often that professor will provide a scientific publication related to that work and ask you to find and read it, and then come back in for another meeting to discuss what they've learned.

To prepare yourself for the follow-up meeting as well as for beginning an actual research project - you should consider going above and beyond just reading the article to find supporting information.  This will enhance your own knowledge, but also really impress the professor that you:

• have a good understanding of biology
• are comfortable trying new things and using technology
• are a hard worker, learn quickly, and are eager to support their research efforts.

Today's scenario

You recently attended a lecture by Dr. Leslie Smythe at your university.  Her research on yeast biology and how it relates to food and drink seems really interesting and you have heard that she is a really excellent mentor for students. At the end of her talk you asked her about her research lab and if there was possiblility of joining a project. She sent you an invitation to come talk to her and learn more about you.

The talk seemed to go well and she sent a follow-up Email.

Your plan

STEP 0:	You can get a free NCBI account where you can create a "folder" (a.k.a. collection) to store a direct link to that paper and other cool things you find on the NCBI website.
STEP 1:	Figure out how to find that paper and access it.    Then, devise a strategy to look for other helpful information based on the key points in the paper.
STEPS 2-6:	Do some research on the NCBI website and collect those page ("database record") links.
STEP 7:	Share the collection with your professor just before you go meet with her again.
THEN.....	Inpress your professor and start your research career!

Let's get started!