Wow. I'm so frustrated right now. I've been working for a few days now and although the research my lab is doing is interesting, I'm not really a big part of it. Being a laboratory assistant, I have to handle the blood, serum, and tissue samples that come in, but am not doing my own research or anything. Of course I didn't expect to considering I have zero (employed) lab experience up until this point, but it's exactly that that is making me feel down. There are so many kids in my lab that are the same age as me but at such incredibly different points in their pre-health careers. It doesn't help that a few of them haven't really acknowledged my presence in our not-that-big lab yet, but it's also somewhat discouraging for me to see these people that are right around my age writing their own papers on progressive and exciting cancer research and getting published. Hello?! I'm still trying to figure out how to pipet without getting bubbles in my sample and it takes me about 15 seconds to put on my gloves every time. Basically, I feel as though these kids all knew exactly what to do when it came to preparing for and applying to med school and although I'm not a potential med student, I feel as though I'm in the know too late. I didn't even know about doing research and getting letters of rec from science professors until late sophomore year, let alone decide to pursue dentistry, and I'm even still struggling to do those now post-graduation. I'm certainly not saying that someone should have handed me a neat package entitled "How to get into Dental School and Everything YOU Need to Do These Next Four Years to Be Prepared" at my orientation 4 years ago, I just wish that something could have been different. I've taken a year off to sort out some of those things but that just leaves me wondering whether or not I'm cut out for this kind of academic goal (cue simultaneous anxiety about being "smart enough" for dental school...NOW). *sigh* I'm just suddenly feeling insecure about not having the experience or guidance to be successful from here on out.