]Thank you for your answers and follow ups. Per your questions:
1) Define affordable? Perhaps anything in the $800-$1,200
- What is your main mode of transportation? Would be walking, bike or train.
-When would you like to move here? I have to be there by June 1st
3) What type of internship do you have in mind? I was thinking something, of course within the medical field- maybe research- it really doesn't matter as long as I am getting some experience and getting some money. Perhaps I am being too optimistic?
Thank you again for your time and replies. Also anyone else out there starting this summer or will be around for classes and / or will be there this coming fall. ?
-G
Porter/Davis are good and relatively cheap, also Inman Square and Central Square in the other direction in Cambridge. Cambridgeport (right next to Central Square) is also particularly affordable, and if you wind up getting a job in Longwood, it's perfectly located because it's midway between the two (and right on the 47 bus line). Inman isn't as close to the red line, but it's close to Harvard and a great neighborhood, and affordable (for Boston). Somerville is also close to Harvard. I'd check Craigslist - I managed to find roommates with a cat, but there were many places that didn't allow pets, so I guess you just have to keep checking. Allston is also cheap and close by biking (right across the river from Cambridge), and the 66 bus goes from Allston to Harvard pretty reliably.
For the research job, I think the likeliness of a paid job depends on how much lab experience you already have. If you've already got some experience, I'd suggest going on the Harvard Med website and looking at departments you're interested in working in, and then emailing PIs of cool labs and asking if they're hiring for 20 hrs a week. Trying to get a job at Harvard is a great idea because then one of your classes is free every semester. A lot of the time someone's project will be backed up by just needing a bunch of samples extracted or plates run or something, and if they have the funding they'll hire someone to help crank through the extra work. But a lot of the time the part-time stuff doesn't get posted because it's more informal. It's also much more efficient to contact PIs directly - sifting through a million resumes is a pain, and they usually prefer someone with initiative and a specific interest in what their lab does. I've been interviewing full-time research assistants lately at the lab I work at, and my PI said he wished people would just contact him directly if they want to work for him (which is what I did). I initially was worried that I was bothering him, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Here's an example of what I mean: if you were interested in working in the Genetics Dept at Harvard Med, you'd look here:
http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/faculty
On the left side of the page, all the PI's names are listed. Click through the list, and each person's bio comes up, with their contact information. If a person's research seems interesting to you and you have experience with some of the work they do, shoot them a brief email about it (and attach your resume of course).
And then if you don't have lab experience, your best bet would be to volunteer for a while and then try to get a paid job with those skills under your belt. Again, I think directly contacting PIs is the best way to go here. Be brief, but tell them that you're a career-changer and are taking your basic science classes now, are interested in learning lab techniques, and was wondering if you could volunteer 10 or so hours a week. Then they could teach you a basic skill, so that you're able to help out in the lab, and while you're doing that you could sort of shadow other lab members to learn the techniques they're using. After 6 months or so of this, you could have a pretty broad skill-set, and from there you can start emailing PIs about full-time jobs.
And if you're interested in more epidemiology/public health/global health stuff, Partners In Health (
http://www.pih.org/) is a great place to volunteer at. Tuberculosis and cholera research doesn't get much funding, unfortunately, so they have tons of volunteers helping out with a lot of their work. The downside, of course, is that it's tough to get a paying job there, but the upside is that volunteers have the opportunity to really get involved. I've been volunteering there for over a year and love it. The people there are extremely engaging, passionate, and inspiring, and you'll really see projects moving forward and stuff getting done there. It's the kind of place that makes you happy you decided to pursue medicine, at least in my opinion. Most of the PIH people are there through the Division of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard:
http://ghsm.hms.harvard.edu/people/faculty/
Then for paying part-time work in the meantime, I had one other idea. If you're a good test-taker, you could SAT or GRE tutor at Kaplan or the Princeton Review. I believe they start you at about $20 an hour, and you can get really good discounts on MCAT courses once you're an employee, so that could be useful down the road.
I hope some of that is helpful!
