My enthusiasm about being in this lab directly correlates to the height of my friendships with members of the lab. I wouldn’t want to do this work without my friends.
When I accepted to be a research assistant for the Love and Communication Lab, the only information I had about research came from TV shows and this big idea that it was all work and no play. As a freshman with no professional experience, I didn’t even know what it meant to ‘research’ besides searching things on the Internet. I just imagined people staring at their laptops in agony, their hands massaging their aching heads as they learned to Google better.
I was pretty nervous to attend the first team meeting because I knew I was one of the youngest students on the team. The nervousness flew away as soon as the meeting started, with us all participating in answering a Fast Friends question.
The Fast Friends task is a structured conversation designed by psychologists to get strangers to feel close to each other quickly. It’s been adapted and modified, turned into party games and a New York Times article, but it started out as a psychology study. The task starts with easy questions - things like “Whom would you most like to have as a dinner guest?” Slowly but surely, you work your way into more intimate questions. We started every lab meeting with a Fast Friends question, so within a few weeks we were already discussing deeper questions.
Like, “Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?”
Or, “Your house, containing everything you own, catches on fire. You can only save one item. What item would you save, and why?”
I remember the second question really dividing the room. Some people responded with logical, practical answers – they would save their birth certificate or their passport. Others had more sentimental responses – a memory box, a photograph, a cat (which led the first half to argue, of course they would save their pets – they didn’t realize ‘cat’ was an option). Every answer felt unpredictable, and we disagreed jokingly. Through each response, we learned something deeper about each person’s personality.
Though still professional, there is this easiness and kind presence that has continued in the lab to this day that I believe really started with the Fast Friends task. I don’t know why I was expecting this research lab to be full of competitiveness and anxiety. On the contrary, my experience in this lab has been full of friendship and fun memories, along with professionally accomplishing so much, as a team and individually.
One of my favorite times in the lab really highlights this dynamic. At the Western Psychological Association in 2023, we had seven of us students presenting four different posters. It was so cool to see everyone’s poster, the hard work they had poured in to further understanding human relationships.
And what made it even more satisfying was after our presentations, we all went back to the same AirBnb. We all lived together for three days in the same house – it literally felt like a family. You would wake up to the smell of other people making breakfast, go to the kitchen, and talk about your presentation or what happened the night before.
On one particularly memorable night, a more senior student, Noah, made us pizza from scratch. We thought he was joking when he suggested it, but it was actually really good – he used to work at Domino’s, so in hindsight this makes sense. We stayed up late that night talking about how much we appreciated each other as humans and professionals, and we cheers’d over our mutual appreciation (editor’s note: they had age-appropriate beverages).
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I have friends in other research groups, at USF, and at other institutions, that don’t really talk to their teammates. I find that a missed opportunity. My teammates and I at one point had three group chats: one on Google Chats, one on iMessages, and a third on Snapchat. My enthusiasm about being in this lab directly correlates to the height of my friendships with members of the lab. I wouldn’t want to do this work without my friends.
Because we are friends, we are all comfortable reaching out to each other for help, like when we have no idea how to start on a project. My work in the lab tends to be more individual, so these relationships have been particularly important to me as I navigate new problems. The important factor about this for me was that not only was I comfortable going to this group of people when I felt lost at work, but I knew I wasn’t secretly being judged and me reaching out also made others feel comfortable reaching out in the future.
As I’m about to graduate and in my last year at USF, I find myself reflecting on my time here and what I’ve accomplished. This lab has allowed me to further myself and experience so many professional things, such as presenting at numerous conferences and designing a daily diary study from nothing but a dream (more on my actual work in a future post). But it has also taught me that I benefit from work environments where I feel seen and heard. I like being part of a group of psychology nerds who have mutual interests.
I feel so lucky to have built relationships with people like Billy (who is like my older brother); Persia (who is like my wild Queen); Noah (who makes a great pizza); and everyone I’ve gotten to know, one Fast Friends question at a time. When I look for jobs, I hope to find a place that fosters relationships like the ones I’ve made here.
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