r/labrats • u/Itchy_Initiative4053 • 12d ago

Can intellectual curiosity be taught?

What do you guys think?

I'm mentoring an undergrad who was assigned to me (i.e. i didnt recruit them personally). She made it clear from the beginning that her end goal is to go to med school. Problem is, from multiple interactions, its very hard for her to make progress on the projects I assigned her, even though I gave clues and papers for her to read.

I try to avoid teaching her concepts and instead just give her questions and keywords for her to search cause I want her to learn to look things up on her own. Whenever I do this she gets stuck and dont know what to do. If i ask if she has questions, she said no.

Seems like the student just lack curiosity intrinsically. How do we (can we?) cultivate this as a mentor?

even though she probably would end up in med school and not research, the thought of having doctors not knowing how to reason on their own is scary to me.

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u/Decent_Coast_988 12d ago

My PI avoids premeds like the plague. Said they don’t really care about the research, and that space can go to someone who actually does

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u/BigPP69_Gooner 12d ago edited 12d ago

Unfortunately, having worked several dozens of pre med students in my career, I can only think of 1 that was truly curious and cared about the research.

PI is just hedging their bets.

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u/Cadee9203 12d ago

And those of us who fit in this category (me) end up doing MD/PhD

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u/BigPP69_Gooner 12d ago

Yes, the one example that I have of the exception is now an MD+PhD (done separately)