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My Role as a Lab Assistant at Columbia
Keywords:
#Physics #Work-study #Columbia #Education
As a first-generation, low-income student at Columbia, I balanced academic demands with on-campus work through the federal work-study program. I served as a physics lab assistant throughout my undergraduate years, supporting over 10 lab sections. While not a formal teaching role, this position became a hands-on complement to my coursework, shaping my technical skills and deepening my understanding of experimental physics.
Support
In each lab session, my primary responsibility was to assist teaching assistants; whether resolving equipment malfunctions, clarifying experimental setups, or troubleshooting real-time sessions, I provided active, behind-the-scenes support to ensure students had a successful lab experience.
Outside lab hours, I prepared equipment ahead of time, testing sensors, checking circuits, and calibrating systems, often running full experiments myself to confirm outcomes matched theoretical expectations. I learned to diagnose problems ranging from incorrect component usage (e.g., mismatched resistors or capacitors) to deeper issues like power supply fluctuations or faulty detectors.
Procedures
Beyond the day-to-day lab work, I also contributed to the long-term functionality of the lab infrastructure. I developed and maintained spreadsheets for equipment inventory, tracking functionality, and experimental results over time for reference by instructors and my supervisor. Additionally, I edited several student-facing lab procedures, rewriting them to improve clarity, especially for students without prior physics backgrounds, ensuring accessibility across varying experience levels.
Though this was not a formal research position, it taught me core principles that carry over directly into my scientific work: careful documentation, iterative testing, and the necessity of aligning theory with real-world measurements. Working behind the scenes, I came to appreciate how much scientific progress depends not just on abstract reasoning, but on the reliability of instruments and the clarity of procedures.
You can check out more about the Columbia labs here:
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