getting along with labmates

In the lab, regardless of who your mentor is, you'll work with others as part of a team. If you’re lucky, your mentor will spend a few minutes explaining lab rules, policies, and essential aspects of lab culture. Even so, you’ll most likely be challenged with learning most of it as you go.

How well you get along will your labmates will have a direct impact on how much help you receive from others, your letters of recommendation, and how much you enjoy your time in the lab.

Someone ruining or needlessly complicating a labmate's experiment is the third most common complaint people tell us about their labmates. (And it doesn't matter much to the inconvenienced researcher if the labmate believed that they were being helpful.)