Rileys Freaky Fridays

If by chance you live near a science museum, see if they’ll let you volunteer with or at least shadow someone who works in research. Doing the same with a park ranger or wildlife office would probably get you some field research experience. There are also some research institutions that offer internships to high-schoolers–try googling “high school” and “internships” along with a particular field you’re interested in.

New England Aquarium has a volunteer program, but that will be a lot of cleaning fish tanks and telling patrons about gift shop items.

The cream of the crop is summer research at Mt Desert Island Biological Laboratory (mostly physiology research) or The Jackson Lab (mostly mouse genetic models for biomedical research), both of which have summer internships for high schoolers that are VERY VERY VERY competitive and look great on a resume.

Also try asking around your older friends or parents’ friends or acquaintances in graduate school. I and my friends who are conducting research LOVE having volunteers to help us with laboratory procedures and field work, so if you’ve got a university with a big grad school department near you, there’s a treasure trove there.

What else… let me think, you could try a local vets as well, which wouldn’t be too far off your hospital thing.

That’s all I can come up with for now. Universities are a great bet.