I’m 20 and I have worked in a cs research lab since 17. I have spent 2 summers, some months spread out and for a semester off. In addition, I have worked some in my time off from there. In my time there I went from learning how to write a genetic algorithm in C to publishing a work in progress research paper to a good conference this year, and I’m the first author. But the thing is, the only reason I got the internship is because my friends mom is the head of the lab. Obviously I haven’t done poorly and they say I’ve done really well over the years. But basically the only reason I have been able to do these things was because they let me do it. They could have easily done it themselves, except that they didn’t necessarily have time to. So everything I’ve done there was done by me. I was supervised and instructed on how to do things, but I did basically all the learning, work and research myself. But I still don’t feel like I’ve done anything that impressive. I feel like if anyone was put in my position they could’ve done it if they put in the time. But also a work in progress paper isn’t that incredible. So I don’t know.