The document summarizes the author's economics research experience working as a research assistant at North Carolina State University and Centre College over the summer. At NC State, the author helped collect time series data on US debt maturity from 1993-2012 to help a professor model how debt maturity affects repayment. At Centre College, the author gathered athletic spending data from colleges and football coach salary data to help professors with research on college sports spending and determinants of coach compensation. The author also attended two economics conferences where they observed presentations on various research topics.