G5 Thoughts
Yeah, so I spent the night in lab on Monday. Second time I've done this. The first time was before my first committee meeting, when I was converting IPLab image files to .tifs which my PC could understand.
I made some excellent time-lapse videos of migrating cells, though. And had crazy dreams.
It's funny, you can push past tired into a whole 'nother place where it just doesn't matter anymore and you just keep doing things, e.g. tissue culture. I got a lot done . . . I just wish I had some intermediate speed between stalling and full throttle.
I have also officially become someone who Knows Things in the lab, as the senior graduate student who has been there since November 2003. I guess in a sense this is kind of neat, but the downside of it is that I get pestered all the time. I've been showing some co-workers how to do an assay I worked out, and the other day I was giving sage advice to a younger grad student.
I think I can say I've learned a lot about how to do science (mostly the hard way). It turns out that I am probably significantly smarter and more competent than I have felt the last year or so. I can also hold my own in most conversations, even if I don't really know what I'm talking about, which I think is almost as good as actually knowing a lot of stuff, and much better than knowing a lot of stuff but keeping quiet about it.
I've also learned not to make myself too indispensible, because then people will be always wanting me to do things for them, and I can't be having with that!
Por ejemplo, I discovered that the liquid nitrogen tanks were bone dry and all the cells in them had karked it, but it wasn't me who ended up having to break the news to my PI. This saved me a lot of hassle and heartache in terms of dealing with cranky boss and humiliated remorseful technician (although I did lose several vials of cells, which was very sad). And the best part was, I got to weasle out of this nasty task in a way that made it seem like I was being really tactful. Whew!
I should't reveal these things about myself, probably. But hey. We do what we have to do to survive.
I made some excellent time-lapse videos of migrating cells, though. And had crazy dreams.
It's funny, you can push past tired into a whole 'nother place where it just doesn't matter anymore and you just keep doing things, e.g. tissue culture. I got a lot done . . . I just wish I had some intermediate speed between stalling and full throttle.
I have also officially become someone who Knows Things in the lab, as the senior graduate student who has been there since November 2003. I guess in a sense this is kind of neat, but the downside of it is that I get pestered all the time. I've been showing some co-workers how to do an assay I worked out, and the other day I was giving sage advice to a younger grad student.
I think I can say I've learned a lot about how to do science (mostly the hard way). It turns out that I am probably significantly smarter and more competent than I have felt the last year or so. I can also hold my own in most conversations, even if I don't really know what I'm talking about, which I think is almost as good as actually knowing a lot of stuff, and much better than knowing a lot of stuff but keeping quiet about it.
I've also learned not to make myself too indispensible, because then people will be always wanting me to do things for them, and I can't be having with that!
Por ejemplo, I discovered that the liquid nitrogen tanks were bone dry and all the cells in them had karked it, but it wasn't me who ended up having to break the news to my PI. This saved me a lot of hassle and heartache in terms of dealing with cranky boss and humiliated remorseful technician (although I did lose several vials of cells, which was very sad). And the best part was, I got to weasle out of this nasty task in a way that made it seem like I was being really tactful. Whew!
I should't reveal these things about myself, probably. But hey. We do what we have to do to survive.
posted by Joolya at
7:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home