I am still (of course) troubleshooting experiments. Nothing has been solved yet and I must go to lab this weekend as well (though hmm...possible break at least one of the two days next weekend? A girl can dream). At some point mid-week a few classmates and I were talking and we realized that we're going to be technically fourth years in less than a month and we still have no publications. You could've practically heard the blood pressure rising. To add to this somewhat...worrying revelation, I found out, from my PI no less (who didn't seem that concerned, or at least did not allow himself to appear concerned in front of me, bless him), that one of my collaborators had emailed him, without telling me, requesting an audience with my PI. This occurred after a meeting with that collaborator on the previous day, during which he reminded me that I've been trying to get this one experiment to work for over a year now and the conversation involved the phrase "I don't want to be a defeatist, but....".
...and so I spent the half an hour post that feeling humiliated and generally upset, because in my experience the only reason why a collaborator would go to the PI without going through the person they are collaborating with is if they have an issue with that person that they don't think can be revolved and would require the touch of a...higher power, shall we say. My PI didn't even say anything, really. He just wanted to know where I am with that project because he got that email. That made me feel worse at the time because I felt that I've disgraced him with my inability to successfully troubleshoot this one infuriating experiment. Wendy subsequently had to do the metaphorical hand-holding and generally be very sympathetic and patient.
Then because, according to Evernote, I have around five to seven experiments running on any given day (feels about right) (this is the only reason why I can continue to produce data despite of my spectacular ineptitude in certain areas...such as biochemistry), I had to haul myself from the "I am made of fail" mindset to at least "meh" so I can at least go meet with my other collaborator to wrap up our (thankfully much more successful) project and continue with the rest of my day and experiments. Depression is unfortunately not very productive, and I have apparently already reached the time (fourth year! Already!) where I cannot afford to operate at anything but maximum efficiency.
Well at least the behavioral tests should be wrapped up (my end anyway) by the end of June, so I no longer have to work both days of the weekend. This is excellent news as that continuation of seven day work weeks for even two months longer is probably going to result in burnout.
In the meantime, I have discovered Zotero (like Endnote, except open-source -- actually so much like Endnote that Endnote tried to sue them, and failed), which seems lovely and has 1550 journal formats I can load to help me keep track of my now no-longer-manually-manageable list of references. And does Chrome not allow printing to PDF? Or is there an obvious button somewhere that I've missed? How do I get to NOT remember my search/browse history? What? Evernote is still awesome, even though I moved all my gel images to a different drive and so confused it for a bit.
I will talk about the career courses another time. For now it suffices to say that the week-long course has been useful, but not in the way I expected.
I think I have figured out a way to articulate my disagreement with the philosophy behind the book Atlas Shrugged. This too, shall have to wait, as it's getting late and I desperately need to sleep. Last time my brain zoned out (early this morning) it started wondering about the optimal distance between and rotational acceleration of dominoes (when it tips over toward the next one in line) which -- what?
Finally, the lady downstairs moved out to New Mexico (where her daughter and probably grandchildren are). If you don't count the girlfriends, I think I may now be the only female living in our building. Though given that I practically live on campus these days I suppose it doesn't matter.
Sleep now. And Friday is here which means that I won! Because the awful bits have passed, and I'm still here, you see. Well, cheers.
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