I often have many things going on at once, and this turned out to be one of those weeks where it felt like too much, with this kind of result. (I will, I fear, have to be lab both days this weekend, which feels like a minor tragedy at this point.) --it is a frustrating week too: I made two really really stupid mistakes, which caused two separate experiments to fail, and the thing that I was sort of painting on my off time as a way to distress just refused to out right (I mean that it's much much worse than the usual "it looks nothing like what it did in my mind") so I ended up starting over for the third time.
So: not a good week. Since the painting thing wasn't working out I ended up spending a lot of time just browsing other people's work online and drink mint tea, because the alternative to that was to roll around the floor in a ball of frustration which-- is not really conductive to anything.
Today we had the going-away lunch for our lab: three of our current seven-person (counting me) lab are leaving at the end of the month. (Yeah our lab's going to be really small for a bit. I'm not even sure if we're hiring anyone to replace people given what they're doing to the grant renewal times right now, and therefore our budget.) There were cards and presents and at one point one of the girls informed us that she thought of us as her "second family" and started crying. It was...awkward. For me, at least, because this is the undergrad that I've complained so much about and I know for a fact that the person who was directly in charge of her is relieved that she won't have to deal with her anymore. Also because she obviously liked me much more than I like her, which is a) puzzling because while polite, I was nearly always curt to her and never encouraged any direct conversation with her (she still talks at me though, because that's what she does to everyone in the lab -- she's a talker) and b) really awkward -- I'm with Auden's "If equal affection cannot be,/ Let the more loving one be me" line, partly because it's familiar, less complicated, and the situation involves less guilt.
But on the bright side, I found out at 6:06pm, today, that one of my other other experiments might've worked. Given that this is a protein stuff there was definitely a "wtf it worked?!" moment (I am a terrible biochemist, for a grad student). I haven't quite figure out how to verify this result yet (though of course I will be replicating it next week) but it will most likely involve some kind of sequencing / purification combo that will be a pain.
That, however, is not happening yet.
Thank goodness because I really need to just sleep for 12 hours.
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