So what exactly is my typical day like?
Well, I’d like to tell you that I arrive at the lab each morning with my entire day planned out. My imaginary self slips on her gloves and immediately gets to work cloning her geneblocks, transforming bacteria, running gels, or transfecting HEK293 cells. She knows exactly what refrigerator to look in for that one primer that her mentor told her to find (and doesn’t need to look through all of the how ever many refrigerators there are in the lab, twice). She doesn’t forget to turn the power on when she runs her gel, nor does she need help running a centrifuge or spectrophotometer because both of those gadgets are just so darn easy to operate. Oh, and also, did I mention that my imaginary self has perfect coordination? Never spills anything. Nothing. Not once. Never.
You see, my imaginary self has been working in the lab for four weeks and naturally has it all figured out by now. To be sure, four weeks is certainly enough time for anyone to master the techniques required to work in a lab. I mean that’s a whole month of working over forty hours a week. That’s 160 hours, or 9,600 minutes. The point is: don’t you think that’s a lot of time? So one would expect that the real me would not be making any mistakes. The real me shouldn’t be screwing up her gene cloning by adding an enzyme too late. She shouldn’t accidentally plate too many cells causing them to be confluent the next day. She shouldn’t spill, splash, break, or drop anything. Right?
This is what I tell myself every day when I arrive at the lab. I tell myself “NO MISTAKES,” and then, without fail, I screw up. This is the only consistent thing that occurs from day-to-day in my lab. I may not know what exactly I’ll be doing when I arrive in the lab each day, but I do know I will goof up at least once. Its only a small comfort that my number of screw-ups per day is down at least 50% from my first day. I’m not complaining. I’m actually amazed at how far I’ve come in these past four weeks. It’s like my mind is expanding like a balloon. My eyes are constantly popping out of my head. I may have a daily mistake, but I also have a daily eureka moment when I discover something new (something new to me at least), or have a sudden insight into some cellular process. It’s those eureka moments that keep me coming back to the lab day after day.
You’re not alone in the mistakes 🙁
I ran a gel for an hour instead of the intended 20 minutes.
I’ve spilled genotyping samples, that is after already going through the process twice.
I’ve forgotten whole reagents for reactions.
And it’s taken me 4 WHOLE weeks to grasp the math behind staining my cells with fluorescent proteins, even though its just simple ratios.
Your vice is not yours alone to bear. WE’LL STRUGGLE TOGETHER!!!!! Young scientist, whoop!