Right. So results. That ultimate goal. What everyone wants to read on our poster when the time comes. That shiny research trinket that a researcher can use to convince others that their hard work was worthwhile (and worth the money).
Well, I don’t have any of those.
And it’s more surprising to me that I’m not necessarily disappointed (yet) at that fact. That’s not to say that I don’t want the results. Everything that I’m doing right now—all of this sequencing that’s been driving me up the wall and designing primer after primer—is ultimately going to lead to some sort of result that hopefully lines up with our hypothesis. And perhaps I am coming to terms with the fact that I may not have any results by the end of the program. I wouldn’t say that I’m thrilled with that. Ideally, I would love to see where the work that I’ve done thus far is going, but I also understand that 8 weeks is not a lot of time, and regardless of where I am by the end of the program, I have learned a lot and have grown much more comfortable in the lab. I’m having a very good experience thus far—and I can be content with that.
But onto how my research is going, it’s still technically in the developmental stage—meaning that the real experiment hasn’t even really started. I’m almost done with that, though, and I’m hoping to shadow my secondary mentor while she performs some preliminary experiments.
But, even if my research is going pretty slowly, It’s still cool to see other members of the lab submitting papers after a high-stress week and others being published. It’s uplifting to see that it really does pay off, if you remain diligent.
If anyone else is in a similar position to me, in that your time is being crunched and you’re not sure if you’ll have many (if any) results to put on your poster, just remember that our time will come!
And for those who are expecting results this coming week, good luck!
