need to vent
So, my goal to be more blase and less annoyed by everything around me in 2006 has lasted exactly 6 days. This is a PR.
Got sick this week, which wasn't so bad except for the fact that it happened when I needed to be purifying protein - a draining process in itself - as well as when both of my bosses are actually taking an active interest in my thesis. Where did this sudden interest come from, you ask? No earthly idea. Shocked the living daylights out of me. So the illness manifested itself in an itchy nose first - the kind where the itch isn't on the skin or in the nose but IN the skin of the nose. I thought I was going to have the bugger off. As it stands, I only managed to abrade the top layer of skin. Becoming, really.
That same night (midweek? sometime) I could not sleep. At all. Read. No luck. Drank sleepy tea. No luck. Took antihistamines. Nothing. Practiced shavasana. Nada. Tossed and turned and maybe slept fitfully 1.5 - 2 hours. Not nearly enough if you have to purify prots and have multiple bosses breathing down your neck.
Next day I was miserable. I managed to fry my gut on a cocktail of Vit. C, zinc, antihistamines and caffeine. After that, the only thing that I could stomach was vanilla chai.
Met up with Queen Barkms at the end of the day for an abbreviated SnB. it was just what I needed. Stella Artois and tea - sitting in the bar, knitting and regaling stories of New Year's. Tired me out so that I actually got a wonderful night's sleep and can get back on track to get some serious work wrapped up and get some manuscripts out so I can go on job talks and get a postdoc in another part of the US so I can write and defend my thesis and FINALLY graduate and get the F out of here. Yea. Best laid plans.
The undergrads in my lab are pissing me off. but not in the traditional sense, where I stomp around like lord of the manor. Unfortunately, we have a crop of really sweet, earnest undergrads who are all a little clueless in their individual ways. One of my favorites has just finished a full year in the lab and is really great. Still inexperienced, but is very bright and eager to catch on. And willing to take the lead and be the 'senior undergrad', setting the standard for the others to follow. OK. He's great.
But the others. Young, young and more young. I don't begrudge inexperience and I am more than willing to teach and train. In fact I excel at it. I rock. but I am getting increasingly annoyed with having to make the same statements over and over again - individually and in group meeting. Whatever happened to public humiliation as a training device. Why don't they catch on? Two things in particular have got my feathers in a huff - not cleaning up common areas (balances, pH meters, SDS-PAGE, etc.) and not reporting broken instruments or equipment. There is no excuse for either. Really, it doesn't take experience to think - 'Hmm, this is broken, I should tell someone instead of just placing it back in the drawer for someone else to discover.' Really! It doesn't.
One of the other things that annoys me of late is that very few people in the lab are doing protein work right now, besides me. So there aren't any other grad students or postdocs that have to deal with these things. As a consequence, I am the only one complaining, and that makes me feel like a shit. Good lab citizenship is an acquired skill, but only with the reinforcement of the whole village. OK, not sure what I meant there. Anyway. I think I am done. Just needed to get it all out.
Sumptin's happening this weekend. More later... ciao
Got sick this week, which wasn't so bad except for the fact that it happened when I needed to be purifying protein - a draining process in itself - as well as when both of my bosses are actually taking an active interest in my thesis. Where did this sudden interest come from, you ask? No earthly idea. Shocked the living daylights out of me. So the illness manifested itself in an itchy nose first - the kind where the itch isn't on the skin or in the nose but IN the skin of the nose. I thought I was going to have the bugger off. As it stands, I only managed to abrade the top layer of skin. Becoming, really.
That same night (midweek? sometime) I could not sleep. At all. Read. No luck. Drank sleepy tea. No luck. Took antihistamines. Nothing. Practiced shavasana. Nada. Tossed and turned and maybe slept fitfully 1.5 - 2 hours. Not nearly enough if you have to purify prots and have multiple bosses breathing down your neck.
Next day I was miserable. I managed to fry my gut on a cocktail of Vit. C, zinc, antihistamines and caffeine. After that, the only thing that I could stomach was vanilla chai.
Met up with Queen Barkms at the end of the day for an abbreviated SnB. it was just what I needed. Stella Artois and tea - sitting in the bar, knitting and regaling stories of New Year's. Tired me out so that I actually got a wonderful night's sleep and can get back on track to get some serious work wrapped up and get some manuscripts out so I can go on job talks and get a postdoc in another part of the US so I can write and defend my thesis and FINALLY graduate and get the F out of here. Yea. Best laid plans.
The undergrads in my lab are pissing me off. but not in the traditional sense, where I stomp around like lord of the manor. Unfortunately, we have a crop of really sweet, earnest undergrads who are all a little clueless in their individual ways. One of my favorites has just finished a full year in the lab and is really great. Still inexperienced, but is very bright and eager to catch on. And willing to take the lead and be the 'senior undergrad', setting the standard for the others to follow. OK. He's great.
But the others. Young, young and more young. I don't begrudge inexperience and I am more than willing to teach and train. In fact I excel at it. I rock. but I am getting increasingly annoyed with having to make the same statements over and over again - individually and in group meeting. Whatever happened to public humiliation as a training device. Why don't they catch on? Two things in particular have got my feathers in a huff - not cleaning up common areas (balances, pH meters, SDS-PAGE, etc.) and not reporting broken instruments or equipment. There is no excuse for either. Really, it doesn't take experience to think - 'Hmm, this is broken, I should tell someone instead of just placing it back in the drawer for someone else to discover.' Really! It doesn't.
One of the other things that annoys me of late is that very few people in the lab are doing protein work right now, besides me. So there aren't any other grad students or postdocs that have to deal with these things. As a consequence, I am the only one complaining, and that makes me feel like a shit. Good lab citizenship is an acquired skill, but only with the reinforcement of the whole village. OK, not sure what I meant there. Anyway. I think I am done. Just needed to get it all out.
Sumptin's happening this weekend. More later... ciao
posted by beaner at 3:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home