I did it!

Well, as promised, it's time to blog about my first attempt at this new technique.

It went...well let's say that it was a medium success.

Not bad for a first attempt...at least I think it's not bad.

So this new technique is supposed to be really simple. I mean REALLY simple. It's supposed to work ALL the time.

My first attempt was last week...I got in early, did some prep and then started. It was SOOOO much harder than I thought it would be. I've been watching people do this for weeks now so I thought I knew what I was doing. -Why don't I believe my own advice? I tell my undergrads all the time that watching and doing are very different and that even though you think you know how to do it when you are watching, that you don't really know until you do it. - This is good advice...I might should listen to it sometime.

Because boy was it different! The first big difference is actually using some of the equipment. It's really really really old. I thought I knew how to work it, I mean I'd watch people do it a bunch of times. Shocker...I did not know how to use it. I had to get someone to show me again! But after doing it, I think I might finally, actually know how to use it! PROGRESS!

Then it was on to actually running the experiment. WOW. The people I'd watched have been running this experiment for YEARS and they just made it look so easy! They alwasy had plenty of time, were totally calm, and just walked through the process. That's not so much how it went for me. I was frantic! There are a lot of time-sensitive parts of this experiment, requiring the use of 3 different timers...that was new all on its own. But to keep that many moving parts clear in my head and to be able to remember what came next was so much harder than I thought.

Without having done it before, I also didn't know just how to set everything up. So I didn't know how to operationalize things or how to multi-task. That meant that an experiment that should have taken a few hours took me ALL DAY LONG! I didn't eat lunch until late afternoon and I have never been so tired! I felt like I was running around the whole time!

And, to top it all off. That experiment, the one that is supposed to work ALL the time...it didn't really work. It kinda worked, in that the drug did what it was supposed to, but the whole thing was about an order of magnitude off of where it should have been. Fun right?

So I did it again today. It went so much better! I felt mostly calm (there were still parts that freaked me out) but it was SO much better than last time. And...the best part...check it out...I was done by EARLY afternoon! This means that I shaved HOURS off the time it took! Now does that translate into decent results? I'll know tomorrow. But for now, I did it!

Today I was all by myself. I planned it so that I would have to be by myself. It's too easy to ask for help if people are around, so by planning to do it when no one would be in the lab, I forced myself to figure it out. This is always the best way for me to learn. I never really learn things until I do it myself. **This has been the story of my life by the way, and a post for another day.**

But I did it! Today, from start to finish, I was on my own and it went well. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but it was a million times better than last week.

So thank you blog, for being a place for me to record this monumental event. Today, I ran my first biochemical assay all by myself! It feels so good to be able to say this. It means that I'm not stuck, that I CAN learn new things, and that even if I don't care at all about something, I still have the ability to force myself through it and come out successful on the other side. I tend to forget that I can do that.

This is a big day for me blog. A big day.

-----The results will be ready tomorrow. I'll let you know how it went...

Where to do a post-doc?

So I've been reading a lot of blogs lately that have been talking about where people do thier post-docs. And whether or not the institution matters as much as the lab.

It's been making me review the decision I made a year and a half ago. I'm very happy where I am and of the choices I had, I really think I made the right one. But it was HARD!

I got a lot of advice from a lot of different people.

I was fortunate. I had choices, which in this job market and this economy, is no small feat. I'm not sure how this happened. In my field I'm really behind in publishing. I mean REALLY far behind. And I was told repeatedly that it would hurt my chances of finding a job. ---In my defense, and I'm pretty sure that this is why it didn't matter, my lab just wasn't publishing a lot. Like maybe 3 papers in my 8 years. So I suppose that my lack of publications may have been chalked up to my lab. We'll see.

But I also came from a lab that wasn't well known. My PI wasn't a superstar, or a rising star. He was just, him. A nice guy who just started to fall out of love with science. I thought that would be a problem too...but it wasn't.

I did the job search almost entirely on my own. Well, really, all on my own. I started because I just got fed up with being a grad student and wanted to know if there were any options for me. So I emailed my research idol to thank him for a protocol he made available and then mentioned that if he ever needed a post-doc to let me know.


Well holy crap, it worked. We started emailing and decided to meet at a conference. The meeting went well and I was invited out to give a talk and see the lab.


While I was going to this conference, I decided to put my CV up on their job searching site and got another interview through that. It was with a lab that I had never heard of and didn't know anything about, but I figured I'd interview anyway. What could it hurt? I met with the PI from this lab at the conference too and had a great chat. It was interesting and the PI was really nice! Within a week I had an invitation to go out to see the place/give a talk. ---Spoiler alert---This is the job I have now.

Over drinks with my PI at the conference I was told that I hadn't applied for enough jobs and that I really needed to do more if I ever wanted to actually get a job. So I applied for a job at an Ivy League university, that I never thought I'd get. This way, I thought, I can say that I applied for more jobs. Well, suprise suprise! I got a phone interview. Which turned into a visit out to said amazing university.


The visits all went well. I gave talks at all of them. Got to experience each place, and decided, much to my suprise, to take the job with a lab that did some completely different work than mine and was a job I'd never even really thought to consider.

The whole point of this post, is to say that I had some faculty members on my committee who thought I made the perfect choice, and some that thought I'd made a HUGE mistake by not going to the Ivy League school. The truth is that the lab at the Ivy League school just wasn't a good fit for me. I didn't really like the PI and the research just wasn't that interesting to me. But I was told over and over that it didn't matter what the research was, that I really needed to have that school's name on my CV.

It's too early to tell if that's true. I'm only a year into my post-doc and don't really know yet what the next job search will look like.


I guess I just really wanted to say that all of this talk about institution vs PI/lab for post-doc has gotten me thinking again.


I'm still really sure I made the right choice, but sometimes, I do wonder...

Working

Well, I've started learning the new technique that I didn't want to learn. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. It's not super fun, and I'll probably NEVER do it again, but I will say that it's nice to learn something new.

It's been a while since I've learned something completely new and I had forgotten about how much fun it can be. That is once I've gotten over how stupid I feel.

We'll see..should be an interesting few weeks. With any luck I'll get to run an assay by the end of the week and I can then regail you with amazing stories of my screw-ups.

Wish me luck!

One more thought...

Before I put my head down and focus for the rest of the afternoon...back to my 'manuscript that won't go away'...I had one more thought.

If you are the PI of a lab. And you hire a new person to work as a tech in that lab. It might be in your best interest to talk to this new employee and make sure that they understand appropriate lab attaire.

Just in case you were wondering...it is NOT okay to wear tube top dressess every day to work in a lab. It is also NOT okay to wear sandals and shorts to work in the lab.

This is not a hard concept.

And there are nice ways of doing it. There are ways of presenting this information in a safe (non-sexual harassment lawsuit endangering), encouraging way, in which the employee understands that you are looking out for their safety and not trying to be mean or demean them. I have LOTS of thoughts on how this can be phrased!

But as far as I can tell you have one, exactly ONE chance to tell this new employee about how to dress. Because if you don't do it as soon as you hire them, and they wear this crap for weeks, and you don't say anything, you lose the ability to EVER say anything about it EVER!

Rant over...I just had to get that off my chest. Because really? No one at work needs to see that much of your skin. And really? Do you really want chemicals spilt all over you? Cuz I sure don't!

Back to work!

Expanding Horizons

In my new lab I have a set of skills that no one else has. That's been really fun! I love what I do and I really love that no one else does it. I like getting to explain my work to the group and being able to provide my PI with data he wouldn't have been able to get otherwise.

But, part of the plan when I took this job was that I would bring my skills and that I would, in exchange, learn some of theirs. It sounded great! It still sounds great in theory.

The problem is that I'm not really into what they do. They do some cool work, don't get me wrong, but it's just not work that I've ever been interested in. Not only that, but it doesn't really compliment the work that I do.

Well things have been going on in the building (construction), that has made it impossible for me to do the work that I like to do. I have a TON to do, but the materials I work with are sensitive to vibrations and the jack-hammering that's been going on makes it so that I can't do what I want.

This construction will likely continue until the end of the month. And while I would love to just spend my time working on my 'manuscript that just won't go away', I have to do something else. I just can't sit at my desk any more.

So I'm trying to learn some new techniques. It's hard though. It's just not that interesting. And I feel like a fraud. I've always loved my research and worked very hard to make sure that I really only did things that were interesting. Of course as a grad student I've done stuff that wasn't thrilling, but for the most part, I've really been into my research! My philosophy has been that research is hard enough without really liking what you're doing, so you had better LOVE what you do. And so far it's worked.

But not now.

It feels like whining to complain about not really liking what I'm learning. But that's how I feel. I'll do it, because the work has to be done and there aren't a ton of people to do it. And I'll learn new things because, as my PI tells me, it's time to expand my horizons...but it's so hard to fake it!

There may be some interesting posts in the next few weeks as I push myself out of my comfort zone and try this new stuff. I'm sure to have some great stories about my epic failures. And that alone may be good for me.

But I really don't want to.

I'm going to be a grown up and do it...but it's just so hard for me to not love what I'm doing.

Writing

So I have this manuscript that I've been trying to work on for about a year now. I hate it. There are just a few more paragraphs to write and then with a little editing it will be done. But I can't seem to get myself to do it.

Part of the problem is that I think I'm just burnt out on the topic...been looking at it for too long. The other part is that this last section is on an area that doesn't come naturally to me. It takes me a very very long time to read through things and figure out what I want to say.

The other part of the problem is that it should have been done a year ago. A YEAR ago! And it's taken me so long now that it just seems so much harder to write.

I'm not sure how to fix this problem. I don't know how to make myself do it.

So I'm just forcing myself to do it. I hate it though. And I'm finding that I'll do ANYTHING before I work on the manuscript. That's why I'm writing this post. Because maybe if I write about how guilty I feel for not having finished this stupid thing already that maybe it will motivate me to finish it.

I'll let you know if it works.

This must happen to other people. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get past it?