ISleepInADrawer.com

Grace Under Pressure

I'm not one to think that Mondays are inherently bad... due to their locale at the beginning of the week - the end of the weekend... You know, back-to-work, no-sleeping-in, what-the-hell-was-I-doing-on-Friday... No. I'm made of naivete - to the core. So, with my head in the clouds, and not a care in the world, I strolled into the lab yesterday, and everything began to go wrong.

Well, not everything. But many things.

I'm still obviously trying to cope with the idea that sometimes-nothing-works-in-research, and the notion that just-because-it-doesn't-work-doesn't-mean-you're-a-moron. For some reason, these concepts are counterintuitive to me. When the PCR fails, or all of my samples look like my negative control, Jamesbrain pours out, "This is not how it should be. You have done something wrong, and wasted valuable time and resources."

Luckily, several events kept me sane enough to do some serious Damage Control in the late afternoon, rather than dwelling on this-is-not-how-it-should-be:

--For Patrick's birthday, we had conveyerbelt sushi in Fremont. I always thought the idea of sushi delivered conveyerbelt style would be... well... aside from seeming somewhat tasteless in principle (Why am I suddenly such a class snob? I was born in Arkansas!), I'd also feared it wouldn't be the safest venue in which to consume raw fish. But, I was wrong! Freaking awesome. And it was a nice break in the middle of the day, just as my experiments were falling apart around me.

--Hadley came by the lab just at the lowest-of-the-low points, and delivered a reassuring rendition of "James, I'm having just as much bad luck... and besides, they say we technicians have to spend our first year learning that nothing works... so we get less frustrated when we spend the next eight years in graduate school..." [Hadley's going to do the M.D./Ph.D. Thing next year... hopefully she'll pick the University of Washington!] She also brought me up from the depths-of-self-hatred concerning the fact that I've never published. Yep, never. And what does the UW want in their applicants? Yep, you guessed it - publications. I just saw one of our undergraduate aides rejected from the M.D./Ph.D. program for lack of publications. Hopefully the M.C.B. Ph.D. program is less picky. If I ever decide to grow up and apply myself. *twiddles thumbs*

But, conveyerbeltsushilunch, advicefromHadley, and some later advicefromPatrick all worked together to get me through what would've otherwise been ten horrific hours in lab. I still needed therapy, though... to burn off steam.

So, I did what any manly man would do.

I went home and baked about 9 dozen chocolate-chip cookies.
An old Arkansas recipe.

(Pardon me while I flex my muscles.)

Today I brought a huge bushel of them into lab with the following note attached:

"If I can't earn your respect through good science, then (God as my witness) I'll buy your respect with food."

That is all.

Posted by James at March 2, 2004 10:37 AM