I know I promised to stay positive regarding work… but after being optimistic and quite happy about this work thing for at least three weeks (wow) I felt the big despair this Saturday.
My hard experiment failed… and the mutants didn’t infect although I really upped the dose.
On the flip side, I guess I can say that they really are attenuated!! And that that in itself is kind of an interesting side effect. (See, trying to be positive in here.) The flop side is that the ELISA didn’t work last week, redoing it today but I fear that my cells might be a little sad and grumpy… ah well, I will try.
More over, I am starting the next 10 days of “living in lab for certain time points” at Wednesday and I really need to catch some sleep before that. Otherwise I will be a very gloomy scientist with bags under my eyes the size of Santa’s gift bag…
Realized that I must have been really stressed and thinking too much, (and maybe because of other reasons as well?) but still, have been tossing and turning in bed the last two nights really disturbs me and haven’t left me rested at all. Took about an hour to fall asleep (that really never happens to me) and then to wake up at 4 am and spend the “hour of the Wolf” by staring into space feeling discomfort and racing thoughts about life, science and everything in between. It didn’t help that Saturday night was spent with nightmares that was way too close to reality for me to disband them in my sleep and say ‘ah, it is just a dream’. (I can do that when I dream about the zombies and the ninjas jumping around chasing me around the world because I am Lara Croft or whatnot; not when it looks like real life and it is just the smaller things like a killer under the car or being half naked in front of the auditorium when one should give ‘the most important talk of your life’.)
So, here I am at work feeling tired and slightly annoyed with myself, writing some whiny things to ‘vent’. Alright, back to happy; I am going to redo an experiment today, hope it works and confirms everything. Although the ELISA didn’t work last week the different treatments still showed significant differences, even if I can’t determine the concentration or anything but it didn’t look crap.
And of course, I have realized it is just work… not my entire life and certainly not worth loosing sanity points for. I guess that is a good realization?! Off to the cell cultures and hoping bacteria grows as they should.
3 comments:
Hope you forgive me for only commenting when I think I can add in something, but you wrote: "And of course, I have realized it is just work… ". You know it in your head, but it doesn't stop you from losing sleep. However, later on, you'll look back on this period with a lot more perspective. So it's good you are already realizing that you will have that, just don't be too hard on yourself. Meanwhile, good luck with your sleeping in lab stint.
Oh, Blogger has changed your comment options?
You are welcome to comment any time, you should know that!
blogger changed my comment options? Didn't know that?! To what?
My sleeping worked ok and *knock wood* it looks like some of the experiments worked... although my ELISA still sucks. Will retry again tomorrow. REally really need that to work this time though.
I haven't had experience with ELISA in many years, but could your antibody be losing steam (storage diluted in the fridge, for instance)?
The comment options look like this, which only means I can't link my name to a webpage, a minor detail. However, there are Blogger blogs I can't even comment on because even though I opened a blind account to link to HIS, I can never remember my password. So, no biggie.
"Choose an identity" (I'm translating from French):
Google/Blogger:
(username, pw)
Sign-up stuff, then,
Pseudonym: (the option I choose now)
(or)
Anonymous:
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