Before:
When I first started in my thesis lab, I was painfully jealous of the benches and shelves of the older grad students and post docs. They were packed with glistening, smart-looking bottles, in my eyes indicative of the experimenter’s experience and breadth of knowledge. Now, as an almost-seventh-year student (deep breath), I am one of the students I hoped to emulate – I have accumulated tons of bottles. I hardly remember what half of them are for, but there sure are a lot of them. Last week I had to dump most of them out, clean off my bench, move my samples and stocks out of their storage spots at various temperatures and transport them to their new home in my new lab, my temporary shelter.
After:
My old bench looks like I was never there – I scraped all my red tape off, wiped clean all traces of my five year-long stay. I resisted the urge to carve my initials into my benchtop to leave some sign of my occupation. I shouldn’t have held back. Now that I think about it, it would be a really good idea to have a lab-worker scratching post at every bench, so you can mark your name and time of occupancy to leave a record of your existence. Maybe I will sneak back in under the cover of night, and scratch away to my heart’s content.
Now it is here again in my new lab, the envy of those that know what they are doing and seem so comfortable in their surroundings. I am a newbie, as disoriented as a rotating student. I have a question to ask approximately every 20 seconds. I don’t know where the bathroom is, much less where they keep latex gloves (actually, I realized they use nitriles exclusively – how annoying).
It’s a rather odd feeling, to know exactly what you need to do but have no idea how to do it, where to find the components, how to set it up. I have a steep learning curve ahead of me. I hope my samples can get along with their new neighbors in the fridge and freezer. It’s a big change for all of us, my samples and I.
I envy you your lab bench, familiar or unfamiliar. I’ve only done a few months of “proper” lab work, some years ago, but I always remember the order it gave to my thinking to have some tangible science stuff around. Now my research is exclusively oriented around the computer (and the occasional scribble in a notebook), and the environment is fairly indistinguishable from that of a journalist or a social worker. There’s something to be said for the frame of mind one has in a Real Proper Laboratory!
As much as my lab bench is filled with bottles, tubes and clutter, I don’t mind, because I know where everything is. Everytime I clean it up, it takes me forever to find something. So for me, there is some order in the chaos that is my lab bench…
Oooh sorry for the slow response. All this moving and unpacking has thrown me off.
Fiona – I know what you mean. There is something satisfying about working with your hands, and not just in the typing sense. Although there is something to be said for being able to hit save and go home whenever you feel like it. I am often at the mercy of my cells and mice. I have to be ready when they are.
Kannan – I agree whole heartedly. There is method in our lab bench madness.
It is good to hear that the Coen lab hasn’t changed! I was Don’s tech years ago and everyone took turns for a week of autoclaving all the tissue culture trash!