Ahhh… it’s that time again… a young and eager semi-sentient creature has accidently wandered into my lab and seeks to nest here for the next few years, pupating slowly, until one day she emerges, a all growed up scientist ready to change the world.
How cynical am I these days?
Actually, she seems to have the necessary attributes to have a crack at grad school… keen of eye, swift of mouth, ready with questions (oh… the questions…and questions…and questions ad infinitum).
There are the necessarily really dumb mistakes, but we all make them. Finding your way in a new lab is like trying to line dance without knowing the steps. You are going to get in everyones’ way and eventually piss someone off. There are a thousand unwritten rules, some rather silly, that exist in all labs, especially when they’re either very big, or very small (mine is the latter).
My PI is franticaly running himself into the ground trying to get preliminary data for his next grant submission, so most of the day-to-day mentoring of The Graddling has fallen to me. It’s good fun, and helps me put my own knowledge in perspective: only an idiot thinks he knows everything. It’s also a big confidence boost because I don’t usually get to test the bounds of my knowledge because I am in such a small lab.
The Graddling actually managed to get data only a week into her first project. PI and I were frantically jabbering in science-speak about what these data might mean and what needed to be done next. Alternate hypotheses sprung up and were instantly quashed… “but this could just be a voltage dependent effect…”
Orders were barked, “Run a set of ramps from different holding potentials through it. We need to see the IV at this dose.”
Of course The Graddling froze, she had been for some time. Despite being told what she was doing and seeming to understand, in the heat of the moment it was all suddennly a lot more complicated than just a “simple” electrophysiological test. Now she understood why we had been so vigorous in our demands for perfection on her technique. Demands on re-making buffer solutions because they might not be at exactly the right concentration or pH.
“It has to be perfect every damned time!”
“But nothing I do works, so why does it matter?”
“Because, Graddling, if by some miracle it does work we need to be able to use your data.”
..and work it did!
A testament to her staying power, and that alone is a good indicator of future success. All afternoon, cell after cell had died before she got a stable voltage-clamp.
“Take a break,” I suggested. She refused and stuck to it.
That’s the thing with research, as with life. Perseverence. Things don’t always work properly, and if the cells are having a bad day because of ambient humidity or temperature, or heaven forbid you screwed up your cell culture earlier in the week, sometimes you might not get data no matter how hard you try. But try you must, and try she did, so
Well Done Graddling. A toast to your first data point. Now go and do it again.