When not blogging or baselessly whining about gashes in my side, I am sailing on Boston Harbor. Most of the time, I race Solings as part of a team of three people. Every once in a while, my friends and I load up a larger boat with absurd amounts of food and wine and set out for a relaxed cruise. Typically, we sail to one of Boston Harbor’s outer islands for a picnic, but occasionally take longer day trips up to Salem. As special (and exceedingly rare) vacations we fly to the British Virgin Islands and sail from island to island in perfect sunny bliss, accented by Carib beer, conch fritters and roti, all commonplace on the islands.
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Lab Life by Anna Kushnir
A discussion and dissection of a most unique workplace environment - the laboratory.
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Red, Right, Return
- Date:
- Monday, 28 Jul y 2008 - 19:39 UTC
Boats docked at my sailing club. The smaller boats on mooring balls in the background are the Solings.One of the first things one is taught in a sailing course is how to read the buoys and other marks in the water. Channels, both large and small, are marked with green buoys on one side and red buoys on the opposite side. When going out of a harbor, one leaves green buoys to the right, or starboard side, keeping the reds to port, or left. When coming back into harbor, a handy mnemonic device reminds you to “Red, Right, Return”. Keep the red buoy on the starboard/right side when coming into harbor.
In a literary (and slightly trite) twist, let’s say that lab was my harbor, my safe haven. I recently left lab, but I have no markers or buoys to guide me out my way. I am pretty much making it up as I go. It turns out that applying my lab-acquired skills and experiences to a real world work environment can backfire.
While in grad school, I worked weekends. Every day of every weekend, to be precise (word to the wise – no matter how exciting it may sound, do NOT take on an animal-based research project for your thesis. You will regret it, and quickly, as I did). As far as I can tell (and please do correct me if I am wrong), I am not expected to work weekends in my current position at Nature Network, though I still do. Why can’t I shake the feeling of guilt and laziness when I am goofing off on a weekend or racing sailboats on weekday evenings? Lab habits, it turns out, are difficult to shake.
Prior to this internship, the closest I came to a corporate environment was standing in line at Starbucks. I don’t know what guidelines to be use in order to succeed here, in a corporate environment. It’s not the same as lab (understatement) and the same rules don’t apply, in soooo many different ways. I need to figure out what is expected of me and what isn’t, how one gets ahead and how one can fall behind. Where are the big red buoys when you need them?
P.S. My stitches come out this week. Hopefully, I will learn my biopsy results then too. Fingers and toes are crossed.
Last updated: Monday, 28 Jul 2008 - 19:39 UTC
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Comments
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stay to the left!
I think the saying goes something like… leave lab left. It’s a simple mnemonic.
And don’t forget to fill out the TPS report.
:) Cute, but not entirely helpful.
Working on those reports. I have never had to fill out a form or report before, and now I have quite a few. It’s weird! Not bad weird, just have-to-get-used-to-it weird.
Well the temptation to make a variety of barely relevant pirate jokes is pretty strong, but I’ll resist. I totally hear you, although I’ve been more relieved to be detached from the laboratory than anything else. Not to get too personal, but were you still enjoying the laboratory before leaving for different pastures? I, to be honest, was not, and maybe that makes a difference.
Pirate jokes are wonderful, aren’t they?
In answer to your question – no, I was not sad to leave lab. In fact, I devoted at least half my blog to talking about how I couldn’t wait to get out. It was the work and the failures that I disliked, not lab culture or lab life. Those things I actually miss now that I am away from it. And it’s not that I am unhappy now (far from it, in fact – I hope I didn’t make it sound like that in the post!!), it’s just that I am trying to fit in an unfamiliar environment.
once again my “fears” are in your blog :) I am looking forward to, yet nervous about, silly things like weekends off! I get guilty if I skip even one day. I haven’t had a proper weekend off in… three years! What will I do with myself… learn to sail maybe?!
The guilt just won’t leave! It’s really bad. I can’t tell if I should be working or not.
No proper weekend in three years? That’s pretty bad. Careful, now. You might turn into one of those loonies on the train platforms in the big cities. They are probably all burnt out researchers.
Great post – I know exactly what you mean! I always stayed late in the lab and it has been hard for me to shake the feeling that 5:00 (or 6:00, or often 7:00) is too early to leave the office, even when all my direct coworkers have gone for the day. Then again, I do often count myself as lucky that I have a job that is not so mindless that I can simply shut off at a predetermined time and go home. So, I guess it’s a balance… now back to that TPS report…
Hi Catherine! I might have to inquire in person how you work out the balance for yourself. I am still in the process, clearly. The reports and forms are a funny, funny thing, aren’t they… Grad school did not teach me how to fill out reports and forms, nor did it teach me when the various forms need to be filed and why. Oy. Not so much with the forms in a lab, I have to say.
This is OT perhaps, but when I picked up The Beast from his holiday in the countryside, we were talking about this, and wondered how people who were red/green colour-blind managed. It is, after all, the most common form of colour-blindness.
That is an interesting question, Bob. I think that color-blind folks can tell the difference between green and red based on the density of the color. Red looks like a darker/denser grey than green does(this is all from one of my close and color blind friends). He at least, has learned to distinguish green from red, without seeing the actual color, per se. He only really ran into difficulty in immunofluorescent images with green/red overlays. That’s when I hopped in to lend a hand. Or an eye, as the case may be.