A fascinating day in the lab life of ME
For the past 2 weeks, all I've been doing is DNA isolation after DNA isolation... I have 11 bacterial colonies to extract DNA from but strangely enough, I've only done 3 of them successfully (I also have DNA from E. coli and P. putida). The first isolation was fascinating, the second entertaining, the third slightly interesting... and on and on until they became the bane of my life! I must be cursed; every possible problem that could have occured has impeded my progress (even some problems that couldn't have occured but chose to ignore that simple drawback). So we've been troubleshooting, since they've been messing up consistently for over a week now... I'm trying not to panic!
My day begins with the continuation of whichever bacterial DNA isolation I had left the day before, my futile hope growing as I near the end of the protocol... I walk nervously across to the Ciemas building... the elevator is inanely slow on my way to the second floor... and then, inevitably, the seemingly-innocuous yet innately evil NanoDrop spectrophotometer crushes my hopes and dreams. I glower and slouch back to the basement of Hudson Hall to redo the whole isolation... and the next day, I forget the disappointment, I'm filled with new hope................
Today, though, was marginally better: I figured out how to plug my iPod into the computer speakers so I finally, finally, get my own music! Teenagers can't stand to be left alone for long periods of time without their iPods, and although I hate to be a conformist, it's such a relief. Another way I keep myself entertained is to think of new and exciting ways to arrange the pipet tip boxes. Since I do so much pipetting, I use up maybe a box of each size every couple days. Instead of the way I've seen everyone else do it, row by row horizontally, I sometimes take the tips in rows vertically, or in every other row horizontally or vertically, or by diagonal row, or working in rows from both sides so the last row of tips is in the very middle, or in a square spiral around the edge, or sometimes even stab the pipet randomly. This last method gets tiring when the tips become more and more sparse, though, because I keep on hitting empty spaces. I'm running out of creativity... suggestions, anyone?
Peace out!
AR
