This has not been the most productive week. I ended up going home early on Monday because my lower back hurt too bad to sit down. Yesterday I set up a maxi prep (a method of havesting DNA by inoculating 100 mL of media with bacteria that contain your gene of interest) but when I came in this morning, the culture media was as pristine as it was yesterday - no growth. I am not sure why the cultures didn't grow except maybe I over treated with ampicillin. I doubled the AMP concentration in an effort to decrease the number of false positives. A friend of mine told me he regularly does that so I thought I would give it a try. Whether that is the problem or not, I don't know.
When I came in yesterday morning, the lab was a mess. Our post-doc had done a protein isolation from a plate of primary schwannoma cells and had left everything out. Apparently she did the experiment on my bench because that was where the majority of the mess was. I am getting sick of having to clean up her messes. I have spoken gently to her about the necessity of cleanliness in the lab but apparently she is not listening. I have worked with quite a few foreign scientists over the past 10 years and most of them have been very good. Several of them, mostly Chinese, have been quite sloppy though. I am not sure if they leave messes because they are used to people like me cleaning up after them or if that is the way they are. This is not just a Chinese thing though. I have found that a good number of physician/scientists are the same way. Maybe they are just used to having nurses around to clean up their messes. I guess I shouldn't pick on my Chinese collegues too much, though. I have known a lot of American scientists who are so messy that I can't stand to even go near their benches. Several weeks ago in lab meeting I brought this problem up by telling everybody that I really didn't care what their own work space looks like but I do care what our shared work spaces look like. It is simply common courtesy to clean up after yourself - didn't their mothers (and fathers) teach them that? How can you do good science in a pig sty?
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This blog is an attempt to document some of the successes and challenges of my job as a researcher.
2 comments:
Hey, I feel that about my house all the time, only I'm the one to blame.
It is most rewarding to see that one of my kids has picked up the idea that cleanliness makes a workspace more acceptable!
I hate coming home from work to find breakfast dishes still sitting on the counter and in the sink (and it happens quite often). I can't stand to try and fix a new meal with all the dirty junk surrounding the space. I refuse to fix a meal if I find that situation.
I don't know why some people don't even seem to notice the mess and can live with it - (girls' bedrooms right now). It's a mystery.
Maybe you ought to start giving out prizes to the lab tech that keeps their place the cleanest for a month. ???
Good luck trying to convince all of them.
Mom
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