Flux

Both the wonderful thing and the terrible thing about research is how mutable it is--not just month to month, but from day to day. For example, I had my week planned out on paper--which experiments would be on which days, what I was going to do.

Then, today, I went upstairs to get the data from a run I did yesterday and couldn't turn on the computer. Then, I realized that the laptop from the computer had been unplugged and the battery ran out halfway through my experiment. Which shut down the computer. Which shut down my experiment.

The thing is, it wasn't really anyone's fault. The instrument is in another lab, one that is getting increasingly cramped for space [and one which has to endure the incessant noise of a PCR instrument they rarely use...]. There is limited outlet space, so someone had unplugged the laptop to plug in another tool, before I went upstairs to use it. Then I came up, turned on the computer and started the run without noticing the plug--because it's never been unplugged before and I've never had any reason too.

But in losing this one experiment, I lost resources--plenty of mastermix, some template that is quickly running out. More than two hours of my time.

And it pushed my day back, pushed my week back--I went in expected to stay for 8 hours today and ended up staying 10. And still had to move back an experiment I'd originally planned for today. Possibly to Saturday.

So--this is research. Full of incredible rewards--beautiful runs of experiments that spit out data with perfect R-squared values, two hits on a drug screen with a similar structure and the promise of finding new molecules, closing up an open abdomen on a lab mouse without messing up. But full, as well, with endless frustrations--experiments that don't work, bosses who think you're going to slow, and a degree that depends on the number of results you get.

You'd have to be crazy to go into it, I guess. But, then again, crazy is kind of what I do.