The Neverending Paper

Oh fucking shit on a shingle. This paper is going to haunt me until the end of time. I truly and sincerely hope that they are not all like this. If so, I may very well end up becoming a carpenter or something. Because fuck this.

I am still doing control experiments. Still! No one seems to be satisfied with my explanations, let alone the data itself. I would like to remind people that data don't lie, but I keep forgetting that in their eyes I apparently don't know shit. Or something. Seriously, how many different methods will it take to prove that my new method works? Three isn't enough. And if three isn't enough, I have the sneaking suspicion that not even ten will.

I gotta say, supplemental info on journal articles really chaps my ass. And all of this dumb bullshit that I am currently enduring will just end up in some big stinking barfy pile of supplemental info that only the anal-retentive myopic fucks will read. One of my mentors, a true scientist who still comes in to the lab every day at age 80+, says this: Prove it, but don't over-prove it. This is something that has stuck with me for years, and I will remember it forever. I am all about this phrase. That is science. One well-crafted experiment should be enough. But no, in the age of supplemental info, it will never be enough.

One day, in the near future, I truly hope that this will be remedied. I will probably still be working on my paper then, to be quite honest.

I was always under the impression that grad students typically have a problem with not knowing when to end a project. Well I'm trying to end mine, but my PI and the staff scientist want to keep it going. I am NOT going to take three years to put out a paper. I won't do it. Fuck that shit. I swear I am not going to carry it over through the fall semester. So it is said here, in print, kinda-sorta. But for fuck's sake, the paper must die soon.

Turning the corner...

Well, shit. Life is pretty fucking good today.

I have been working on this dumb experiment for MONTHS now - trying to get ChIP to work. There has been lots of plotting to set my bench on fire, wanting to blow up the lab, and general crankiness during this optimization process. Today, though, I received the results from my last run and it totally fucking worked. Perfectly. Beautifully. The most perfect ChIP protocol ever.

Holy fucking shit. I am the motherfucking ChIP master. At least, I am today.

My paper came back from the boss, and there really aren't that many notes. Then she added that I was a great writer. I felt like she put a little A+ sticker on my paper and a big smiley face. It felt good.

Things have been so fucked lately in the lab. I'm not really talking to anyone anymore due to the horribleness of the last month. By that, I mean no chit-chatting - just work-related stuff and typically polite pleasantries. Amazingly, though, I've discovered that I get a fucking shitload of experiments done now. This has been one of the most prolific periods of my time in the lab, and it's wonderful.

So, with all of the sudden good fortune in the lab, I'm expecting that my paper will be submitted within the next 4-6 weeks. Fuck yeah.

Everything's coming up Millhouse.