In my opinion...

I haven't mentioned Lady Lab Dragon in a while, because, well, that's an interesting situation.

Lady Lab Dragon, as some might recall, made my life hell for an entire summer. In short, I developed this new assay, we argued over whether or not it worked (it did), and as a result she would not talk to me or help me in any way for several months. Because of this, the other people in the lab also stopped talking to me. To resolve this situation, I had to pretend to need her help. Then she was cool with me again. Seriously.

This woman is one of those people who thinks that the entire lab would crumble if she wasn't there. I'm certain that she believes she knows more than our boss. Because of this, she thinks that she is our boss. She won't get her own ice - she asks a postbac to do it. She doesn't do any routine ordering or anything. She also informed me that I should have shared my dissertation proposal with her before turning it in. I believe she secretly wishes us to genuflect when she comes through the door.

So for the last few months, almost every day, she has come to me to tell me about what she thinks I should be working on. It is always prefaced with "In my opinion". In my opinion, you should be working on X project. In my opinion, you should do this experiment with ABC timepoints. In my opinion, you should use this cell line.

Fucking. Hell.

I've talked to my boss about how I want to try for a "superpostdoc" position. The boss is cool with this and is totally supporting me. My boss is fucking rad and totally leaves me alone to fall on my face, rather than tell me no about something crazy she puts me in contact with people who can help me, and in general she just knows how to handle me. She's never told me what to do - she offers suggestions. It's wonderful. The constant input from Lady Lab Dragon is the exact opposite of what I need and want.

I wish that I could tell her to stop, but then I'm certain she would stop talking to me again. This would be very bad news. I need to discuss ideas and projects with people. Sometimes saying something out loud makes you realize that it's a stupid idea. Furthermore, someone may have tried what you want to do and can offer advice, or they can explain to you while it might be more difficult than you think. So if I say something to her, all of this will go out the window. Again.

In my opinion, she needs to grow up and start acting like a professional. One can dream. I am still constantly amazed that scientists can be so fucking childish and/or retarded.

The scoop

Fuck, man. I could get scooped. Seriously.

I've been working on my project for almost three years. Since I thought I was going to submit it last fall, I presented my findings at a poster session. I went to a conference this week, and a huge name in my field essentially presented my data. I went cold and clammy. I thought my liver was going to rupture with fury.

This project has been crazy from the start. I had a really unique finding, but no one believed me. My boss tried to get me working on something else several times. I've documented pretty well how I was met with resistance by my lab mates. At the conference where I first presented the data, I saw people pointing at my poster and laughing. I got laughed at again this week.

I was really doubting myself for a while, and honestly I was a little scared to publish the data. Part of me felt so vindicated seeing him present what are essentially my findings. His conclusions were the same as mine. The mechanism was the same. I wish that I hadn't been so scared. I've said before that data don't lie, but like most things I didn't follow my own advice. And I could pay for it.

Of course, now that this titan is trying to publish almost the exact same research I have done, it means I have more weight behind my findings. But still - the dude is so well known and so successful that I am amazed he is trying to scoop me. Isn't his success enough? Apparently not. To make the matter worse, I really idolized this guy. Talk about some bitter disappointment.

Now they don't know my paper is already submitted and in revision. I'm hoping to have it in by the end of next week. I don't think I will get rejected, because it it a very mild review. I just hope to fuck they don't have theirs submitted too. It's an arms race - and I only have two arms. He has an army.

But I have to say, it will be the best feeling in the world to scoop a big lab like that. It might be petty, but that is what keeps me even more motivated to publish than I already was. Because fuck them. They fucked with the wrong person.

Grad School Blues

I hear that everyone in grad school gets depressed. Well, maybe this is my turn. My time to be awash in misery and question my desire to continue.

There are just so many things wrong. I should be happy, having finished and passed all of my classes this semester. It is also the last semester of full-time coursework I will ever have to endure - so even more reason to celebrate. But no, I am in a strange void.

So, to start, I am being challenged by my own lab about my paper. It's getting to be a really uncomfortable, antagonistic environment. I designed a new method, and it works, but no one in the lab believes me.

I don't know what's going on here, but I am miserable. I have pulled up paper after paper and provided tons of evidence that demonstrates my method actually works. It works! I have done countless controls before starting these experiments, but the past month has been spent doing more. More controls to prove something that I have already proven dozens of times over and over and over.

So this is science?

I am amazed at how myopic scientists can be. It really saddens me. They get something in to their heads, and it becomes an immovable fact. There is no plasticity in their brains - just facts. "Facts." Unfortunately they forget that, in order for science to be evolving, some current knowledge must, by definition, be incorrect. Some "facts" are fucked, and if we keep using the same methods and the same setup, we will never learn anything new. Science must evolve, or else it will become like the medical field - figurative and literal regurgitation.

I can't wait to have my own lab. I hope I make it.

Finals

So I'm in finals week.

This semester has been horrible. At first, I thought that the classes were too easy - and they were, in a sense. For instance, I have covered DNA transcription in no less than four courses. But I had to cover it again here in the Biochemistry course at the University of Hell. By this point, transcription is easy. Somehow, though, I ended up with Ds on all of my exams. Ds! Me!

I've been panicking since that second D, thinking that I would have to take this class over again. There is absolutely no way on earth that I could do that. I am done emotionally. I am filled with rage at the condescending manner in which the professor speaks to me and the other students, at the level that the material is covered, but most of all because all the exams are multiple choice.

I seriously think I would have transferred had I failed. But then, I probably wouldn't have been able to transfer if I failed. Fuck me, I cannot wait to get these dumb classes over with and continue on with the real reason that I came to graduate school - to do fucking science, man!

I have three more finals left, none of which pertains to anything that I am now doing in the lab or anything in which I am remotely interested. I have no motivation. I am probably going to end up on academic probation.

But I am back in my home lab now, and much happier for it. My overall mood is improved, my experiments are working, and I'm writing my paper. I have to say, it is really strange to think that these pictures of blot membranes and graphs that I quickly put together so as not to be late for lab meeting will one day be in print. It's bizarre. My shitty little science might actually mean something.

Maybe this is all worth it after all.

So I've been away...

So I haven't posted in a while because, well, I hate everything.

Work in the rotation lab is not going well. On two separate occasions, my cells have become contaminated with yeast. I have no idea how this is even possible. I have been doing tissue culture work for years, and I have never had a problem. Now suddenly this has happened twice. Twice! The PI looks at me like I'm an idiot.

I finally got enough cells growing to do a immunoprecipitation experiment. I did the IP just fine, but today when I went to run the gel all hell broke loose. Someone prepared the running buffer wrong, so although the current was steady - there were 700 volts flowing through the damn gel. The cassette got so hot that it cracked the glass and my gel dribbled out of the casing, and I lost my sample. It took me forever to get that shit ready for the experiment and a lot of time doing the experiment itself, only to be foiled by a buffer. What. The. Fuck.

I'm bringing contamination and destruction everywhere I go. It's like I'm living in bizarro world and I'm completely incompetent.

I can't wait to get back to my real lab.

Class is still horrible. I'm still doing really bad on exams for some unknown reason, even though the material isn't hard. I don't get this, either.

I went to a conference a few weeks ago. I was all prepared for people to ignore my poster, as is usually the case - but this time was different. I had quite a few people show up to talk to me during the poster session. In addition, I heard from my work colleague that he saw about four or five people taking photos of my poster when the hall was empty.

I hate people that do this kinda shit. I mean, if you aren't able to come up with your own ideas and your own experimental design, why the fuck are you in science at all? If you need to photograph the slides from someone's talk because you can't figure shit out on your own, you should turn in your degree. I absolutely can't stand these assholes.

Now I have to start writing my paper so I don't get scooped. I don't know what I will do if I get scooped. I'm pretty sure that petrol bombing would fit in there somewhere.

Man, I thought grad school was going to be great. I'm being challenged in all the wrong ways, though. Pointless memorization. Idea theft. Dickbag professors. And worst of all, the stifling of my creativity. I'm sure I can use all of these lessons eventually, but that fact is really not making things any better. This sucks.

So yeah, I hate everything.

Fun, fun, fun

Well. The comedy is over. My statistics professor spends a great deal of time talking about her cruise of the Mediterranean. The class is so easy that I don't even know why I bother to show up anymore.

In my Molecular Biology course, there are people who don't know the difference between sense and anti-sense DNA strands. I wonder how they got in to graduate school. I wonder why the fuck I thought coming here was a good idea. I wonder if I threw my career trajectory away to keep my apartment.

A long time ago, I went to this lecture on "The Imposter Syndrome." A lot of smart people think they are imposters, that they don't measure up and are secretly really stupid. There was a grad student from MIT in front of me. I was afraid of that, so I sold myself short. I didn't want to get ass-raped by intense courses.

I thought grad school was going to be fucking brutal no matter where I went. It is not. I swear that I am not that smart - it is just that this shit is mind-numbingly easy.

It depresses me. I am depressed. Poor me, school is too easy. My rotation lab is working me like a slave. I am pretty sure that I hate everything right now.