Sophie's Socks and Stuff

Scientific Evolution

2009-02-12T16:26:00.003+01:00

I was thinking about all the hype at the moment about 200 years of Darwin and started to get a bit irritated. For me science is all about the NEW and EXCITING! I love being a scientist as I get to do and see things no one has ever seen before and it gives me a real buzz. I love going to conferences, even when they are in wet, unglamorous holiday villages in run down ex-industrial towns (somehow I have totally missed out going to conferences anywhere hot and sunny and sophisticated). I love hearing what cool new experiments people have designed, I love hearing how the field is evolving and developing.

For me science is dynamic and ever changing and the emphasis on 200 years of Darwin or 50 years of Einstein or other narrow people focused things seem very un-science to me. It's more of a personality cult and opinion rather than facts and new theories and current ideas and generally regressive rather than progressive. Obviously the whole scientific field based on evolution is still current and progressive and hopefully getting some positive exposure reflected from the current Darwin based celebrations but everything in the general media seems to be looking back rather than seeing forward or worse it's mired in the whole evolution/intelligent design 'debate'.

Earning your keep

2009-02-05T18:36:00.003+01:00

I'm really irritated with my old phd supervisor and his student/post doc. I have been nagging this student, Gamesboy, to get his thesis organised and planned pretty much since he started (in totally his best interests as I knew how crap our supervisor is when it comes to actually getting a thesis written and submitted). Anyhow he is now into his 4th unpaid writing up year of his PhD. Which isn't so bad except he has written hardly anything. A decent stab at some of the general introduction topics and one decent method development/characterisation chapter but there is still lots and lots to write up (and in my eyes quite a few actual proper experiments to do to prove it's a sensible method).

Anyhow what is really bugging me is that the start of the year he started on a post doc contract following on closely to his PhD project (basically more characterisation and applications of the method he has developed and pimped up beyond belief during his PhD). I'm really chuffed for him that he got the post doc and continue with this new method except that he is doing bugger all work as far as I can tell. I know it's nothing to do with me but I think back to when I was still finishing off writing up my thesis and working as a post doc I worked really hard at the day job and did the thesis in the evenings/weekends/spare time to get it done as I felt bad not doing what I was being paid for i.e. the post doctoral work.

two-for-one papers

2009-02-02T23:14:00.004+01:00

Is it me or are more and more papers shoving all the important 'beef' of the paper into supporting information. Maybe it's just random that the few papers I've noticed and got round to reading in detail all have heaps and heaps of supporting data. I can understand sticking in videos or large images which don't go into regular print papers but the supporting information I've been reading have been as long as the original paper and covered all sorts of (to me at least) important methods and analysis details. I guess it's good that the detail is provided with the paper but it seems to make the original, actual paper a bit thin and annoying, especially when you keep referring between two bits of paper to try and get an overall view of the authors aims and conclusions.

The other thing which gets me is that the supporting information seems to be a lot of methods and characterisation and as someone who's research is primarily method development/improvement it's really irritating. For me I always like to read through method details carefully as my pet hate is seeing a really interesting result in a paper and then realising that the methods are a bit duff. I used to be the sort of person who always skimmed over the methods in a paper but given my current research it's probably the bit I read in most detail and sends me screwy when I see stupid analysis (my pet hate is Lineweaver-Burk plots in enzyme kinetics - how are they still allowed these days!) and poor experimental design or lack of demonstrable controls.

Dry

2009-01-13T17:31:00.002+01:00

My absolute worst irritant in the lab is stuff running out just as I want to use it. If I am doing stuff on my bench using stuff that only I use, this is never a problem as I'm a bit of a horder and always have plenty of buffer, reagents and stuff which I keep an eye on. This works fine in 2 of the labs I'm in as either everyone shares the chore of making up communal buffers and reagents or we all have our own unique reagents we use and aren't used by anyone else.

Today I was doing the lab thing and just getting ready to set up another experiment and cleaning my equipment when the freaking water ran out! Water is about the most fundamental reagent there is, no water = no experiments. Turns out that a nearby water system is broken so everyone has been taking water from my lab. Unfortunately the automatic refill is a bit iffy and I usually check it once a week or so which is fine. Except vast amounts of water have been taken from the system and the tank is dry and it's going to take ages to refill. Fortunately I scrounged enough water for the rest of the afternoon but this sort of thing does my head in. The main fault lies with the SO in the broken lab as he never maintains the system properly and didn't bother fixing it when it was first broken (way before christmas). Gah.

New Old Office

2009-01-12T16:36:00.002+01:00

We've moved back from our temporary office into the old office which is all new and shiny and refurbished and I am so pleased with the way it is. I still have a massive desk, but this time it's level and the drawers all keep themselves closed even when unlocked. We also have coathooks so I can wear my nice long winter coat to work and not worry about getting it trashed under the wheels of my desk chair when I move about (previously the only place to put a coat was on the back of a chair). Other exciting and useful developments involve shelving (previously there was very limited shelving that was either all way to high up on the walls or in a corner above someones desk and head so not easy to acess). There are less people in the office which makes it feel a bit more relaxed and quieter and will be perfect if Billy Talentless moves out (technically this is a post doc office and he is not a post doc anymore). Another big deal is the lighting, I can't work out whether it's just the new lighter carpet and repainted walls or that I'm just sitting under a fluorescent strip but it's a whole load brighter in here. There's still film on the windows filtering out sunlight and making it look like the apocalypse is imminent every sunset but it's way better than before and should help with battling SAD over the next few months.

Best of all is that the new desks are layed out differently so that it's more friendly, previously everyone had their backs to each other and the door facing walls but now there are more window seats and less back to backs and my desk is a prime spot by a window, away from Billy and facing the door so I don't get suprised when my boss comes to see me and I'm procrastinating way on the internet.

stocks

2009-01-12T11:35:00.002+01:00

Gah, what's the point in employing a general dogsbody (a.k.a. scientific officer) if they can't even keep general supplies of gloves topped up. Billy Talentless (he was previously a PhD student and 2 post docs in the same lab group and did naff all research and totally got carried by other talented PhD students working on the same project as him) has finally wangled himself a permanent contract as a SO in the group. His role, as far as I understand it, is to liase with estates for lab/office refurbishments, keep an eye on the general group labs and keep communal stocks (gloves, tips, water, gases) topped up. It's really not a hard job to check the shelves once a week and see what's running low and order in new supplies but stuff is always running out. It wouldn't bug me so much but stuff is always run out when I need to do an experiment and it's not my job to be chasing up people for something as simple as a box of small gloves. I hate him!

winding down friday

2009-01-09T14:28:00.002+01:00

Nearly at the end of the first full week back at work for 2009. It's been hard work, I think I'm still quite weak from the flu I had over Christmas, I've still got a bit of a cough and sniffles and I feel tired quite easily (although this may also be related to my resolution to take the stairs instead of the lift more often). I am finding it hard to summon up motivation to do much but loaf about really. Still at least I've managed to prep loads of stuff and should be good to go straight off with a load of experiments next week.

New Year Old Habits

2009-01-08T11:11:00.002+01:00

So far 2009 has not got off to the best of starts work wise, it's freezing outside, I'm stuck in a temporary office and it's generally dark, gloomy and moopy weather. And then everything is made the more sluggish by the fact my boss is away all this week and I was off sick the week before the christmas break so it has been ages since I actually did any work. I think I might skive off early today and go for a bit of a pootle about outside this afternoon to try and boost my vitamin D levels and see if the pitiful amount of sunlight available perks me up, I need to get back to going to the gym regularly as well but I am just totally lacking in motivation.

Oh well, I guess that's enough whinging, now time to procrastinate some more and track down some reagents I need for some important experiments.

new year new blog?

2009-01-07T18:13:00.002+01:00

I doubt it, but I figure this is a good time to put something new on here. This is all going to be a year of change for me. My contract is up in a few months and I still don't know what I want to do with my life. As this post doc has gone on I have enjoyed it more and more and I've got to the point where I feel like I've got to grips with everything involved in it and can make interesting and new experiments and results to add to the field. I would like to do another post doc in the biology side of things but I'm not really a biologist anymore (I certainly don't feel like I have an up to date set of skills and knowledge for general biological techniques) even though I know and understand the literature and background. Another problem with going on to another post doc is that I would have to move to a specific city where Himself has recently got a fixed term academic contract. I could do the long distance thing but I don't think I love science that much to do it.

The other obvious career option is industry but that would be more in the physics/chemistry area which I just don't feel confident in even though on paper I have the right skills and background.

Then again there is always the third way which would be to persue some sort of non lab based new career but that still seems weird to me.

And if that isn't enough to worry about I turn 30 just before I lose this current job! And then there is the global recession and general media misery. Maybe I should cut my losses and go off and have babies which is what most of my friends suddenly seem to have done!

Stressed Sophs

2008-09-23T21:33:00.002+01:00

My enthusiasm for teaching was a bit premature as I found out last week that unlike postgraduate students, I don't get paid any extra for demonstrating in labs. This whole getting post docs to demonstrate/teach in the department has kicked off big style. I had a long chat with the secretary who dished out all the teaching amongst the postgrads and post docs and she was explaining how the allocation system had totally gone wrong and everything was a last minute nightmare. I pointed out that it's totally inappropriate for a post doc to be taking time out of research to babysit undergraduates in their practical classes, especially as neither I nor my boss get reimbursed for my time. So either I spend less time in the lab = less results = less papers = less proposals and new funding = bad news! or I do the research with the demonstrating and marking on top and take time out of my other interests, relaxation and family time which is rubbish as well.

The head of research for the school is out on the rampage about this as it all seems to have been approved without his knowledge and his research group has suffered the most and has the postdocs with the most intensive demonstrating loads. I finally decided that it was out of order how much extra work I have been asked to do, especially compared to the other students and post docs and got a bit of a rude response off the secretary. Basically as I was stupid enough to volunteer for teaching in the department I stuck with it for the rest of the year unless I can find other people in the department stupid enough to take some of it off me which will take ages and as I do very little work in my actual department it's not even like I can call in any favours so I am more than likely stuck with it.

I am so totally annoyed at the way this whole thing has been (dis)organised. There was no consultation or anything with the post docs. As far as I can tell basically the research councils have decided post docs should get more teaching experience (kind of understandable) but the department have taken this as just shove them in anywhere in a lab and do the same sort of thing as the post grads but without gettting paid! Gah, this department really drives me up the wall at times.

Papers

2008-09-23T21:04:00.003+01:00

I finally got around to addressing the referee comments and resubmitted my paper this afternoon. Fingers crossed they will accept our revisions and reasoning (one of the original comments wanted a whole heap of additional experiments which are not practical with my model and will take ages for no actual improvement of the paper or interpretation of the current more interesting results). Apparently there are a mad load of complicated corrections to do on my other paper but fortunately they all relate to the theory and are for the boss to deal with. Hopefully he will sort them out and get it submitted. I am really hoping that by the time I finish my contract I will have 3 first author papers and a second author paper which will be pretty good going considering everything.

Of course this all relies on me pulling my finger out. The finger was out briefly today but everything else seemed to conspire against me. It took forever (well over an hour) even to get all the apparatus put together and made me waste one of my samples, then when I was actually doing the experiment I realised that one of my stock solutions was missing and I added a much stronger stock solution than I meant to which knobbled the experiment. Then I managed to further knobble it by taking stuff apart before getting everything switched off properly. Still I aim to get in dead early tomorrow so that I can get two experiments done in the day and have some results for my meeting with my boss. There is nothing more motivating than a meeting with my boss when I still haven't got any new data!

Job hunting

2008-09-23T20:55:00.002+01:00

Well it looks like my job hunting has been narrowed down a lot for me as himself has just got an academic research job in a neighbouring town. He'll be commuting for a while but it makes sense for me to look for new jobs closer to where he will be working. Had a look at the local university and there are some interesting looking research groups and some relevant labs that are probably worth contacting about positions.

Himself went across for a meeting with his new research group this morning and everything seems really positive and it's good that he's back on a career track as his current job wasn't going anywhere due to rubbish upper management bollocks and that sort of thing. Also the other good news about this job is that it will put him in good stead for other jobs around the country should we relocate again depending on whose career is going in some sort of direction somewhere.

Teaching - Kerching!

2008-09-15T19:02:00.002+01:00

I got an email asking me if I would do some teaching in the new term, running workshops and tutorials, that kind of thing and that my boss had already agreed it would be a suitable thing for me to do. Anyway I said OK and filled in a crappy online form not really agreeing to do anything. I assumed from the first email I would be wanted to share my specialist knowledge and expertise for just a very limited time, I didn't think I would be suitable to do more general teaching in the department as I have absolutely no background, prior training or qualifications for the department I am currently officially part of!!!

Anyway I got an email the other day saying I was going to be spending an afternoon a week babysitting foundation course students. I suppose in one way this is a good thing as at least it's not specialist so it doesn't matter that I don't have any background in this department but at the same time it seems a bit of a waste that I will be stuck in an undergraduate lab babysitting, rather than getting on with my own research and stuff. Even though it's only three hours a week it's quite awkward to rearrange my experiments around as I don't really do any experiments in this department, so it's not like I can even pop out the lab for five minutes to check on something while I am teaching/demonstrating.

At the moment I have decided to see how it all goes but if it's eating into my research time too much I'll drop it but I'll miss the cash. I was ready to drop it before doing any teaching but then I saw the post doc pay is quite a lot more than the teaching pay for post graduates and I think the extra cash will come in useful in the spring/summer when I'm out of a job.

Interdepartmental Trekking

2008-09-10T23:36:00.002+01:00

Today I went for quite a random wander around another department for help with a specific technique I wanted to try and was thrilled to find such useful helpful people. One of the advantages of my workplace is that it is HUGE so that there is about every technique and piece of equipment I could dream of using. Unfortunately as it is so big it's hard to keep track of what different people are doing and that people often have no idea what other people in the same department are up to. I'm really glad I went trekking off on my own to seek out other people for this method as I got some really helpful tips and information which I would never have got from reading books or journal articles and the chats with the helpful people have made me rethink some of my current ideas into some more practical experiments that are more likely to give me data. Although there is lots of stuff I could do, I'm more and more aware of how little time I have left until my contract is up so now I am definitely more interested in the less innovative and unusual stuff and more interested in stuff that is more certain to give me results to write up into a paper.

Overlooked

2008-09-01T19:00:00.002+01:00

I think one of the things holding me back most these days is the fact I always seem to be overlooked. It's hard as I am physically all over the place doing experiments and stuff. Anyway chatting to head boss bloke over cakes the other day he suddenly twigged that I would have been the perfect person to go over and do some experiments at another facility but he obviously just forgot about me and my work and got someone else to go instead. I was checking out the new website (which is still very ugly) and noticed I wasn't listed as a post doc (or anything) which is a shame. Once I've finished sorting out my official university website I will be onto them and get my face added onto the group listings.

Bad Books

2008-09-01T18:47:00.004+01:00

I have learnt a bit of a lesson about not being too helpful to people today. I offered to read the transfer report of the first year student in our lab while he was on holiday so he gave me a hefty introduction and methods and I went through it pretty carefully and made lots of appropriate and helpful comments. Anyhow what a waste of time that was as I didn't realise he was back from holiday and submitted the whole thing without getting any feedback from me.

He is also in my bad books at the moment as he never seems to make up any of the communal samples we use in the group. We don't have a strict rota and I generally do it fairly often as other people have asked me to clarify the procedure yet again (which I don't mind too much as if the samples aren't made correctly then I have completely useless results and will have to make up more sample myself and also explain to the boss why we are getting through such expensive material so quickly). Anyway I asked him if he had time to do it with me this afternoon but I ended up doing it myself and with one of the other students.

I in a bit of a grump today after a rubbish weekend where himself was ill and I didn't do anything productive or constructive and just got more and more irritated with my own company. Hopefully I'll get a good nights sleep tonight and be in a better mood tomorrow as I have important experiments to do. I have been attempting Important Experiment for most of the summer it seems like but not got very far due to all sorts of irritating obstacles.

Paper revisions are going quite well I think except for bloody endnote. It is a horrible programme. Once this paper is resubmitted I am definitely going to try my hand at LaTex.

Lurgy

2008-08-27T21:49:00.002+01:00

I was brimming with enthusiasm and ideas which is quite unusual for me coming back from a break. Unfortunately I am struck by lurgy (probably due to spending the weekend standing around in cold muddy fields with millions of scummy people) so I am not getting on quite as well as I hoped.

In other news I got the comments back from the paper I submitted, my boss is a bit narked but I'm not too bothered about them, they certainly seem better than the corrections I got for my PhD thesis. It's a pain and it seems like the reviewer didn't really get the point of my work or quite understand the point of the system I have developed but it's not entirely unexpected and hopefully I will be able to get it sorted out quite quickly.

Diversity

2008-08-13T12:04:00.002+01:00

I'm currently working on my CV and having a rethink about what I want to do when my post doc contract expires next year. I am thinking that there is still lots I want to contribute to this field of research and would really like to continue in academia a bit longer. Anyway I realised there is no one around here to speak to about moving on, applying for grants, working on CVs or similar. Everyone just seems to go from PhD onto various grants and there is no real interview or application proceedure, people just get kept on as long as there is money from somewhere for them to do something. No wonder this department is a state. It seems a bit unhealthy to have such a static workforce, with nobody with fresh ideas or perspectives coming in. Even though I did my PhD at the same university as I am currently working at, at least I have moved faculty and work with completely new people and lab groups.

Plotting Data

2008-08-13T11:16:00.002+01:00

I spend a lot of my time extracting data from different graphs, manipulating the raw data in various ways and generally plotting and pimping graphs so that they are clear and easy to understand. Personally I prefer my data presented in as close to raw format as possible with maybe just the odd modification to correct baselines and remove noise so that the plots are simple, clear and easy to interpret. While the data can be manipulated to give a straight line I much prefer to see the data in the original plot as it's much easier to spot deviations or anything strange which might be going on. I understand that before the days of computers for everything, rearranging data to give a straight line much simplifies things, but with programmes such as SigmaPlot, OriginPro, Igor, and Prism to name but a few pretty much any data can be fitted to quite complicated equations so there is no reason to do double reciprocal plots or whatever.

When I read a current paper which determines constants using double reciprocal plots or other methods rather than fitting to the original plots I can't help but be rather sceptical. Either they really know nothing about the subject and don't realise the potential errors of analysing data this way (which doesn't instill confidence in the rest of the paper) or they know their data is a bit shonky and this is the only way to get a fit out it (which again makes me sceptical and wonder what they are not saying). I recently saw that some of my data doesn't fit to the commonly accepted model and rather than forcing my data to fit by using different plots or removing data points, I just submitted it without any fit and then commented about why it doesn't seem to fit and deviates from general accepted principles - I just hope the reviewers think like me!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2008-08-12T16:57:00.002+01:00

I have been getting super slack this week as it's now the third week my supervisor has been away and I haven't got any materials at the moment to do any experiments (I need to wait for the boss to return from holiday and authorise my purchases so I can actually get the stuff I need to make up new samples). Anyway I've been ticking over OK the past couple of weeks brushing up on my maths, checking over the literature, going over data and reanalysing it but I feel I've got as far as I can with that and am flagging a bit this week. Anyhow today I've just started writing another paper (even though I don't have the key experiments done yet!) and I'm excited at how much easier it is. It took me flipping ages to write my first paper on this project partly because I was generally a bit depressed and finding it hard to do anything, and also because it was a lot of reading around the literature and trying to tie my new results in with the current information out there. Anyway this new paper is a direct follow on so I can pretty much rehash most of the introduction and all the methods in this new paper then plug in my new results and discussion.

I didn't realise how much I have learnt so far in this post doc until now I think as everything has been quite hard but now I really feel like I get it and have ideas of my own. My next big personal challenge is chatting with my boss when he gets back from holiday about the ideas I have come up with and whether any of them are actually worth pursuing. This is quite a big deal for me as I hate saying what I think to bosses/people in authority, I have the terrible habit of talking myself out of things, which when it gets really bad I talk myself out of trying anything and end up feeling miserable, depressed and unproductive. It's all a (probably unfounded) fear of looking stupid and being ridiculed for being stupid or not properly understanding something.

Virtuous

2008-08-04T21:46:00.001+01:00

So today I did my 45 minutes of maths and went to the gym this evening for the first time in ages.

In other news my friend M failed her PhD today, but that's for another post.

Maths

2008-07-31T17:16:00.002+01:00

I've been attempting do some serious analysis of my data recently and it's all going reasonably well. However I have realised I desperately need to brush up my maths skills if I am going to be able to do anything more with my data and analyse it properly. I have always been a real biochemist when it comes to data analysis. Stick everything in excel, print out a few graphs, do a few simple numerical manipulations until it looks right and use the odd specialist fitting package where all the theory part is done and it's just a case of pasting in the data and blindly accepting the output.

Anyhow an interesting chat with an ex-colleague has finally made me get off my bum and get to work on those maths skills. At the moment I have decided to spend 45 minutes every workday working through a maths for biochemists book. It's going much more slowly than I thought but I'm pleased I'm sticking with it. I think that this time I'm sticking with it as I really want to understand my data in more depth so need to develop the maths skills to do that, and also i have found a neat book especially for biochemists which is written in quite a chatty style which I find easier to relate to and also has really relevant examples. I shall try and chart my progress here and keep motivated.

Run Down

2008-06-24T16:22:00.002+01:00

Meh, everything is ticking along well workwise and I'm feeling a lot better in myself mentally and with how my life is than I have done in a really long time. So now my brain is totally in gear it seems like the rest of my body has given up. I don't usually get sick at all and am often annoyingly healthy but currently I feel totally wiped out and run down. My hayfever is horrid and I've been stuck with trying to shake off a stupid cold for the past few weeks. I know I need to get back into going to the gym and sorting out my eating habits but it just hasn't happened so far. It's all a question of balance and at the moment I feel like I'm bouncing from one end to the other.

Hmmmmm I think I have just talked myself into going home early today. Nice one!

Drip Drip Drip

2008-06-23T18:41:00.002+01:00

Although work is going well at the moment it's all a bit depressing around here. In the past month or so I have found out that 3 of the soundest, friendliest and brightest people I know in the group have decided to leave permanently. The first person had just been awarded a massive fellowship and originally left for a long sports holiday between finishing his contract and starting his fellowship but the current news is he is now working full time for a company and not sounding like he's going to to come back with the fellowship.

Another friend (who specialises in the same technique as sporty fellowship boy) is also leaving after being offered a great post doc elsewhere with opportunities to use some new shiny equipment and really exciting cutting edge technical/method development. I'm really pleased for him as it's a great opportunity but he will be really missed in the group as he is so laid back and relaxed and helpful and damn good at experiments.

The third, and saddest leaver is one of the PhD students. As far as I knew she had been getting on really well, she had completed a paper at the end of her first year and was really confident and working hard and doing quite different stuff to the rest of the group. Unfortunately it seems like she had a total breakdown in her relationship with her main supervisor and ended up quitting. From the sound of things she threatened to quit and no one made any effort to persuade her to stay. After 2 years of effort and with plenty enough results to fill a thesis it seems such a shame. It also really highlights the poor and/or peculiar management styles that go on around here. It has really struck me over the past month or so since I have been thinking about future careers and doing the odd development course how much I need positive encouragement and constructive feedback to bring the best out of me. This is probably a huge generalisation but I think women tend to get more paranoid about their place at work, probably a hangover from bitchy schooldays (I'm sure this is where it comes from for me) and need much more positive help especially from people in authority, otherwise we end up self doubting mentalists putting on a huge 'I can cope' front with everything crumbling behind. There's plenty more I could say on this topic but that's probably best saved for another post.

journal dilemma

2008-06-23T15:20:00.002+01:00

Finally got my paper all ready to submit to biochemistry but now I don't know whether to actually submit it to Biochemical Journal which apparently has the better impact factor these days. I have no idea what to do. The choice is mine, unfortunately I'm a very very indecisive person. oh dear.

Flattered

2008-06-18T22:09:00.002+01:00

Today I was at a workshop with quite a few PhD students and at the end one of the chemists said to me it was great to meet someone a bit quirky and show that you can still be very much yourself and still come across as a professional scientist. I always worry about having turned into a totally tedious stereotypical geeky physicist so it was really nice to be a positive role model for someone who thought I was cool. I

What am I?

2008-06-18T00:23:00.003+01:00

Well I'm not an academic! I'm thinking more and more what sort of career/job would suit me when I come to the end of my contract in May and I'm still stuck. I was a biochemist and that was all cool and groovy and straightforward protein purification, characterisation science. Then I got a PhD which was going to be all nicey nice biochemistry science but mutated into loitering around a lab on top of a chemistry department and definitely the realms of physical sciences. These days I'm in a physics department but mostly loitering on top of chemistry with the odd excursion back with the biochemists. I feel like I've lost more skills than I have gained, especially in the realms of self confidence.

Square Peg in a Round Hole

2008-06-02T18:05:00.002+01:00

I've just come back from an excellent training course which has come at pretty much the perfect time for me and was perfect for me and where I am right now. I've been having a rubbish time recently and have a lot of hard stuff coming up. Anyway one of the things I have really realised recently that I am a square peg in a round research hole. However much I think I want a researchy career I am not going to fit or be comfortable in it, especially the direction in which my research has taken me. So now I am at the point I think where I need to find what shape I really am and what shape hole would suit me first.

The future, it looks terrifying!

Searching

2008-02-19T17:54:00.003+01:00

Gaaah! I am writing up a paper at the moment and on the whole my data is OK and it all tells a nice story. My current issue is finding and interpreting other literature in the field. One of the main aspects of my work is validating a new experimental model so things are always complicated comparing to my data done with a new model to stuff done using more traditional methods. This is not so bad, it's just a bit of a pain having to really go through and understand the methods sections in other papers just to check a 1 or 2 values out of the paper to see if it's actually comparable or not. My main frustration at the moment is tracking down papers to compare my findings with. Obviously I have some good starting papers but doing literature searches to check certain values and other models is a nightmare as everyone seems to use a slightly different combination of capital letters, brackets and abbreviations in their titles and keywords so rather than just being able to look for example something with a simple name, I seem to end up doing multiple searches with each version of the name, and then this is further complicated that the thing I am looking for in relation to my main search parameter is also written in lots of different ways.

One thing which has consoled me with all this tedious literature searching is that I think my new model is really neat and is relatively simple to use to find out important parameters which at the moment are not easy to find out without using some quite unnatural experimental conditions.

Support Systems

2008-02-13T19:31:00.002+01:00

I meant to blog about this a while ago but never got around to it. At the moment I am really annoyed with my old PhD home department. When I finished my PhD I wrote to the head honcho of postgraduate students in the department detailing quite specifically how I felt the department had let me down during parts of my PhD. In particular the fact that on paper the department seems to have adequate support systems and proceedures for ensuring students make decent progress and stuff but in reality it's just a load of pointless admin. I didn't really get a satisfactory response from my letter but I felt that it was time to move on and accept that I had done what I could and hope that the department would review their proceedures at some point. Anyway it turns out that a current student of my old supervisor is having a lot of similar problems which I encountered (and which previous students before me encountered) and that NOTHING is being done about it. What is even worse is that this student has gone to the doctor to get additional help but the underlying problem (his work in a particular lab with a particular supervisor) is not being assisted in any way by the university. As I'm no longer associated with the lab or student there is not a lot I can do except see how things pan out and get frustrated with the ineptness of the department and suggest small alternative methods of support and ways in which the student can try and help himself a bit more than he does at the moment. The worst case scenario is that the student will not pass his PhD and maybe then the department will look into things further, although that is a little late and extreme. Or they may continue to do nothing which wouldn't suprise me in the slightest.

bleugh

2008-02-05T16:48:00.000+01:00

I am totally mooped at the moment as I seem to have come down with the lurgey. Usually I am the last person to come down with a cold but somehow I've managed to randomly catch one. I am not a person who likes being ill. Hopefully I will get better quickly, at the moment I'm mainlining vitamin C and zinc and drinking lots of cups of herbal tea. I have quite a lot of work to do (mostly because I have been lazy and procrastinating recently) and also want to get fit ready for my ski holiday at the end of the month. In fact I'm wondering if I compromised my immune system a bit by pushing myself quite hard at the gym after finally getting back into it after christmas.

Resolution in progress

2008-02-01T16:09:00.000+01:00

I said I wasn't making any resolutions this year but was going to get my finances sorted, well I'm on the way and have got around to opening some new savings accounts with better rates of interest and put some money in them. Now just need to make sure I keep topping them up and getting out of my current habit of spending all the money I get paid each month.

Discrepencies in data analysis

2008-01-22T18:34:00.000+01:00

I feel like my brain is going to start exploding soon as I have been doing so much reading and trying to sort out what's going on with my data. I have good data, I know that as I did all the experiments myself! My problem is that my data doesn't fit nicely to any typical models, which is OK and there are many likely reasons for this, but just means lots of work to explain and justify why this is and that it's not that I have a rubbish or pointless experimental system.

One of my main problems is that there are lots of ways to plot out the data, and mostly that's fine and standard undergraduate stuff. What is really getting to me is the fact that one particular way of presenting the data is particularly bad yet half the text books I have been going through plot the majority of examples using this representation (after first pointing out its serious inadequacies in earlier chapters) and all the background papers I have been reading relating to my experiment also use this particular projection. Gah! I guess it's most annoying for me as my data definitely shows its deviations from typical using this particular representation, and it makes it really hard to evaluate other peoples research when shown this way.

Another problem I am finding as I try to really analyse my data is just how complicated my system really is. Individually each part is quite straightforward and well characterised and understood. But put all together it actually tends to brain melting complexity. One of the things I have a lot of trouble with is adequately explaining by research in detail to other people. I can explain stuff and justify it at quite a simple level, and it all works out and makes sense in my head at more detailed and complicated levels, but actually getting that across to people in my own words I find is a nightmare. Still practise practise practise and one day I might be perfect!

Researcher Refreshments

2008-01-18T11:32:00.000+01:00

On the whole catering on campus is quite improved since I first started here. My only gripe is that it's pretty much impossible to get anything except a pint and packet of crisps in the bar, a stale sandwich from the shop or take away from the skanky fast food places up the road after about 3:30pm. This is really annoying to me as I'm not really a morning person and prefer to stay and work quite late. This means mid afternoon (3.30-5ish) is when I get my second wind and really get going with work. I'm reasonably productive late morning/early afternoon but as I know I'll be staying late and so generally need a mid afternoon coffee and biscuit break to keep me going late enough to get a decent amount of work done.

I don't expect to have five star catering from early until very late but I don't think I work especially strange hours and just get very frustrated that the only coffee available from pretty early on is skanky canteen machine coffee or instant in one of the coffee rooms and has to be drunk in the canteen or at my desk. Technically there are departmental coffee rooms but I have never liked unserviced coffee rooms (ones where there are only machines and chairs, no actual tea person dishing it out) as they always seem to have their own cliques in and routines which I can never really get a part of as I am never in the same place for any length of time.

Meh! Mondays

2008-01-14T14:58:00.000+01:00

Definitely back into the usual routines now and mondays are horrible. Especially ones like yesterday where it is cold wet grey and wetter. I generally don't mind wet weather, as long as it stops at some point in the day. What I do mind is getting soggy walking to work and then being cold and damp all day in the office. The other thing that really infuriates me in wet weather is all the people who decide to drive to work. Why? It's not like a bit of rain does any harm, and if it's that bad it's easy enough to wear proper waterproof clothing or take a dry set of clothes and shoes to wear once at work. I still cannot get past the number of cars I see on my walk to work with just 1 occupant. They just sit there in their little metal boxes looking bored out their tiny minds. I just don't get it.

Update

2008-01-10T18:47:00.000+01:00

Ooops it's been an age since I put anything on here. I had a pretty good stint in the lab just before christmas, in amongst a million christmas parties. It was really good to be out and about socialising with lots of people but I was glad when it was actually christmas and I had a period to totally laze about far away from work and everything. I kept feeling like I was coming down with a cold over christmas so kept everything quite gentle, but I never actually got a cold, I have possibly the worlds best immune system at the moment. I haven't been ill for ages.

I got some top presents for christmas (mostly stuff I wanted) and didn't see much in the sales so I'm feeling fairly flush and have decided that this is the year I'm going to try and sort out my finances. I was always careful with money as a child and have never been in serious debt (I was really fortunate that I got a good job in the holidays at university and got extra funds off my parents so I didn't get stuck with huge student loans to pay back) but these days I seem to be spending all I get and not actually saving sensibly at the moment.

I need to get back on track with all things health and fitness related as well. Although I seem to have the worlds most robust immune system I still need to keep up the good work I was doing by going to the gym regularly and not eating crazy huge food portions all the time. Everything went a bit to pot over christmas what with non stop socialising and big style boozing and all the lovely lardy christmas food. I've been forcing myself to the gym this week and have been finding it really hard going although was pleased with myself for managing 2 km on the treadmill in about 15mins. I have always hated running but I'm trying to get better at it as it's such a cheap and easy thing to do. I've also discovered the joys of the student canteen, especially the soup they do which is cheap and hand made (not just bland concentrate or cup-a-soup style) and perfect for the dismal weather round here at the moment. Once I've finished off all the millions of chocolates I aquired over christmas I should hopefully start to see a re-reduction in my waistline.

Work is going OK so far. I've finally got all my experiments completed enough to start writing up a paper. Hopefully I can crack on with it and get it written nice and quickly and get on with some new exciting stuff in the lab. Best of all is that Billy is working from home this week so it is all calm and lovely in the office at the moment. There was some serious Billy bashing going on over christmas, the man really does annoy everyone. And it's interesting to see that the people who get most annoyed with him are usually the most laid back, friendly and normal people in the department.

I've not really got any resolutions this year. I think January is such a miserable month it's hard to motivate yourself to do anything, let alone get all puritanical about stuff. I would like to write more on this blog, so hopefully by actually writing that down here for everyone to see I will get around to actually writing a bit more from time to time.

'Tis the season to be hungover

2007-12-13T18:05:00.000+01:00

I'm just recovering from the first of many work christmas parties coming up. I have done naff all work today, just prepped a couple of samples to use tomorrow. I am secretly hoping that the stuff I ordered ages ago and which are essential to my experiments won't arrive until the new year now, otherwise I will feel obliged to work like a crazy fool in the lab and behave myself at the upcoming christmas meals.

Data Details

2007-12-11T16:08:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and write about how I save and compile all my experimental data. I am do some experimental work in 3 different departments using quite different techniques. The main bulk of my experimental work is done in one department with the odd bit of sample prep (which can be quite complicated and detailed) in the other departments. I could keep separate notebooks for each department but I prefer to keep everything together (the way I see it is there is less risk of losing and misplacing one of them and only realising just as I am mid experiment or something).

I am fairly good at keeping my lab book up to date but it is never very detailed. My predominant experimental technique is quite straightforward and the experimental conditions do not change from experiment to experiment (I run lots of different samples using the same method). I am not keen on sticking in graphs of my data as it just makes my lab book big and bulgy and I don't think it's ever very relevant to just look at a single graph, my data comes into its own when compared with the whole data series. My lab book is most useful as a reminder of anything unusual which I observed and prompts to myself during the experiment - usually something along the lines of 'I am a moron, remember to keep the reference electrode properly protected next time'

I take a lot more time organising my data and experimental files on my computer. I have now taken to writing up all my experimental details for the day in an excel sheet (which is essentially an electronic copy of what I would note down in my lab book). I usually process all my data from the days experiment quite promptly and paste all the important data into a new excel file (and sometimes also an origin file depending on the exact type of experiment), usually just saved by the date of the experiment. I then have a big ass excel sheet which is a summary of all experimental work I've ever done, listed in chronological order and with hyperlinks to all the processed data files and which also summarises all the main experimental parameters I've measured and any other pertinent notes. It's so easy to just open up a single file to check what day I did a particular experiment and then directly find the raw data and whatever. I was quite happy the other day when my supervisor praised my organisation of my data and stuff. It's a skill I really learnt when I was finishing off my thesis and had a nightmare tracking down old data I needed to re-process or reformat.

I am also a big fan of neatly writing up detailed protocols for the particular experiments I do which I can easily send to any other members of the group who want to try and repeat one of my techniques. Also it's really handy for going back into labs when doing experiments and procedures which I do quite infrequently and is much easier than finding the particular page in a lab book when I first did the protocol which gets grubbier and more battered each time I go and repeat it. Also after mislaying my lab books one summer I like to have an electronic back up of absolutely everything.

Neither Nor

2007-11-30T13:19:00.000+01:00

I'm generally a bit miffed this week. I think the weather has been having a big effect on my mood and I have been sleeping really badly and generally been a bit out of sorts so am probably a bit more oversensitive than normal. This week I have been mostly miffed that I seem to be so forgettable to people (it's either that or people really don't actually like me). I was miffed earlier in the week when I overheard one of the PhD students inviting another one of the students out for drinks that evening. I wasn't visible when this conversation was happening but I was miffed I didn't get an email or head round my office door to invite me out. And then last night I saw there was a departmental event which it seemed like all the students had gone along to, without saying to me that they were going along or anything like that.

I kind of understand why I might get left out of things more often than others in that I share an office which is all boring or unpopular post docs rather than being around the students and stuff in the main office. But it seems to be happening quite a lot and is really getting me down. I think one of the reasons it is bothering me quite a lot is that I still don't feel like I have really settled in this department. I am about the most junior post doc in the group and am generally quite different to most of the other staff and students here. I am currently based in a department which is a very different field to that which I studied at undergraduate and postgraduate level, I'm a different gender to most of the staff and generally feel I have very little in common with the people I work with. I probably have most in common with a couple of the students so when I feel excluded by them (even if it's inadvertant exclusion on their part) it feels a bit like I am being excluded even more by the department as a whole.

I just feel out of place in so many ways, being confused as a student again, being left out of socialising by the actual students here and all sorts. Still I think this is enough self pitying for now and I should pull my finger out and get back to the data analysis.

I'm a doctor dammit

2007-11-29T20:06:00.000+01:00

I don't know what it is about me but I got mistaken as a PhD student again today. This time by a theory student who has recently started coming to our group meetings. I have no idea what it is about me which seems to give the impression I'm still a student. Possibly my totally rubbish and informal way of presenting my work at group meetings.

1 year on

2007-11-22T18:11:00.001+01:00

Today is exactly one year on from my PhD viva. It seems strange and much much longer ago than just a year. I'm suprised and pleased with myself at how quickly I seem to have got over the viva trauma and got on with things, especially as I was so completely and totally horribly angry and upset about it all for a long time, now I'm mostly disassociated from it.

Non transferable skills

2007-11-12T13:13:00.001+01:00

I was having a think on the walk to work this morning about all the emphasis on transferable skills that PhD students and research staff are meant to develop during their studies and careers. I'm one of the few people who seem to like, or at least not mind doing courses and stuff, I am definitely the sort of person who learns better from being taught and shown stuff, rather than motivate myself to learn it out of a book or whatever for myself. What I was really thinking about though was that there seems to be a lot less emphasis on courses and learning the skills, background knowledge and theory of whatever the PhD/research is on. I know I have been pretty odd and probably a bit unlucky with the way my research career is panning out, but I can't help but think that I am already pretty well equipped with general personable transferable skill type things and what I am really missing are the skills to make me a better and more knowledgable specialist in my field.

Ooops

2007-11-02T18:48:00.000+01:00

It's been longer than I thought since I updated this. Nothing much has been going on, lab stuff is pootling on. Have ended up having a good week in the lab and looking forward to continuing it through with some bigger experiments next week. The success this week was really reassuring after having a rotten time towards the end of the previous week (mostly self inflicted by repeat spack attacks in the lab!)

The gym thing is still going really well and I still haven't lost any weight but I'm pretty sure my trousers are all looser on me which is nice. I'm looking forward to loosing more inches and going out and buying a couple of nice outfits for all the Christmas parties I have. One of the benefits of being part of lots of different labs and departments is getting invited to lots of Christmas parties and social events.

Also been quite busy recently doing a lot of volunteering. The volunteering thing is weird as I enjoy doing it as I find it's a good way to hang out with totally different people to whom I usually hang out with and also it's important to me to feel like I'm giving back to society, especially as I have what I percieve to be quite a selfish job (my research is interesting and important but not easily classifiable into directly good for society type work like some research can be seen as). A lot of people seem to find it odd that I give up my time to do something where I don't get paid or appear to get any direct material benefit but I have always thought there is more to life than money and that sort of thing so I am still happy doing it even if other people don't ever get it.

Seeing an improvement

2007-10-10T12:45:00.000+01:00

I joined a gym for the first time in my life just over a month ago and it actually seems to be going really well. My current job involves a lot of walking between labs (some of which are separated far across campus) and I was totally fed up of getting home at night and being totally tired out and lethargic. The gym is hard going, especially as I started off so terrified and out of shape - I have never been a sporty person in my life. My main aim in PE lessons at school was to see how early I could be sent out the class to get changed and read a book/write lines or whatever. All the instructors at the gym seem really nice and it isn't nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be. Even though sometimes I feel like the pinkest, hottest, out of breath person there I figure lots of people started out this way and the only way to improve is to keep at it and not get discouraged.

I'm a bit knackered today as I had quite a hard session this morning but overall I noticed that even when I was covering up to several miles in a day just doing experiments in different labs on campus I was holding up pretty well and being more productive than I have been in a long time so it definitely seems to be worthwhile for me and I will be keeping up with it.

Safety and Sensibility

2007-10-04T18:20:00.000+01:00

I twigged the other night one of the reasons Billy Talentless really annoys me. He has pretty much self appointed himself Health and Safety head of the lab group and has also got himself another H&S related role across the department. Like I think I said in an earlier post I think proper H&S precautions and attitudes in the lab are really important. Unfortunately Billy has taken on these roles not because he cares about best working practices and similar in the lab, but because he likes to make himself feel important by being able to antagonise people and tell them off. He always makes a big deal to me how he is going to give such-and-such a bollocking for not being safe in the lab and is always sending out a million emails that generally get automatically deleted by most of the lab group as he is very much seen as the Boy Who Cried Wolf. He is truely appalling at dealing with other people and I've never seen him modify his behaviour and attitude to fit a situation as ultimately it is all about him. Often in situations I think people respond better if you treat them like adults, have a quiet word with them rather than first off get the secretary to send out an email detailing the health and safety breach (generally only something very minor) and humiliate them in front of the entire lab group.

A lab called home

2007-09-30T18:48:00.000+01:00

I'm a bit peeved tonight as I came into work to make up some plates and bits in advance of all the biology bits I have to do this week. Unfortunately I didn't do the main prep I wanted as I couldn't find the antibiotics to make up into my plates. I like working on a project that uses so many different skills and is so interdisciplinary but I am getting a bit tired of being a bit of an itinerant scientist and not being settled in just a single lab (or even just a single department) like most of the people around me. It's especially hard going over to the biology lab as I use it so infrequently and I don't really know all the protocols and particular lab proceedures and culture for doing stuff. I just slip in, use all the materials and equipment I need for a week and then disappear for another 6 months or more. It is hard as there are some big personalities in the lab and they are all used to working together all the time and I find it very hard to speak to new people, ask questions and make new friends. Ideally I like to pop into the lab at strange times to do as much as possible out the way of everyone else, but at the same time my efforts are thwarted by not knowing where stuff I need is kept and not wanting to rummage around the millions of fridges, freezers and cupboards to find stuff.

Another thing which is getting me down a bit is that I do very little lab work in the department where my office is based and again it's hard to get to know people and make friends when working on such a different project and not being around all the time so I miss out on all the coffee break bonding and stuff which goes towards getting to know colleagues and stuff. Being multidepartment gets really physically tiring as the 3 labs/departments I work in are separated by up to a 10 minute walk (depending on how much stuff I am carrying with me).

Enough moaning, I will be up bright and early tomorrow for the gym and hopefully get into work early, finish the stuff I wanted to do tonight and prepare everything else for the week and get on with more exciting sciencey stuff. I also get a minion for the first time ever so I hope they are reasonably bright and independent and interested in the project.

All Change

2007-09-26T13:22:00.000+01:00

It's the start of a new academic year and it's all change around here. One of the students I have been particularly close to in my old lab group finally submitted his thesis and is leaving the department. Another student in my old lab group is just about finishing up in the lab and will hopefully be written up and submitted in reasonable time (my old supervisor seems very keen on traumatising his now unpaid, stressed students by trying to get them to help project students and stuff in the lab and not being at all helpful with actually writing up and getting submitted in a reasonable time frame. I could post loads about how out of order my PhD supervisor was with the writing up and submission phase of doing a thesis). It will be so quiet in the lab space I do most of my experimental work as there are loads of people due to finish this coming academic year and very few new students to take their place. Apparently this pretty much comes down the RAE and it not being such a good financial deal for the centre to have lots of PhD students anymore, they are more interested in recruiting research fellowes. It is a real shame as there has been quite a buzz around the centre with lots of sociable students and people being busy and productive and now it's really quiet and empty a lot of the time.

It's not quite all doom and gloom and emptiness as there is a new PhD student just starting with my current boss. I was showing him the experimental system we use and how to prepare samples and stuff and had a good chat with him and he seems great. He is certainly competent and sensible in the lab and seems to be careful and quick at getting to grips with everything. It seems like we are quite lucky to be getting a new student in the lab as there seem to be very few new students in any of the labs I work in this year. It's also slightly disappointing to see that out of the few new students, there isn't a single female this time around.

Made up martyr

2007-09-24T12:57:00.000+01:00

The peace and quiet of the past week is back to being disrupted again now that the particularly infuriating post doc (we call him Billy Talentless as he is a bit like the slightly strange lead singer of Canadian rockers Billy Talent - except he's a waste of space and has no percievable talents at work) is back from a conference.

We were having coffee a couple of weeks ago and Billy was moaning how he has been made a particular safety officer and how the head safety people must have caught him on a good day to get him to do it. This totally did my head in as Billy is the most interfering annoying idiot and likes to concern himself (mostly in slightly inappropriate ways) with health and safety things in the group and wider department. Fine, if you want to be involved in H&S go ahead and do it, I have a big interest in H&S being adhered to properly at work myself, and am not ashamed to say it's a big important thing for me and I applaud anyone who wants to make the extra effort to take a bigger role in ensuring H&S is done properly in the department. What really got me was the fact he moaned about doing it when everyone knows it's what he absolutely loves. I had no intention of massaging his ego and pointed out in front of everyone that he should quit complaining as we all know he totally loves it really. I'm not really a fan of laughing at other people's expense, but I can't help but think he really did bring it on himself.

Volunteering

2007-09-21T19:42:00.000+01:00

I have been a total wreck at work this week after staying up until stupidly late on Monday night doing volunteering. I don't mind giving up my time to help others, in fact I think it's really important and is one of the reasons I do it. But I got a bit caught out this time and will have to keep a close eye on things to make sure I don't inadvertantly get signed up for things that will interfere with work and stuff, like late nights. Still at least it's friday and I will make sure I get plenty of sleep in over the weekend and be able to re-set my body clock properly for next week and get lots done in the lab. I'm looking forward to next week as one of my friends is finally submitting his thesis and I get to properly help and supervise a student in the lab. On the downside another part of my experimental system has gone strange and now I can't even get really simple control experiments to work. But this isn't quite as bad as it could have been as I think this new problem actually means that the huge problem I thought I had is actually OK. Fingers crossed I will be able to sort it out next week. It was sorting out another problem with the system which actually flagged up this new peculiarity, so hopefully things are smoothing out and I will be able to get some decent data quickly and soon.

Avast ye scurvy dogs

2007-09-19T06:47:00.000+01:00

Today is International Speak Like a Pirate day where I am planning on thoroughly confusing most of my workmates. Although that's nothing new as no one understands what I'm on about most of the time anyway!

Offices

2007-09-07T11:43:00.000+01:00

I am so glad it's finally friday. I've managed to get all my data processed and all the gaps filled in, now all I have to do is put it into some sensible sort of summary graphs and figure out where exactly I am with everything. Fortunately it has been quite quiet and bearable in the office as PhoneBoy has mostly been working from home this week. Although my ears are ringing today after he spent a good half hour or more wittering on to some random supply company wheedling for a discount on equipment. I really don't like the office I am based in most of the time. The office has the most rubbish layout with desks facing walls so everyone has their back to one another and it gets really hot and stuffy when the sun comes round the windows during the day. One thing I've noticed is that I'm the only person in the office with any sort of personal decoration on my desk, everyone else on has stuff like the university wall planner or calendar and then their computer and the odd paper and some dull stationary. I love my little space of wall where I have stuck up loads of postcards and pictures and the most random calendar of vegetables shaped as animals. Maybe it's a gender thing but I find it really strange that no one else has got anything at all pinned by their desk.

Data

2007-09-05T15:52:00.001+01:00

I am bored to tears with my crappy data. There are so many numbers and graphs which come out of an average day in the lab, all of which need editing and processing with the most crappy software ever, then key values taken out and summarised in an excel file, which then have the 2 or so key values from the whole day to be put in origin and excel and finally when I have done enough decent consecutive experiments, made into a graph. On the one hand I love being able to generate loads and loads of data in a day, but then again I hate summarising it down to such a tiddly point in the Big Scheme of Things.

At the moment I'm realising how poorly I summarised some of my earlier data and am now going through my old lab books and computer files and trying to get everything sorted out neatly and completely. It's so dull. At least one of the PhD students is back and so I got a good gossip in earlier, and have been speaking to a couple of other students who have come by the office to ask questions and stuff. I get really down on myself and thinking I don't know anything, whereas in reality I am actually really knowledgable on my subject. All I really need to do is make more effort on the bench side of things and concentrate on getting a lot of good results and going through the data promptly and thoroughly when I get it.

Owwwwwwwww

2007-09-04T09:51:00.000+01:00

I joined the gym just around the corner from my house last week as I am fed up of being a lumpy, tired out grump and figured that a bit of exercise would probably be very beneficial. I've never ever been to a gym in my entire life until this week and I was quite suprised how nice everyone is and how much there is to do. I am totally suffering this morning as I did a circuits class yesterday. I thought I was going to die during the class, especially when I was totally knackered and realised I'd finished the circuit, only to be told we had to do it all again when my legs were already turned to jelly. I managed it and was pretty pleased with myself but now today my legs and bum are very stiff and I am like an old woman, especially when I have to sit down or get out of a chair.

Compliments

2007-08-31T14:04:00.000+01:00

My lab work is still going totally and utterly pants but I'm still plodding through and trying to be methodical and careful to try and figure out what's going on with my samples. As I've been putting the hours in the lab I've been having plenty of chats with the most junior PhD student in the lab who works for my ex-boss (my slightly more effective PhD supervisor) and it seems like the nagging and crazy encouragement and enthusiasm I have been showing him and his project has actually been helpful. I really hated being so isolated in the lab and not having anyone but my boss to ask questions or be interested in my project (and even then as soon as my boss got a visiting student, undergrad project student or anyone else in the lab I got totally ignored and forgotten about) so I have been making a real effort with him to encourage him and be interested in his project (he is doing it the hard way but I do believe in his project and think it could have some really interesting benefits and uses).

Anyway we were both in the lab yesterday and my experiment still wasn't quite behaving but I heard a little yelp of joy from the next bay for about the first time ever, usually junior is really down on his project and whinges about it lots. Anyway he had got possibly the best and most totally ace and skill results of his PhD so far which really confirm the whole idea and concept of the project. As we were chatting about these new promising results he thanked me for the interest, enthusiasm and faith I'd shown in him and his project which was really sweet. Sometimes I worried that I was maybe a bit overboard and/or out of place with my interest in him and the project but it seems not. It was even nicer to be thanked as I was feeling a bit down about everything and how I feel that I am being really supportive to all the current PhD students around me and how no one took the time to be like that during my PhD or as I am now. I am still a solitary little lab person stuck in a room on my own for large parts of the day and with no other people on the project and only my PI to talk to about data, results and experimental difficulties.

Still not working

2007-08-24T16:44:00.001+01:00

I am so bummed out. I still haven't sorted out my activity problems. The only thing I can think is the problem is that all my samples have gone mad in storage and died or that the preparation method is mucking them up. Looks like I'll be in over the long weekend missing out on the lovely weather and running through a set of 4 experiments which will hopefully give me some sensible guiding data on whether the problem is with my samples and/or with the preparation method. This has been going on so long and I am so fed up with it and having crappy data. I'm hoping that this set of experiments should give me some sort of definite answer. If my samples are dead I am totally stuck as I can't think why they would have lost activity and I don't really have time to make up a new batch before I have to give a big talk on my work. Also I would like to figure out why they have suddenly gone screwy so it doesn't happen again.

I am still hoping to pop out into the sunshine a bit to get some nice things in the shops. And even better is that I don't need to feel guilty as it seems like HR picked up that I'm finally graduated and am officially a proper post doc rather than a bog standard research assistant so I finally got a pay rise this month. At the moment I have my eye on a new school bag (a funky patterned messenger bag which is practical and not too bulky) and some new trainers for wearing with dark slim leg jeans. Woo hoo. Also I think I'm looking forward to my friends hen night which is a murder mystery dinner party in fancy dress. I still need to sort out my outfit and will probably have to brave Primark to get something. I think Primark is probably the best motivation for getting me out of bed and at work early tomorrow, the queues in Primark are absolutely mental. It's not a place I ever usually bother shopping at but it's currently rammed with ugly hippy stuff that will suit the character of the person I'm meant to be at the dinner party and is cheap enough that I don't mind buying something I will only wear once.

Today is another day

2007-08-23T11:32:00.001+01:00

So far, fingers crossed, everything seems to be going really well. The sun is shining, my sample was dead easy to set up with another perfect surface and I'm in a very cheerful mood looking forward to getting some good results and the long bank holiday weekend.

Not my day

2007-08-22T17:48:00.000+01:00

Man alive I don't believe it. I was super efficient all morning sorting out new samples for experiments today from a couple of old archive samples in the freezer to check that I'm not going mad and also to fill in a couple of points for this scary talk I'm giving in a few weeks. I was zipping across campus between labs and dodging the millions of builders lorries which I'm sure are out to get me, the building round here is totally doing my head in, everything is dusty, grubby and in my way. Anyhow I was happy with my speedy efficient ways until I finished my first experimental run and realised the stupid set up was leaking. I thought with the new screws and stuff that it was all pretty water tight, but apparently not. Anyway managed to get everything set up again (I was determined to get everything set up for a good experiment as I had the best surface in a long while so I wanted to make the most of it). But even though my set up wasn't leaking, I was still getting results that were characteristic of a leaky experimental set up and in the end I had to go off for cake. Unfortunately cake did not magically solve my strange leaky looking problems but I have a good idea of what the problem is and will try fixing it tomorrow as it's too late to restart anything today and I have also run out of surfaces. Fingers crossed tomorrow I will have a good surface, no leakiness and some decent activity. Generally I find I can get 1 out of 3 right but unfortunately the results aren't useful unless I can coordinate all of it together at once.

I think one of the best things I ever learnt as an undergrad was about zen and the art of practical experiments. If the going gets really bad, just leave everything on the bench, step out for a cup of tea and large cake and then come back and try to sort it again, rather than staying there and getting so annoyed something finally breaks putting you even further back in the experiment.

Argh

2007-08-17T10:07:00.000+01:00

Well first day back in the lab was totally pants. Still stuck with the same problems which have blighted me off and on since Easter. Today I have decided that going into the lab will just depress me so I am going to have a mega data clean up and sort out, sort out all my files on my computer, sort out all the literature I have scattered about on my project and get myself totally up to speed for this talk I have next month and try and pin down the problems I've been having and to blast through the last data bits. Wish me luck!

In the mood

2007-08-15T16:03:00.001+01:00

I am so not in the mood for work today having just got off holiday. It was so great to go on holiday and not worry about work - I totally didn't have any proper holidays while I was doing my PhD and this was the first time I've been abroad since finishing so it was extra nice. I had such a great time mooching about in the sunshine and eating loads of cake, cheese and ice cream. The weather was unbeliveably perfect, sunny but with a cool breeze so warm enough to swim outdoors but not get sticky and sweaty and minging. Hot temperatures don't agree with me and just send me floppy, whereas this holiday I got lots of sunshine but cool enough for going out and about and doing stuff.

Now I'm back and it's as grey, damp and depressing as ever. I've got heaps and heaps of work to do to try and figure out all my data and get some definite numbers out of it. I'm really bored of it now and want to move on to some new stuff, but need to get this finished off properly first. Also I've got railroaded into giving a talk at a research day thing organised by another faculty. It's one of those things I agreed to do as it sounds like it would be good experience for me but will be totally terrifying and stressful to actually do.

Dirty Labs

2007-08-02T11:17:00.000+01:00

Gah - what is it with some of the people around here who seem to be totally incapable of tidying up any sort of mess. I was in the lab yesterday and there was spilt and dried on pirahna solution on the general work bench, pirahna solution shouldn't even be ON that bench, let alone totally left there as a potential hazard for the other lab users. And then I came across a load of spilt anonymous white poweder in the balance - people shouldn't even be weighing out stuff directly in the balance, let alone chucking it about and leaving it a total state. Still at least the big boss has given all the lab users a severe warning and next time there is a problem in the lab, people will get their acess blocked. I have seriously never worked in a lab where people are so downright lazy and dangerous before. I feel like such a spod for continually pointing out all the problems in the lab but I figure someone should do it.

Books

2007-07-30T20:56:00.000+01:00

My foot is much better now but I'm still using it as a bit of an excuse to not get on with labwork too quickly (that and I will be quite buggered if it gets bad again as labwork requires a lot of walking). I have been pootling down to the library which is probably the best stocked of anywhere I've ever worked and studied. I had real real trouble writing up the background theory for my thesis as there were really no good, recent, intelligible to to the beginner texts on the subject. I found myself really going right back to basic physical chemistry texts and working my way backwards and forwards through the whole range of mostly ancient very mathematical based books to teach myself the theory. Anyway, I was going through the books in the library to read up on some more related theory and found a heap of new books on the topic. A bit late for me but a definite sign that the field is becoming a bit hotter and popular and these new texts should be great for new people entering the field. What's really good about these new books is that they are modern (it got so tedious finding the most relevant books for my thesis were all published before I was born or when I was only at primary school) and are not written for the crazy brained maths people, but are more friendly clear introductions and also cover a lot of practical and experimental detail which I think is really nice to see. Once I've worked my way through the books some more this week I will be emailing all the students I know working on the topic to look through the books.

Ow!

2007-07-26T11:19:00.000+01:00

Finally on the way back into the lab and starting some experiments except that I can't physically make it to the lab as I seem to have done in my foot and ankle so I can't walk anywhere, just hobble about rather painfully. I have no idea how I managed to do this but fingers crossed it'll get better quickly.

Still Tired

2007-07-25T15:50:00.001+01:00

Still not into work today either. Just tired and confused a bit like the weather I think. I didn't sleep well last night as people in the next road were having a party and playing loud techno - I thought I had finally found a techno free area of the city to live in but doesn't seem like I have. I think I will slack off work soon as I'm really not getting much done and I would probably feel better after a shower, lie down and going out and getting some proper food and the house a bit tidier. Ever since himself got sick earlier in the year and I got stuck having to do all the chores I discovered that it is possible to come home after a busy day and get all the housework and everything done, but it's hard and leaves little time for anything else and since then I've found general disorder and mess left lying around annoys me much more than it ever did previously, but now himself is mostly better I refuse to do all the chores and housework but have yet to persuade him to tidy up more efficiently on a weekday and resent having to do it all myself.

In other news the irritating colleague had his baby with him in work today. I managed to mostly ignore it as I do not do babies. The baby was suprisingly well behaved and even better it made the irritating colleague quieter than ever in the office. Still I finally got some more earphones to keep in my desk at work so I can listen to loud industrial music when he really gets going and makes too much noise for me to concentrate or work with.

Go Slow

2007-07-24T16:39:00.000+01:00

I am having a bit of a go slow today and trying to get myself back into work mode after just over a week away at a conference. The weeks running up to the conference were totally hectic as I was desperately trying to repeat some experiments I'd originally done at the wrong dilution to present at the conference. Then I finally had my PhD graduation and then I was supervising an A level work experience student and squeezing in a bunch of interesting seminars in between the supervising. The conference was no let up as I had just under an hours commute to get to the venue and the days were loooooooooong. I heard and saw some interesting science but I was glad when it was over and I could finally get a lie in! And then it took me 8 hours to do what is usually a 2.5 hour trip to get back home so I am not exactly in the refreshed and revived and motivated mood I was hoping to be in when I came back to work!

Graduation

2007-07-08T11:28:00.001+01:00

I'm finally graduating this coming week and I'm really looking forward to it. Especially as I had a bit of a shopping binge and got some totally fab comfy shiny silver high heels and some perfect smart trousers to wear at it, and a lot of posh make up, I am determined not to look like a spoddy haggard gurning loon in my graduation photos.

I think I am really looking forward to graduation now as i'm back on a bit of an even keel, feel really comfortable and happy with the way I'm working in my current job and feel like I've finally put the whole sorry PhD episode behind me and got over it. I hated pretty much everything about my PhD, the department, my supervisors, my project, my colleagues, the actual science in it. But I did it, and I did it all myself pretty much entirely unsupported and now it's finally over and no one can take the achievement away from me. I'm pretty glad that it worked out that I missed the earlier graduation as I feel like I've had enough time to put the whole thing behind me and can enjoy being proud at receiving my PhD.

Bored

2007-07-04T16:06:00.000+01:00

I knew there was a downside to working so hard and so long in the lab recently, all the dull data processing and analysis. I love doing the bench work (mostly) and I love having the neat finalised results, it's just the faffing about with the instrument software, excel and all the rest of it inbetween which I'm not so keen on. Still being serenaded by a bit of cheesy Duran Duran so it's not too bad. And the sooner this is done, the sooner I can get back into the lab and get more data to go through and firm up the results.

Feeling Better

2007-07-03T16:17:00.000+01:00

Finally feeling like I'm shaking off this cold, although soggy feet again today so won't be suprised if it comes back again. I am so sick of the rain, I bet it will be glorious sunshine for exactly 1 week when I'm away at a conference, then crap again. Still keeping really busy in the lab trying to get these last results to tie up my data, I'm trying really hard at the moment as I really want to make a good impression with people there, I doubt there will be such a good opportunity for putting myself out there and networking for quite a while.

Office Twat

2007-07-03T16:08:00.000+01:00

Argh. The irritating colleague (Billy Talentless as the other half calls him when I moan about him at home) has just started slagging off mine and another colleagues laptops. I am not bothered about computers, I tend to use what I get given, which for the past 5 years or so, have been Dells. And for the most part they have run totally fine for me (except for the hard drive dying the day before I was due to print and hand in my thesis!). Unlike his Samsung which has had an engineer out at least 5 times this past year! What a bloody cheek, he was still disagreeing (in his irritating shouty voice) as I pointed out the fact that I have never had an engineer out to sort my computer and he has. Idiot - I am going back to the lab where I don't have to be near him.

Ow!

2007-06-25T08:02:00.000+01:00

Bleugh this is not the way to start the week. I have been stuck at home all weekend with a horrible cold which is just getting worse so I got no sleep last night as I was trying to cough up a lung and didn't get any of the heaps of work I needed to do over the weekend done. And my wisdom teeth are hurting and it's totally chucking it down with rain at the moment.

Communal Lab

2007-06-22T10:56:00.000+01:00

Mostly I like working in a communal lab as it means I get to see more people, catch up on gossip and chat away while making samples BUT it would be so much better if people stopped stealing and borrowing away the communal equipment, I don't have the time or inclination to go around all the rest of the labs in the building to see who has taken my marker pen, pipette, ruler, reagent bottle etc and actually kept to the cleaning rota. I totally scrubbed clean the lab and cleared all the surfaces, cleaned and tidyed the glasswear, sorted the skanky mouldy water bath only a few weeks ago and it is already looking like total shit tip again. Grrrrrrrr. I'd send out a stroppy email to the other users but I know that it won't make any difference to people's behaviour.

Blergh

2007-06-19T11:42:00.000+01:00

Dunno what's happened to my motviation recently. I've been a pretty busy bunny in the lab but it's been frustrating as I've not been getting consistent results. I hate having to process rubbish data, if everything has been going well and sucessfully I'm usually pretty keen to get all the data sorted and stuck in my lab book and waved at my boss, but when it's rubbish mostly I want to procrastinate or bang my head on the desk in frustration. But it's important to still go through all the data and try and figure out where all the problems are coming from. So if it's so important still why can't I do it? Argh. I suppose logging off here would be a start though.

Reassured

2007-06-18T20:33:00.000+01:00

I was quite reassured the other day to see my typically cool, calm and self assured boss fretting over a departmental talk he had to give. It was a special talk related to a prize he was awarded and amongst a few other talks to other departmental award winners. It was reassuring to see that he really was human and gets worried sometimes (usually I am so in awe of him as he's so clever, funny and chilled). It's definitely good to see that people who seem totally on the ball and unflappable on the outside can still feel as imposterish and worried on the inside.

The only downside to this talk as it made me realise even more how hard it is to explain my research and results to audiences. Being between the sciences is great most of the time but when time is limited and you need to explain the significance of the results, it is especially hard when the majority/all the audience are totally unfamiliar with the experimental technique. Still it means I always work hard whenever I have to give a presentation and means I'm not likely to rest on my laurels and risk losing the audience as I have assumed too much previous knowledge, although it's a fine line not being too patronising

Professional Societies

2007-06-11T15:27:00.000+01:00

Being a bit confused as to exactly what sort of scientist I am these days, I can't really figure what (if any) professional societies I should join. My work crosses the 3 main science subjects so I could join the 3 main socieites, but that seems a bit excessive and redundant. I'm not sure whether I should go with the society most closely related to the department which employs me and will (hopefully) support me with some of the issues I face in my current environment or whether I should go with a society more closely associated with my first degree and is still relevant to my current project and is how I most readily identify myself, or should I go with the society most related to the main experimental technique and methods I use? Should I join all 3? none? find a more specialist society to join? I really have no idea at the moment.

Senior Scientist

2007-06-07T23:17:00.000+01:00

I've been totally anxious all day for various reasons but today I got thinking about my current fairly haphazard career so far and that of my peers. One of the thing which has been really different for me compared to everyone else I know still heading the academic route is that they have had so much more support throughout their projects. I drastically changed fields (unintentionally but impossible to change without scuppering my chances of ever getting PhD funding again) and was the senior person in the lab after the PI, and again I'm in the same situation. Sometimes I think it's OK and think "wow - I am doing a great job getting all this sorted and understood in my head on my own" but at the same time it is really hard as there are no other groups in the university doing the same techniques as me and that being spread across several departments makes it hard to have a good support network and close friends and people to ask troubleshooting questions and really stupid clarifications. Mostly my bosses are fine but sometimes I don't want to bother them or feel like the question is way too stupid and I don't want to look like even more of a dunce to them than they think of me already.

where are the women?

2007-06-07T14:58:00.000+01:00

Feeling a bit mooped again today. Stuff is going pretty well with the lab this week which is good and I am sporting a lovely new haircut which always makes me feel good but as I was walking about campus today I was wondering where all the women were. I know I work in a male dominated area and being (one of) the only is something I generally just have to live with but sometimes it would be so nice to have someone to notice my new swishy hair-do, to have as a role model and make me feel a bit more 'at home'.

I think I'm going to get in trouble as I've not arranged my final probation meeting but I just don't want to see my advisor/mentor dude. He seemed OK when I've seen him about but I felt my mid-way probation meeting was a total waste of time and he was totally disinterested in me, just checking I felt like I was doing something publishable. Grrrrrr.

Enough moping and mooping and time to get back to updating the labbook and going through current data.

Swimming

2007-06-04T16:51:00.000+01:00

The past couple of weekends I've had nothing much (at all) to do so I've taken myself and my incredibly expensive swimming costume to the local pool and gone for a swim. I had totally forgotten just how much I like swimming (desipite having gone through another swim phase just a few years ago). The local pool really suits me as it's not too busy, not full of posers or pro swimmers. At the weekends it's all families and the odd random person pootling up and down the roped off lane. It's lovely and toasty warm and quite small so I can do lots of lengths and feel pleased with myself and not totally knackered or rubbish by the end of it. I really enjoyed the last session as I could totally zone out and not think or worry about much and not feel bad that I was wasting away more of my life.

I think swimming is great as it is actually a sport I can do comfortably without worrying about getting horribly sweaty and bright red within 5 minutes of getting started, I don't worry about stuff rubbing or wobbling about uncontrolably and I reckon no one looks great in a swimsuit and once you're in the water it's all distorted and everyone looks even stranger anyway so it doesn't make me look enviously at other peoples bodies.

Yay for swimming

Brrrrrrrrrrr

2007-05-30T11:39:00.000+01:00

What happened to the sunshine. I am wearing my lovely new cardi and jeans and totally freezing my tits off in the office today. I was in such a happy sunny mood decked out in my sophisticated (for me at least) clothes and now I'm stuck in a crummy cold office with grey moopy windows wondering what happened to summer. I was all keen to get to work and get going on my 'to do' list but instead I've been faffing about on the internet and being entirely unproductive. I think I definitely work better in sunny weather. When I'm stuck in the lab looking out at sunshine and sunny days I feel like I want to make the most of the experiment and get it done quickly and effectively as I'm missing out on glorious relaxing sunshine wheras in the winter I take ages to do stuff and am a bit crap as there is no motivation to make me think there are better/other things I could be doing with myself.

Denied

2007-05-30T11:34:00.000+01:00

Today I'm feeling unreasonably sad. I figured that being one of the least ill people I know I should really get around to donating blood. I went along to the drop in donor centre in town, got all the forms filled out, was relieved to find I wasn't anaemic and got settled on the bed only to be prodded by 3 different nurses on both arms to find a vein. Eventually I was told my veins are just too small to be useful for donating blood. I felt so totally rubbish walking out without having donated anythign while all these other people were lying about donating. I think I'll have to take up body building or something to get myself some nice big juicy veins and try again!

Still Tired

2007-05-16T13:14:00.000+01:00

Still not caught up on missed sleep from the weekend and not sleeping any better at the moment which isn't good. Also the lack of sleep coupled with long infuriating days at work trying to do stuff in various different labs isn't helping with the tirdness, irritiability and grumpiness. I had a right face on all of yesterday and can't see my mood improving anytime soon. Work is going poo what with equipment breaking and samples generally not behaving and doing what they should.

I think I could do with a holiday but can't see anything like that coming up soon (if at all ever again)

Science Machines

2007-05-15T16:44:00.000+01:00

I'm in quite a grump today. I am still tired and a bit stressed after the weekend and haven't caught up on my sleep properly. Then today I finally got all my samples prepared for characterisation on a bit of kit which then went down just as my first samples were ready to load. Typical! And even worse, the chap who is in charge of the equipment is off this afternoon so all my carefully and lovingly prepared samples will be sitting around all night. Oh well. Hopefully tomorrow I will get double the amount of super results done to make up for it - I live in hope.

I knew it couldn't last

2007-05-09T17:23:00.000+01:00

Now not only am I totally tired from trying to work in 3 separate buildings spread across campus this week, I am now WET and tired. Roll on the weekend and eurovision

A bit of a moan

2007-05-03T13:15:00.000+01:00

Sooooooo tired today. The lab work has been going pretty well. I think I'm getting a feel for it and hopefully I will be able to repeat the proceedures in a month or so to really get it lodged in my brain and stuff so I can breeze through it and get loads of stuff for other experiments. It's been good being in a different lab which has been nice and chilled and things have worked out pretty nicely there. Everyone has been helpful and answered my really stupid questions and stuff. Has been quite good for motivating me with my project and appreciate my fantastic boss even more. He is so highly rated by everyone, it's amazing - but fair.

Other stuff is not going so well though. The boyfriend is poorly again and it's so draining. I feel really bad for him as he's obviously in a lot of pain and it is obvious to see the painful problems developing and worsening. It is just hard for me as I try and be sympathetic to his problems and needs and feel like a selfish cow for resenting him sometimes. It's just hard as I can't really speak to people at work about it and stuff. It is just hard for me to come home after a long day at work and see him laying in bed or on the sofa, having just watched tv, DVDs, computer games all day, and then for me to go to the shops for food/drink, cook dinner, wash up, tidy up, do the laundry etc. He's really good when he is healthy at sharing the chores equally and I know that if he didn't have his problems he would help if he could. It just gets me down sometimes and feels like my life is slipping away a bit and has no fun to it anymore and I don't know what to do.

Distractions

2007-04-27T16:49:00.000+01:00

Not had much of a productive week at all unfortunately. I have had stuff planned and wanted to get stuff done. But when it came down to it I faffed about taking too long to make samples, got put off because one small thing I needed wasn't working and I didn't know how to deal with it. Finally perked up a bit more this afternoon (although after a morning which was a total washout - mostly due to my slowness and disorganisation) and am more motivated to getting a piece of kit working and used for my experiments. I have been putting off dealing with this bit of kit for 3 months already so I can't get too smug with myself.

I have no idea what I do with myself in the mornings but I've noticed I can easily spend 2.5 hours between waking up and sitting at my desk at work. Considering it only takes 30 mins to walk in or get the bus I seriously don't know what I do which takes up all the time. And then I can easily spend another hour not really getting much done once I finally reach work. It's a bit of a vicious cycle though as when I am late getting started properly at work, I stay later. Feels like life is totally slipping away with me and I don't know how to stop it and reel it back in and get going in a better way.

No Stamina

2007-04-19T14:25:00.000+01:00

I can't wait for this week to be over. It's been pretty good and I've been getting on OK at the new lab stuff. I've been getting in pretty early (for me at least) and been pretty productive and good at sorting out stuff. But now it's Thursday I can feel a distinct lack of motivation creeping up at me and feeling really tired. Yesterday was a really long day as I stayed on campus for training which was brilliant, and I was especially pleased to realise how much I still remembered and was able to do proficiently.

It's also pretty quiet in the office at the moment and I've not had that much social/relaxation time. It's mostly been work, thinking, reading and stuff. I know I expect too much of myself and beat myself up for not achieving as much as I thought I could do which just ends up in a vicious cycle of me getting depressed and doing even less work and feeling worse etc etc. Still I gave a lab talk yesterday which went pretty well. I was OK at explaining my data and what I thought some of it meant. And after my boss was pretty good and positive and gave me some constructive comments about how I can be better next time I give a talk. He also thinks my progress has been pretty satisfactory and is encouraging and motivating me to really get on with things and fill in my data now I've settled in and have a pretty good understanding of how the experiments and stuff go.

Aims for the next month!

2007-04-18T17:00:00.000+01:00

If I put them here maybe I won't forget or lose them and actually achieve them! Fingers crossed

Finish sample prep and purifications
Characterise sample prep (gel, TEM, optical microscope, AFM, electro - eek that's more than I thought!)
Overcome glovebox fears

Dirty Hoe

2007-04-18T13:40:00.000+01:00

I got colonies. I'm glad I did 3 plates though as it seems like I managed to contaminate 2 of them. But still 1 clean plate with some colonies seems like an OK start. Especially as I had to do them old school and it's been ages since I did any of this stuff. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have loads of bacteria ready for the purifications.

I am like the project student from hell

2007-04-17T12:17:00.000+01:00

Slowly started off making up a few solutions in the lab this morning. Off to autoclave stuff straight after lunch and see if I can get some bacteria to grow tonight. I feel like such a pain in the lab though. All the stuff I'm doing is really simple and I've done it all before but a long time ago in a different lab. At the moment I'm asking the stupidest questions like where the tape is, what is the best size flask to use, what incubators to use, how to make up stuff for small amounts and it's all very slow. Hopefully my confidence will improve during the week and I will get better and quicker at it and it will all work. But at the moment I'm still feeling very annoying and nervy in the lab.

Trepidation

2007-04-16T22:07:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow, all being well and COSHHed up I should be doing some simple biochemistry for the first time in many many years. Fingers crossed it will all work well and I will have a truckload of sample for lots of exciting experiments I need to get done before the conference in a couple of months.

Was suprisingly nice to be back at work, there is a new person in the office who seems fairly normal and it was nice to see my boss and feel fairly organised and productive. Fingers crossed this will carry through the whole week.

Procrastinitis

2007-04-03T22:48:00.000+01:00

I think the short week is getting to me a bit this week. I had a bad bad case of procrastination (and the fuzzy hangover didn't help things much either) today. Yesterday I was pretty well motivated and doing OK with gluing data in my lab book and sorting stuff. Today has just been totally rubbish. Still I'm really, really looking forward to getting started after Easter and getting a heap of sample to polish off this data. I think tomorrow I need to do something in more of a lab direction (maybe figure out stuff with the box and stuff related to that) and also sort out conference registration and abstracts and getting paid.

Mooped

2007-03-29T15:57:00.000+01:00

Can't get going with work today at all. It's really quiet in the department as the undergrads are on holiday and half my group are away at a conference. So far I have totally tidyed out my desk (man alive I had no idea quite how bad it was. Hopefully I can try and keep it reasonably organised from now on) and faffed about on the internet. The weather certainly isn't helping things much either. It's all grey, wet and totally depressing out there. Still at least it's just a 4 day week for me as tomorrow is the boyfriend's graduation. Hope the weather improves a bit for it though.

Miscommunication

2007-03-28T18:55:00.000+01:00

Feeling a bit bummed out at the moment as I gave possibly the worst work presentation of my life. I really need to get my presentations written up properly well in advance of the actual presentation date I think so that it's all clear in my head, not bogged down in all the background of reading and data analysis I've done when actually writing the presentation. Also I really need to practise my talks on the boyfriend as he is handy having the same background knowledge of my work as the average person in the department I present to.

To me, my work is great, and I think I'm pretty good at getting my ideas and work across to people outside the area on a one-to-one basis, but presenting to a mixed group is a lot harder. In practise my experimental system and results are pretty nice and straightforward but filling in enough background to explain why the work is worth doing and make sense to people is much much harder.

Networking

2007-03-27T08:13:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I think I'm really not that cut out to be a scientist and stuff as I see my attitude to work seems so different to most other people around me. Sometimes I don't know whether it's an age, gender, cultural or discipline thing, or if it's just me. I went along to a cross faculty networking event which I thought it was great. It was great to practise talking about what I do briefly and in very general terms to people with very little biology or chemistry background. I think I managed to put myself and my project across pretty well as a couple of people were interested in talking to me longer about my work and general ideas. Despite this small personal sucess it was pretty sad to see such a low turnout to the event. Judging by the number of namebadges left on the registration table less than half the people who registered actually bothered to turn up, and that didn't seem to be many people to start with.

However, it was really good for me as I met a really nice newish postdoc in the department who is keen to start up/be involved with more postdoc networking, socialising, training in the department and we had a really good chat with the person in charge of training and skills for staff in the faculty. Unfortunately I'm now stuck in a department where the head of school doesn't believe in training (and also doesn't believe people like me can be successful - but that's a whole other kettle of fish for a post in the future) but hopefully if people like me and this other postdoc can put the word about and provide positive feedback from training and networking events hopefully things should keep on getting better.

Procrastinitis

2007-03-20T10:42:00.000+01:00

Well I'm pretty much done with the monster data analysis and catch up. Now I just need to print out all the summaries and stuff, glue them into the labbook and think about the next round of experiments. What I really want to get cracking on is the glovebox but what with conferences and holidays I'm not sure that it's really going to be possible until after Easter.

I suppose I should get on with some of this reading and literature survey and working on a lab talk.

Pimp my picture

2007-03-16T13:14:00.000+01:00

I am soooooooo glad it's friday. Nearly finished off half the data analysis but now I'm staring blankly at 100s of pictures which all look the same and need some serious tweaking, fiddling and general pimping before giving to my boss later this afternoon. Unfortunately I don't really understand how to do and it takes ages just to find the right file to pimp up and stuff.

I am so annoyed with myself for so totally neglecting all this data which needs looking over. I am a bit of a data whore and love being in the lab generating it all but I am so not keen on sitting in front of the computer processing and compiling it but I am so ashamed I neglected it so completely and for so long. In fact it's so bad at the moment it almost makes me wish I was back in a bio lab spending days doing qualitative rather than quantitative stuff. Still at least this week has been a bit of a wake up call for getting myself better organised and on the ball and that quite a lot of this data is not quite as bad as I first thought.

Right off to launch myself back into the miseries of origin to try and get a few more sensible looking graphs out of this mound of data. I may be some time

it's oh so quiet

2007-03-15T14:17:00.000+01:00

Man alive I am getting in a worse and worse mood this week. I've been stuck at the computer reviewing and sorting and generally piecing together all my data but I feel like I'm also going totally mad. I've hardly spoken to anyone at all this week. My office is hardly social central but I think I'm losing it today as I'm not speaking, just stuck listening to an officemate who has been wittering on at people on the phone all bleeding day. Can't he see I'm trying to concentrate and get some work done. And even worse, I find his voice sooooo grating and annoying. Argh. Still it's almost friday and then the weekend where hopefully I might get a bit more conversation and human contact. And then maybe next week I can do a few more experiments in the lab and chat to people over there.

Coffee break

2007-03-14T14:47:00.000+01:00

Like I said before I like my job and I have such a sound boss but it's really lonely. One of the things that gets to me most is the lack of sociable coffee breaks. The students go off and have coffee together but it seems a bit of a post-doc free zone. And the other post docs in my office don't really drink that much coffee, have it at their desk or sometimes just have coffee with 1 other person like a PI or student. The only social coffee I get is if I track down old friends from my old department and pay out for a coffee at one of the places on campus.

Socialising

2007-03-13T19:26:00.000+01:00

Just feeling a bit mooped at the moment as I've had a productive day at the computer doing data analysis but now I need some human interaction and no one from my office ever goes to the pub.

F is for Faffing

2007-01-18T11:54:00.000+01:00

I am possibly the worlds biggest procrastinator and faffer. I don't really know what's happened to me but as I get older I seem to get faffier. It does not make for a good and productive scientist. I seem to be quite disinterested in the actual detail of my work, so I tend to do stuff without thinking, spend more time reading blogs and nonsense on the internet instead of trying to order my life, analyse data, read papers. It's pretty much out of control I think and I don't know how to stop it. I keep planning to start stuff, to change, to take up something new. My faffing tends to mean I don't get to work until about 10am when I mean to get in for just before 9am, I don't get my lunch until about 2pm, I don't get out from work until about 7pm (and usually because I've been doing not much, rather than getting around to any serious work).

I've got a progress meeting with my bosses on monday and god knows how I'm going to explain myself to them, I've got so little work done to show for the past 2 months. It's not like I've tried stuff and it doesn't work, it's that I've not tried, I've just faffed. Help!

weekends

2007-01-15T17:33:00.001+01:00

another weekend. Another wasted 48 hours. I need to find something fun and easy to do over the weekends. It's far far too easy to just stay in bed and do nothing and get totally mooped.

E is for electrochemistry

2007-01-15T17:27:00.000+01:00

Electrochemistry is like a sophster!

Over the past 4 years I have been (un)fortunate enough to enter the field of electrochemistry. It is a strange field, generally overlooked and left out of chemistry where possible. It's awkward, difficult, unusual and the theory can be a right pain in the bum but generally I love it. It can be such a powerful analytical technique which is great as it can be really obvious when you have a problem with the system you're using in the lab (yes I know this is a bad thing but the problem gets flagged up and is reasonably obvious to start with meaning less wasted samples). It requires patience and a lot of understanding but is worth it in the end.