Thursday, July 09, 2009

What does it mean to be a scientist?

So I went over to the Finnerty lab yesterday afternoon, and spent the whole afternoon toiling away - fixing, fetching ice, resectioning, making up solutions, calculating different dilutions of antibody, incubating in blocking solution, pipetting out the antibody solutions.

At 9pm, tired but contented, I carried my precious culture tray down the corridor to the storeroom where sits the big fridge, in which my slices were to spend the next two days rocking back and forth in their little plastic wells. The storeroom door has a heavy spring. My mind was relaxed and thinking about going home. The door sprang back heavily and knocked the tray out of my hands.....

.....which somersaulted through the air in slow motion and crashed to the ground.

Upside down.

I took it back to the lab to salvage but everything was completely trashed - so my whole day was wasted.

I guess this is what it means to be a scientist.

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