This week I spent quite a lot of time getting my project set up and ready. I did have a day where I had some extra time and so my mentor recommended I shadow some one in the lab and see what other projects were underway. I only managed to get to one person because the day was almost over. I “shadowed” the lab manager. I put shadowed in quotes because he was focused on getting a new ion chromatographer installed and wasn’t doing much lab work. So, I didn’t really see much of what he was doing but since he was just watching these two representatives from the company that sold them the machine install the thing he and I chatted. I ended up with an awesome two-hour tutoring session on bacterial plasmid design and integration! I’m working in a geomicrobiology lab and I learned a lot about genetic engineering. Who would have thought! It comes to show that there is a lot of diversity in skills in all labs and if I (and my cohort) go out of our way to learn more about the others in our labs, we might learn a load more than we were expecting.
This week I also got to write my first protocol. It was a simple one on how to find the working volume of a chemostat but it was an in-depth process. my protocol was like a short novel. It was meant for me to reference as I will need to do it again and so I wrote down the things I thought I might forget. My mentor has this amazing system where I will write a protocol for something that I’m going to do, then, make a copy of that protocol and write notes next to the steps I laid out so that I can describe the things that I did differently than intended. I then go back and make another copy of the protocol to edit if I feel that the old one was not sufficient. This gives me a sort of “to do list” as I work on a task and the copies of old protocols help record the progression of how I approached the task. This also allows me to go back if a new protocol is worse than the older one. I’m learning so much in just the first full week!
The cohort!… wait.
Zoom in.
More.
I SAID MORE!
Would you look at that. He forgot what to say “Cheese.”
hahah your photo series is hilarious! Also, it sounds like you’re learning a lot and having an awesome time doing so! Pretty neat that you got to shadow in the lab.
Let’s climb when this rain finally clears up!