I'm just gonna run right through the rain;
I'm just gonna dance right through the pain.
I just wanna feel that rhythm, feel that drum -
let my heart beat louder,
let my heart speak louder than my head!
- Charice, Louder
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"Christa, I'll repay you by continuing to be a total ass to you."
-- "Real cute."
"It's the least I can do."
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Awesome. So awesome.
My day in the laboratory was especially exhausting today! I've been mentally preparing for it for the last week - we've been referring to today as "my crazy day" for a while. Four stem cell protocols performed concurrently with two insulinoma cell protocols! So I spent all morning running between the lab and the tissue culture room, keeping track of four different timers, and by the time I was four hours into the protocols, I was dropping containers and pipette tips everywhere - although I'm unsure if that was entirely fatigue or if it was also my natural clumsiness. I walked away from the lab with an enormous headache from overwork, and was forced to spend the greater part of the afternoon physically crippled by pain and collapse.
But exhausting lab days are common. I've always been one to bite off more protocols than I can chew, sometimes even breaking my jaw trying. However, today stood out, because it was my very first time necessitating my own experimental team. Obviously, I needed to immortalize my achievement through blog!
I actually had other scientists helping me with my experiment! I had my own lackeys! There was overlap between time points of my various experiments, so I actually got to recruit assistance and assign jobs to people! I was preparing antibody solutions while another undergraduate counted my cells for me, I sent my post-doc to aliquot reagents for me as I harvested cells, I had cell photos taken for me while I needed to fix slides with paraformaldehyde.
My goodness. I actually got to delegate and give orders in the lab, and performed successful quality checks! As I was creating additional antibody cocktails, I took note of an unused strip of foil on the lab bench. I approached my post-doc, "Did you remember to cover the fluorescent slides with foil?" His face dropped, realizing that my cells were currently enduring the pain of photobleaching by light exposure, "Oh no, I didn't!" and rushed away with the same motions that I usually made whenever he would correct me. He came back after mending his error, and smiled with pride, "Christa, you're really like, the boss now!"
AKDJSKKLASJDFL YES