The Lab

I’ve been in the lab this week, learning how to do science. As a general rule, I find that the lab and I don’t get on super well. It’s one of those places that makes me all disorientated, at times dizzy, and is just generally an unpleasant experience. I can never find anything. I have an uncanny knack of getting in the way. Or tripping over. Or adding the wrong amount. Or dropping something. It just makes me feel uneasy...

It was a pretty small lab as well… Like I would say, 9 m² at a push, but at least one quarter of the room is filled up with a rather large steel box they told me was an 'important and expensive piece of scientific equipment.' A further eighth of the room is filled benches, two large PC computers and a fume hood type thing that filters air. Had there been just me, this set up would have been cosy. Given that there were three of us (because I needed somebody to tell me what to do and another to provide moral support), it was rather cramped.

How the room made me feel

Actually, the first event of the week was getting the fume hood type thing into the lab. This involved taking the door off its hinges, because the fume hood was too fat to fit through the door. They say science is all about problem solving. I believe a truer word was never spoken. Although, maybe if you have a brain that functions a bit more practically than mine, thinking to take the door off it’s hinges wouldn’t be such a big stretch. If it had been my problem my first reaction probably would have been to cry and then resign myself to the realisation that science was going to have to happen in the hallway. A very useful instinctual response to the situation, I think.

The situation to a tee

We were supposed to be measuring trace metals in seawater. These trace metals have concentrations in the realm of parts per billion which, for those who would like a visual representation, is equivalent to one drop in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Which is not  a lot. At all. Measuring such low concentrations, means everything has to be super clean. This was a real issue for me. Cleaning and I are not the most compatible of ideas. Cleaning makes me want to vomit. For some people, ‘clean,’ like ‘unique,’ is an absolute. It is or it isn’t. There is no middle ground. You cannot have something moderately clean. I find this idea to be an intriguing one, however, it is not one that I abide by. It is not one that I uphold myself. ‘Clean’ for me is a scale from ‘horrifically dirty’ to ‘clean enough.’I usually clean something about one quarter of the way to ‘clean,’ and then carry one my humble way. But apparently our bottles in the lab needed to be cleaned not once but five times before they were considered ‘clean.’ Five times. Clean was definitely an absolute in our lab. In case you're wondering, five is a very large number. Like, very large. 

Pretty much me all week

I’m not the most patient person in the world. Actually, I’m nowhere near the most patient person in the world. It’s a vice of mine. I’m not working on it. I’ve accepted it and moved on. But I did have to wait a lot this week. I had many unsolvable issues and questions that required the assistance of those superior to myself. In order to release some of the tension that was caused by my waiting this week, I became an expert in my own hands. What they look like, their composition, their general robustness and durability. There is a lot of waiting around and a girl has got to fill her time somehow. Fingers really are fascinating though, aren’t they? Quite incredible. And they are amazing how just when you thought that you were bored, they become so interesting all over again. Quite astounding. As a small, but amusing aside… my delightful grandmother informs me that I have stubby fingers that have hideous nail polish on them (Shucks! Thanks Gma!).

 

No wonder I found my hands so interesting

I had one job this week. My one job was to make up a whole lot of solutions at a certain concentration. Which is really difficult. And I failed. Admittedly, I was only about by a factor of 100. 4? 400? Pretty much the same thing, right? It’s a hard life, really.

My conclusion

So now, I’m more or less on holiday. Which is great because it means that I can sit in bed all day and do sweet nothing. At all. Ever again. 

Life is good.