Missing: My Life. Reward if Found!

Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t actually been locked in the -80 freezer, swallowed by the giant centrifuge, or actually died over the past month and a half (it just feels like it). It’s just that I’ve been forced to take a brief hiatus from my life… I expect that we will be reunited in roughly 5-ish years. It’s not that I am unwilling to work hard (I certainly am) or long hours (I clearly do)… just that the experience thus far has proven to be a bit more intense than I was originally anticipating. Two months ago, I couldn’t wait for the end of classes – I repeatedly heard myself tell everyone around me how much better things would be when I was done with class, how I was sure I would be putting in very long days during the week and mornings on the weekends, but I would be sure to have time to actually see them on weekend evenings. And my statement was partially correct – I am indeed much, much happier now that I no longer repeatedly bash my head into the cell or developmental biology books, attempting to learn multiple signaling pathways and HOX gene development. The one detail which slipped my mind, however, was that actually being in class and having exams were the one key factor that (somewhat) limited my hours in lab. Now that classes are over – no more excuses for why I am not in lab ALL THE TIME.

I’m not at all unhappy, surprisingly. Sometimes I worry that I will look back and regret the countless invitations to do things with friends which I have had to turn down, all the Friday nights I was trapped in lab until after 9pm, the realization that literally all I do is do benchwork in the lab, read papers at home in the evenings, and manage a few hours of sleep. But I like my lab, and even though 90% of my projects are failing miserably at the moment, I am content with the research and excited for new projects which will be waiting for me upon my return from my pharmacology training at NIH. I really like the people in the lab – we all get along very well and it’s generally a young lab so most people are only a few years older than me. While we are all diligent enough to make sure our experiments are completed in a timely fashion, it’s also the kind of lab where individuals will conjugate around the sink while washing western blots and chat and we all do seem to get along together very well. I will admit to being a tad disgruntled by the fact that I am the only graduate student my year stuck working these dreadful hours – the other students seem to stroll in at 10am and leave by 4pm, Monday-Friday only. I’m usually here between 7:30 and 8:00am on weekdays, never get out before 6:30 (there are times I am stuck here until well after 9), and weekends are just an extension of my weekdays – I’ve never put in less than 8 full hours on any given Saturday or Sunday. I don’t mean to complain, but it just gets frustrating hearing other graduate students discuss their relaxing weekends at home, when I’m putting in 9 hours in the lab on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday. But… it’s only another five or so years of this, right? And maybe at some point during the next five years things will start to work, at least enough that I can maybe take one day off per week, or at least only work half-days on the weekends, which would be fine.

Considering it has been a month and a half, I feel like there should be something of interest going on in my life but really – there isn’t. In that month and a half I have taken off exactly three days from the lab, over Memorial Day weekend, to go visit my grandfather in the hospital. The lab finally moved down the hallway into our new space, which is at least three times the size of our old lab, and it is amazing how we seemed to have already filled the space to capacity. I finally have my OWN BENCH and my OWN DESK and I feel like a real graduate student with a home in the lab (and quite the home it is, considering I spent significantly more time here than I do in my own apartment – perhaps I should consider asking if I can move in permanently to save on the cost of rent). In two weeks, I’m heading off to the National Cancer Center for some molecular pharmacology training so I’m sure there will be a few new, fun stories to share… but don’t worry, I’m still expected to come into my thesis lab on the weekend to keep on working, so there is still a good chance that I will have some humorous encounter with the dangerous laboratory equipment here – provided I can even find it now that it has been moved into the new lab.