The Protein Nazi

Remember way back to May, when I had to drag my tired, though amazingly not hungover (but extremely exhausted) self out of bed at pre-dawn hours to be in the lab by 5am the morning after my bachelorette party to start an experiment? It sucked. After not getting home until after 3am, I knew how absolutely crucial this experiment was (as in, without the data from this experiment there was no point in applying for the grant), so I willed myself into the lab to set up the experiment. Since there is a long incubation time in the middle, I went back home where I found all my friend still asleep, crawled back in bed for a short nap, had brunch with my friends, and returned to the lab and was there until after midnight scrambling to finish all the data.

The data turned out to be gorgeous, and I emailed it off to my PI by 1am that night. He happened to still be up, working on grant for which the data was intended, and was so excited that he sent an email off with my data included to all the collaborators entitled “Amazing Grad Student Produces Novel Data!” and singing my praises in the body of the email. My PI expects very hard work, but he does pay compliments when they are due, and I did appreciate his recognition of the long hours I had just logged and the giant kink they had put in the weekend I was supposed to spend enjoying my bachelorette party with friends who had traveled in to D.C. specifically to spend the weekend with me.

Fast-forward several months, and my PI finds out that the grant was indeed funded. As such, he decided to take the lab out for a celebratory lunch. And so, right now, everyone from my lab is taking off part of the afternoon to enjoy a delightful sushi lunch in celebration of a collaborative grant with a lab at another institution. Note, however, that I am currently typing a blog post... indicating that I, sadly, would not be at the celebratory lunch. Because we’ve had a bit of turnover, and we’re a joint lab, over half the people at said lunch have had nothing whatsoever to do with acquiring the grant, while the person who dragged her tired, sorry ass into the lab and did the important experiment is still stuck in the damned lab purifying proteins which have to be done ASAP for an experiment for a paper which we are trying to push out rapidly. Yes indeed, my reward is that I get to babysit the purification system, pushing the #*%@&*! button every time the "electrical error! call for service!" message pops up.

Seriously, this happens all. the. time. around here. ALL THE TIME. On a whim, something will come up – a lab picnic, a trip to go berry picking, one of the PIs will decide to have everyone over to watch Turkey play soccer in the EuroCup tournament, and everyone else drops their experiments and runs, and all I hear is “Oh, Julie can’t go, she’s purifying her proteins.” WHY AM I THE ONLY RESPONSIBLE PERSON AROUND HERE?!?!

All I’m saying is that if my PI doesn’t bring me back some lunch, my freshly purified, crucial proteins are being held hostage. NO PROTEINS FOR YOU!