yup, win or lose you're doing science, and if you learn from your results, win or lose, its a awesome thing! I miss my days in lab as a chem eng, totally envious of ya! Keep on Science'n!
I had a PI as an undergrad researcher who encouraged us to celebrate our failures, too. He taught us to refer to them as "lessons learned". He told these amazing stories about eureka moments and failures that turned into successes. He used to go around at the biweekly lab meeting and have everyone talk about either a major success or a lesson learned, and that practice has stuck with me and now I do the same with my team. When you take away the stigma of failure, it encourages some risk taking, discovery based attitudes and a kind of openness that encourages a stronger team. One of my lessons learned was that the autorad film packages contain a cardboard spacer that feels a bit like film when you're taking it out in the darkroom at 3 AM. After 12 hours exposed to P-32, and a quick run through the film developer, you have an irradiated soggy piece of cardboard. I now know, even at 3 AM, the difference between autorad film and the cardboard spacer. Lesson learned.
I work in creative arts, using technology, code etc. I totally get the little win. I can spend a number of days trying to get some larger idea working but have learnt that problems must be broken down. Solving each of those problems and seeing a result, even if it's just a few pixels doing what you want, is a win. Thank you Alex for bringing transparency to the process and showing that, no matter what you do, it is all a creative and thoughtful pursuit with goals that are achieved through steady small steps.
I know the feeling exactly! Recently I had a swing at making an electronics project work from the basics. The first problem was in making the the CPU talk to the display in a way the display likes (getting the timing and data just right). I've never done something similar before so I tried to be really careful and rigorous. From my past experiences in programming things never go right the first time and this had the added compilation of unknown hardware behavior. But it worked! I felt that happiness-jumpy feeling and started to tell people in the house about it (almost in a style of "IT'S ALIVE!") but then I stopped and remind myself: "It's just a small display you've turned on, they don't understand your hype". Still that didn't wipe the smile of my face :) After that, other modules started connecting and the feelings came back but this time they were a part of the journey that had it's direction. When I finished that project I had the satisfying experience of laying back and observing the finished product but it wasn't as satisfying and those small moments along the way and I think we see a common theme, you always learn something new and maybe it's a way your body rewards you for really expanding your mind doing the hard work yourself :) Great video idea, it seems like the little wins are staying in the shadows nowadays but they definitely have a big role in the human experience.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Alex! I think celebrating the little wins have been the hardest for me, because I had (what felt like) SO. MANY. FAILURES. I think the only way to really appreciate science and keep going is to appreciate those little wins. Focusing on failure just feels even more isolating... it's too early for me to say a win for this week but I finally found someone to give me some guidance with my research and I don't feel so alone anymore!
One student in my department didn't get things to work on her project until her 4th year, but she just defended her thesis and it was great. I feel like persistence is a necessary quality for a scientist.
It's absolutely important for life in general to savour the small things and make them keep you going, because otherwise you will end up in negativity.
The Network Engineer that I work with and I always have a little review at the end of the day, or week depending on how busy we were, and ask "what did we accomplish this week" and as long as we can come up with something we feel good. Don't stress what is yet to come, just celebrate what you were able to finish.
When I was in grad school I had two internships and two regular jobs, many days i would get 4 or less hours of sleep. I worked in cardiac rehab and strength & conditioning so my situation was different so i din't have to sit in the lab all day and moved around a lot which is what kept me sane.
Hi Alex, I'm an undergraduate studying BSc Double major Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wildlife Biology I'm in my first year of this degree but not the first time in tertiary study. I had a major incident in my life which has cause a lot of mental health problems for me, I suffer PTSD, which in turn caused me to lose my passion and love for science so I failed my first degree and got asked to leave the university. So it took me two years to reapply and go back to study, surprisingly I got in and even better I am loving every single day. It's a big win for me to get back into science but I have little wins every day when I get out of bed and grateful that I am alive. Thank you for everything and you are a massive inspiration for me. SO THANKYOU!
+WildlifeExplorer Tarin I'm so glad to hear that you're back pursuing science and that you're celebrating both the big and little wins :) Thank *you* for watching!
Back when I was working on environmental bacteriophage isolation it was always a HUGE little win when I would have plaques at the end of my isolation cultures. Maybe 10% of inital plaques would lead to anything resembling a viable isolate after three or four rounds of isolation cultures, and even those would typically peter out after a few days, but for a brief moment I thought "This can work out, I can do this."
I'm a mechanical engineer. A lot of my work is just maintaining what works. I live for the failures, because that's when I have to think. Why did this go wrong? How did it fail? Was it something I did? How do I stop it from happening again? My most frequent wins are when I go completely unnoticed, like I'm just a gentle breeze on what is a pleasant day. The majority of science is learning what doesn't work, so as long as you learn that, it's a win.
A recent win, not really little but not really big, so important but minor? I was trying to do a 1st order calculation of an observable to get a handle on what physics our community's sophisticated programs disagreed. After two months of writing code, revising code, and tracing the calculation by hand; I convinced my advisor I wasn't messing up and we subsequently determined there was a typo in the equation as presented in a seminal review of the field. We also determined that something non-first order was happening in the codes, but was a surprisingly huge effect. So two results and a cessation of that feeling of omg-totally-failing-at-life!
As I first year grad student (here in the uk) I love these videos. Some things have gone wrong for me already too but like you, my cells didn't die today! :)
+Alex Dainis im synthesizing an MRI contrast agent for prostate cancer. Another scheme was rejected by the enzyme but this new scheme shows promise. what are you sequencing?
I can imagine Ms. Dainis reviewing these videos many years from now and sighing. Would they depict what she'd deem the good old days or be glad they're over? ("Is that what you looked like, mommy?")
a group at my university always has a bottle or two of sparkly wine in the fridge in case something that wouldn't work for a while finally worked. so in case you needed to appreciate a small victory a little more you could always just grab your co workers and pop a bottel. this policy was instated by the groups professor btw on another note, you do your own sequencing? at my uni you just pop your samples in a companies mailbox at noon, they pick it up in the evening and you get your results in the next day for a small fee
One of my lab partners poured our plant DNA on the lab bench. In my sense of pride or delusion (I'm not sure), I actually collected the slurry off of the bench, purified it and still ran it. It was amplified using known primers and sequenced, and amazingly it worked. I was so shocked and awed. #whenbadscienceworks
I worked in the software industry for a while, and coding, man it can be frustrating! Every time I made a piece of the program work I took a celebratory tea/coffee break and shouted "WOO WHO'S DA BOSS?!" etc. in the office... I quit programming but my short career in computer science was full of those small victories. :)
+Jaksary Yes! Every time my code runs without errors (even if it's not my code and I'm just running someone else's program) there is absolutely celebration!
I was talking about that sort of thing with some other grad students at my school, just a few days ago. I'm a first year so it's still just course work, but its a lot of failures. This semester is a little less oppressive than first semester in a lot of ways, but it's still pretty grindy. Not understanding concepts for a long time is kinda the norm, so it really feels good for something to finally click. Like it just finally dawned on me how this infinite-horizon game theory steady-state notation works. little win. Looking for the little wins kinda bleeds into the rest of life. I'm a yoyo player and I make video tutorials for that. Of course, I want them to be good and insightful, but it's a big enough little win to just get one out there. It was a huge relief when I realized that no one needs them to be great, and a good video is better than no video. Each time I get a message saying that it helped someone learn a trick, that's a little win. If the video helps one person, it was more or less worth making. and I've been trying to lose some weight. Consistently losing 2lbs a week for about 6 weeks now; slow consistent little win.
Science is like that distant father you are trying to make proud so he'll notice you. You're likely punishing your mistakes much harder than he would . The downside is even when you do succeed, his attention just leaves you wanting more.
Indeed, we tend to think that "it works" is the normal state, that everything always works for everyone else, and that we are failures because things to wrong for us all the time. But we don't hear about the failures of others, only their successes. In reality, things go wrong for everybody, all of the time. Failing doesn't make you less good than the rest, succeeding makes you better than the rest. Ofcourse, that's hardly a comfort when you realize a few day's of work has been for nothing.... but as Thomas Edison said; I don't fail, I find new ways that don't work.
I find it a good idea to celebrate little wins personally, if you are working in a team, celebrating in a team. I certainly find myself nowhere after spending days on a single article, such as theory and development of glass electrode (I am a chemical Engineering student, in a diploma though), and then I just plunge into the world of worries. I will definitely give this idea a go.
+Thade Glad to help - this is why we all have to be better about talking about this stuff, because I know there are a lot of mornings where I need to hear this kinda thing too.
Great video! I'm gonna know in the next few days if what I've been working on during the last 2 months works as expected. So either big win or big deception. *Fingers crossed*
I just started a graduate school two months ago, and, unfortunately, had no little wins yet. I'm preparing my first introductory presentation for the lab meeting and realise I have no results to show after two months of work. Even worse, the more I read about the topic I study, the more confused I become. I can only perform experiments my PI and supervisor suggest, because I just don't have ideas what to do on my own. Recently my PI asked me: "ok, we need to prepare feeder cells, you know the protocol? How is it done?" and I stumbled and said "uhh, I don't know". Actually, the postdoc in my lab explained to me how to prepare feeders, I was in the room while she and the other student prepared them, and I even corrected her on reaction volumes a couple of times, but when I got directly asked about this, that stuff was just not inside my head. Now I'm sure the PI is convinced he made a mistake inviting me to the lab :'( He is a wonderful guy, but he just sounds so disappointed when I tell him something didn't work or I did mess something up. Hope he's not going to kick me out of the lab...
+Rowen Loweren I think this is how everyone feels at the beginning of grad school. You are absolutely not alone in this, and I would bet your PI even remembers the feeling himself. So much of science, especially at the very beginning, is stuff not working and making silly mistakes and feeling like you don't know anything. I just always keep telling myself that I'm here to learn: if I knew all the answers and knew how to run all the experiments, I wouldn't need to be in grad *school* at all! You're experiencing totally normal things, and they suck (I know from much experience) but it is gonna be alright. Just remember that it's not you, it's grad school.
I once runned a theoretical calculation that took 8 months of exclusive attention to get a result. It resulted in my first paper though, and the second part of my master thesis that allowed me to graduate :D
I had a small win the other day when I successfully got a western blot to work, I didn't get the data I wanted... but it worked!... now I just have to do it over again about three more times.
All I can say is enjoy your time in school. Grad school can be tough but you are there to learn. When you get out into the real world and you have to produce to make money and you have a real idiot for a boss breathing down you neck, you will look back at this and yearn to be back in school.
Last week, I was the gopher for the lab and I had accidentally grabbed the wrong cell culture for a transformation, Agrobacterium instead of E. coli. (in my defense, the label had fallen off) So when I discovered what happened, I had to go back and redo it for every one of my classmates that I messed up. I messed everything up, but then it worked fantastically! Trying to keep my spirits up, but this lab has been plagued with problems, and since the last stage just utterly failed, now we have to turn in the reports a couple weeks early.
Yes, I had one of those wins last week as well! I finally got some crystals of a compound that was sitting in the refrigerator for almost a year now :) (although they will probably will have a sh** R-value :P)
+infiniteWays Yay crystals! And also yay getting old reagents to work... "Expired in 1998? Ehhh, give it a try!" happens a lot with certain things in labs...
Alex, I'm not a brain like you. I have a hard time with algebra. My gift was flying. You work so hard for the smallest of results. I can't imagine what that's like. And I sure as hell don't see what you're saying as bragging in any way shape or form. Besides isn't there an old saying"the squeaky wheel gets the grease"or in your case the recognition for all the hard work that you do, day in and day out. To me bragging is trying to get something for doing something easy. But recognition is what you get for putting in a lot of hard work. I hope this makes sense. Like I said, I'm no brain. Keep the videos coming. I love to hear more about what you discover.
Needed this right now, thanks. The other day I made RNA for the first time and I got a high, clean yield, so there's that! Trying to celebrate that and not think about my numerous failed experiments *shakes fist at protein purification column*
Today, I just realized that one can suffer a sense powerlessness when attempting to rationalize the quantity of fructose in homemade doughnuts and coffees. This seems like a conundrum until you decide for yourself that tea and bread is more nutritionally balanced. This is always incredibly appetizing. Could Five more minutes pass until I find out that molten dark chocolate is too sweet to consume and will leave a depreciation for your hunger of knowledge.
My lab mate and I used to celebrate the little wins after we had a conversation about impostor syndrome and concluded that we didn't celebrate them enough. My (not so little) win for the week was finally finishing counting 86,810 dead flies that make up my offspring data for this experiment. Yey!
Nice, I think celebrating your wins is a very important thing to do and I definitely don't do that enough myself! Though I hope you get enough sleep: You looked super tired in this video.
Thanks for this. I've been having some challenges at work that seem daunting, with occasional setbacks on a project I'm responsible for, and I sometimes forget and downplay the strides forward that I make.And it's reminded me of a song from one of my favorite old films from hen I was in grade school that's really appropriate to the topic: "The Roses of Success" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (th-cam.com/video/GND10sWq0n0/w-d-xo.html).
But still, sequencing DNA and stuff sounds like some kind of Frankenstein job to me, LOL - Well, I'm more into physics anways (after all, biology is nothing but fancy chemnistry, and chemnistry is nothing but fancy physics ;))
yup, win or lose you're doing science, and if you learn from your results, win or lose, its a awesome thing! I miss my days in lab as a chem eng, totally envious of ya! Keep on Science'n!
I had a PI as an undergrad researcher who encouraged us to celebrate our failures, too. He taught us to refer to them as "lessons learned".
He told these amazing stories about eureka moments and failures that turned into successes. He used to go around at the biweekly lab meeting and have everyone talk about either a major success or a lesson learned, and that practice has stuck with me and now I do the same with my team. When you take away the stigma of failure, it encourages some risk taking, discovery based attitudes and a kind of openness that encourages a stronger team.
One of my lessons learned was that the autorad film packages contain a cardboard spacer that feels a bit like film when you're taking it out in the darkroom at 3 AM. After 12 hours exposed to P-32, and a quick run through the film developer, you have an irradiated soggy piece of cardboard. I now know, even at 3 AM, the difference between autorad film and the cardboard spacer. Lesson learned.
I work in creative arts, using technology, code etc. I totally get the little win. I can spend a number of days trying to get some larger idea working but have learnt that problems must be broken down. Solving each of those problems and seeing a result, even if it's just a few pixels doing what you want, is a win.
Thank you Alex for bringing transparency to the process and showing that, no matter what you do, it is all a creative and thoughtful pursuit with goals that are achieved through steady small steps.
I know the feeling exactly! Recently I had a swing at making an electronics project work from the basics. The first problem was in making the the CPU talk to the display in a way the display likes (getting the timing and data just right). I've never done something similar before so I tried to be really careful and rigorous. From my past experiences in programming things never go right the first time and this had the added compilation of unknown hardware behavior. But it worked! I felt that happiness-jumpy feeling and started to tell people in the house about it (almost in a style of "IT'S ALIVE!") but then I stopped and remind myself: "It's just a small display you've turned on, they don't understand your hype". Still that didn't wipe the smile of my face :)
After that, other modules started connecting and the feelings came back but this time they were a part of the journey that had it's direction.
When I finished that project I had the satisfying experience of laying back and observing the finished product but it wasn't as satisfying and those small moments along the way and I think we see a common theme, you always learn something new and maybe it's a way your body rewards you for really expanding your mind doing the hard work yourself :)
Great video idea, it seems like the little wins are staying in the shadows nowadays but they definitely have a big role in the human experience.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Alex! I think celebrating the little wins have been the hardest for me, because I had (what felt like) SO. MANY. FAILURES. I think the only way to really appreciate science and keep going is to appreciate those little wins. Focusing on failure just feels even more isolating...
it's too early for me to say a win for this week but I finally found someone to give me some guidance with my research and I don't feel so alone anymore!
One student in my department didn't get things to work on her project until her 4th year, but she just defended her thesis and it was great. I feel like persistence is a necessary quality for a scientist.
It's absolutely important for life in general to savour the small things and make them keep you going, because otherwise you will end up in negativity.
The Network Engineer that I work with and I always have a little review at the end of the day, or week depending on how busy we were, and ask "what did we accomplish this week" and as long as we can come up with something we feel good. Don't stress what is yet to come, just celebrate what you were able to finish.
When I was in grad school I had two internships and two regular jobs, many days i would get 4 or less hours of sleep. I worked in cardiac rehab and strength & conditioning so my situation was different so i din't have to sit in the lab all day and moved around a lot which is what kept me sane.
Oh man. Anytime my code compiles, even if the output is wrong. That's a win to me.
Hi Alex,
I'm an undergraduate studying BSc Double major Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wildlife Biology
I'm in my first year of this degree but not the first time in tertiary study. I had a major incident in my life which has cause a lot of mental health problems for me, I suffer PTSD, which in turn caused me to lose my passion and love for science so I failed my first degree and got asked to leave the university.
So it took me two years to reapply and go back to study, surprisingly I got in and even better I am loving every single day.
It's a big win for me to get back into science but I have little wins every day when I get out of bed and grateful that I am alive.
Thank you for everything and you are a massive inspiration for me. SO THANKYOU!
+WildlifeExplorer Tarin I'm so glad to hear that you're back pursuing science and that you're celebrating both the big and little wins :) Thank *you* for watching!
Back when I was working on environmental bacteriophage isolation it was always a HUGE little win when I would have plaques at the end of my isolation cultures. Maybe 10% of inital plaques would lead to anything resembling a viable isolate after three or four rounds of isolation cultures, and even those would typically peter out after a few days, but for a brief moment I thought "This can work out, I can do this."
I feel like this is a great way to go through life in general. Focus on your little wins.
I'm a mechanical engineer. A lot of my work is just maintaining what works. I live for the failures, because that's when I have to think. Why did this go wrong? How did it fail? Was it something I did? How do I stop it from happening again? My most frequent wins are when I go completely unnoticed, like I'm just a gentle breeze on what is a pleasant day. The majority of science is learning what doesn't work, so as long as you learn that, it's a win.
A recent win, not really little but not really big, so important but minor? I was trying to do a 1st order calculation of an observable to get a handle on what physics our community's sophisticated programs disagreed. After two months of writing code, revising code, and tracing the calculation by hand; I convinced my advisor I wasn't messing up and we subsequently determined there was a typo in the equation as presented in a seminal review of the field.
We also determined that something non-first order was happening in the codes, but was a surprisingly huge effect. So two results and a cessation of that feeling of omg-totally-failing-at-life!
Finding out that something doesn't work is still finding out stuff. You've added knowledge to the world. How many people can say that?
As I first year grad student (here in the uk) I love these videos. Some things have gone wrong for me already too but like you, my cells didn't die today! :)
yay for the win! I optimized the conditions for a synthesis and it still works! keep the momentum Alex!
+Sonicthehedshot9 Woohoo! What kind of thing are you synthesizing?
+Alex Dainis im synthesizing an MRI contrast agent for prostate cancer. Another scheme was rejected by the enzyme but this new scheme shows promise. what are you sequencing?
Yay, new series!
I can imagine Ms. Dainis reviewing these videos many years from now and sighing. Would they depict what she'd deem the good old days or be glad they're over? ("Is that what you looked like, mommy?")
a group at my university always has a bottle or two of sparkly wine in the fridge in case something that wouldn't work for a while finally worked. so in case you needed to appreciate a small victory a little more you could always just grab your co workers and pop a bottel. this policy was instated by the groups professor btw
on another note, you do your own sequencing? at my uni you just pop your samples in a companies mailbox at noon, they pick it up in the evening and you get your results in the next day for a small fee
One of my lab partners poured our plant DNA on the lab bench. In my sense of pride or delusion (I'm not sure), I actually collected the slurry off of the bench, purified it and still ran it. It was amplified using known primers and sequenced, and amazingly it worked. I was so shocked and awed. #whenbadscienceworks
I worked in the software industry for a while, and coding, man it can be frustrating! Every time I made a piece of the program work I took a celebratory tea/coffee break and shouted "WOO WHO'S DA BOSS?!" etc. in the office... I quit programming but my short career in computer science was full of those small victories. :)
+Jaksary Yes! Every time my code runs without errors (even if it's not my code and I'm just running someone else's program) there is absolutely celebration!
I was talking about that sort of thing with some other grad students at my school, just a few days ago. I'm a first year so it's still just course work, but its a lot of failures. This semester is a little less oppressive than first semester in a lot of ways, but it's still pretty grindy. Not understanding concepts for a long time is kinda the norm, so it really feels good for something to finally click. Like it just finally dawned on me how this infinite-horizon game theory steady-state notation works. little win.
Looking for the little wins kinda bleeds into the rest of life. I'm a yoyo player and I make video tutorials for that. Of course, I want them to be good and insightful, but it's a big enough little win to just get one out there. It was a huge relief when I realized that no one needs them to be great, and a good video is better than no video. Each time I get a message saying that it helped someone learn a trick, that's a little win. If the video helps one person, it was more or less worth making.
and I've been trying to lose some weight. Consistently losing 2lbs a week for about 6 weeks now; slow consistent little win.
+Jacob Mccann Oh, a fellow yo-yo player. It's been a while since I've played seriously, so I'm a bit rusty. I'll check your stuff on your channel!
This week I made my first CVD, this is something that I'm going to do a lot for my thesis but is the fist one I do and I feel very proud of my self
Maybe the way to extrapolate this idea in a more general sense is: appreciate the good things in life, no matter how small.
+ricarleite I agree!
This video gave me so much positivity. Now, I have a new perspective on my little wins :) Thanks Alex! #goforthdoscience
+Hilmi Dzul I'm so glad :)
Science is like that distant father you are trying to make proud so he'll notice you. You're likely punishing your mistakes much harder than he would . The downside is even when you do succeed, his attention just leaves you wanting more.
Indeed, we tend to think that "it works" is the normal state, that everything always works for everyone else, and that we are failures because things to wrong for us all the time. But we don't hear about the failures of others, only their successes. In reality, things go wrong for everybody, all of the time. Failing doesn't make you less good than the rest, succeeding makes you better than the rest.
Ofcourse, that's hardly a comfort when you realize a few day's of work has been for nothing.... but as Thomas Edison said; I don't fail, I find new ways that don't work.
Thanks for this, Alex. It was really helpful to hear this. :-)
I find it a good idea to celebrate little wins personally, if you are working in a team, celebrating in a team. I certainly find myself nowhere after spending days on a single article, such as theory and development of glass electrode (I am a chemical Engineering student, in a diploma though), and then I just plunge into the world of worries. I will definitely give this idea a go.
I really needed to hear this this morning. Thanks. Really.
+Thade Glad to help - this is why we all have to be better about talking about this stuff, because I know there are a lot of mornings where I need to hear this kinda thing too.
Great video! I'm gonna know in the next few days if what I've been working on during the last 2 months works as expected. So either big win or big deception.
*Fingers crossed*
I just started a graduate school two months ago, and, unfortunately, had no little wins yet. I'm preparing my first introductory presentation for the lab meeting and realise I have no results to show after two months of work. Even worse, the more I read about the topic I study, the more confused I become. I can only perform experiments my PI and supervisor suggest, because I just don't have ideas what to do on my own.
Recently my PI asked me: "ok, we need to prepare feeder cells, you know the protocol? How is it done?" and I stumbled and said "uhh, I don't know". Actually, the postdoc in my lab explained to me how to prepare feeders, I was in the room while she and the other student prepared them, and I even corrected her on reaction volumes a couple of times, but when I got directly asked about this, that stuff was just not inside my head. Now I'm sure the PI is convinced he made a mistake inviting me to the lab :'( He is a wonderful guy, but he just sounds so disappointed when I tell him something didn't work or I did mess something up. Hope he's not going to kick me out of the lab...
+Rowen Loweren I think this is how everyone feels at the beginning of grad school. You are absolutely not alone in this, and I would bet your PI even remembers the feeling himself. So much of science, especially at the very beginning, is stuff not working and making silly mistakes and feeling like you don't know anything. I just always keep telling myself that I'm here to learn: if I knew all the answers and knew how to run all the experiments, I wouldn't need to be in grad *school* at all! You're experiencing totally normal things, and they suck (I know from much experience) but it is gonna be alright. Just remember that it's not you, it's grad school.
I once runned a theoretical calculation that took 8 months of exclusive attention to get a result. It resulted in my first paper though, and the second part of my master thesis that allowed me to graduate :D
+Felipe Portales What I tried to say is that it was a few months of trial and error.
I had a small win the other day when I successfully got a western blot to work, I didn't get the data I wanted... but it worked!... now I just have to do it over again about three more times.
+Phillip Sanchez Even if it's not the expected data, just having it work is definitely a success!
Wonderful!
Any clues about what you've been trying to achieve/make progress with?
Every failure's just winning an education ;)
All I can say is enjoy your time in school. Grad school can be tough but you are there to learn.
When you get out into the real world and you have to produce to make money and you have a real idiot for a boss breathing down you neck, you will look back at this and yearn to be back in school.
Last week, I was the gopher for the lab and I had accidentally grabbed the wrong cell culture for a transformation, Agrobacterium instead of E. coli. (in my defense, the label had fallen off) So when I discovered what happened, I had to go back and redo it for every one of my classmates that I messed up. I messed everything up, but then it worked fantastically! Trying to keep my spirits up, but this lab has been plagued with problems, and since the last stage just utterly failed, now we have to turn in the reports a couple weeks early.
I sometimes have the opposite reaction in life and keep wondering how on earth everything is still working
Running into this during grad school would have been nice
Yes, I had one of those wins last week as well! I finally got some crystals of a compound that was sitting in the refrigerator for almost a year now :) (although they will probably will have a sh** R-value :P)
+infiniteWays Yay crystals! And also yay getting old reagents to work... "Expired in 1998? Ehhh, give it a try!" happens a lot with certain things in labs...
+infiniteWays Oh, crystals, what a pain are they to make. The best way to grow them is to forget you were even trying to get them!
Wow, I understood none of that science stuff, but I really needed this video :,) what kind of science are you in?
Alex, I'm not a brain like you. I have a hard time with algebra. My gift was flying.
You work so hard for the smallest of results. I can't imagine what that's like. And I sure as hell don't see what you're saying as bragging in any way shape or form.
Besides isn't there an old saying"the squeaky wheel gets the grease"or in your case the recognition for all the hard work that you do, day in and day out.
To me bragging is trying to get something for doing something easy. But recognition is what you get for putting in a lot of hard work.
I hope this makes sense. Like I said, I'm no brain. Keep the videos coming. I love to hear more about what you discover.
Needed this right now, thanks. The other day I made RNA for the first time and I got a high, clean yield, so there's that! Trying to celebrate that and not think about my numerous failed experiments *shakes fist at protein purification column*
+Alison K9 High, clean yield RNA is hard to do! Woo hoo!! I do lots of RNA work so I know that struggle well!
Today, I just realized that one can suffer a sense powerlessness when attempting to rationalize the quantity of fructose in homemade doughnuts and coffees. This seems like a conundrum until you decide for yourself that tea and bread is more nutritionally balanced. This is always incredibly appetizing. Could Five more minutes pass until I find out that molten dark chocolate is too sweet to consume and will leave a depreciation for your hunger of knowledge.
I didn't die today...win?
My friend who does science constantly had cells that kept dying. They were reduced to tears on a regular basis.
+mortono Yeah. That was me about a year ago. It happens.
Little wins... Will note that, thanks! =)
I successfully aligned COI (mtDNA) sequences from 90 mollusks from different populations. I had never done it before, and it looks beautiful
+Felipe Torres Yay for pretty and scientific alignments!
My lab mate and I used to celebrate the little wins after we had a conversation about impostor syndrome and concluded that we didn't celebrate them enough. My (not so little) win for the week was finally finishing counting 86,810 dead flies that make up my offspring data for this experiment. Yey!
+Sally Le Page I saw your pictures! That is definitely a not so little win :) Congratulations!!
We do computer security research (ethical hacking) in our lab, so our little wins are sometimes accompanied by evil laughter :D
i did a lot of experimenting in grad school
Yay win!
Nice, I think celebrating your wins is a very important thing to do and I definitely don't do that enough myself!
Though I hope you get enough sleep: You looked super tired in this video.
''I wanna have 'little wins', but how do I become a scientist?'' :)
Bite-SciZed wins are the best, anyway.
Hey, genetics grad student!.. Why is nobody working on the cure to baldness?
Thanks for this. I've been having some challenges at work that seem daunting, with occasional setbacks on a project I'm responsible for, and I sometimes forget and downplay the strides forward that I make.And it's reminded me of a song from one of my favorite old films from hen I was in grade school that's really appropriate to the topic: "The Roses of Success" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (th-cam.com/video/GND10sWq0n0/w-d-xo.html).
Came into the lab and nobody had stolen my sterile PCR tubes. tbh i count it as a massive win, not a little one ;)
Oh no. No no no no no. I am very protective of my sterile things. That's not a win, that's call for a battle cry!
And I read too fast and thought someone HAD stolen your tubes. Big win. Massive win!
eyyyy, a little bragging sometimes is cool too!
Sometimes you simulate and do very heavy numerics and then, after a few weeks and beautiful results you find a bug in your code :'( #DoItForTheScience
And a little humble-bragging is alright as well.
Peppermint? Successful lab days? ::swoon::
But still, sequencing DNA and stuff sounds like some kind of Frankenstein job to me, LOL - Well, I'm more into physics anways (after all, biology is nothing but fancy chemnistry, and chemnistry is nothing but fancy physics ;))
I gotta say... your eyes look puffier than usual... it seems to me you're a bit tired maybe?
i would not recommend a career in science to anyone, unless you're a masochist