Lab rat

Never in a million years did I envisage myself enjoying 9-5 in the lab. So far, I'm loving every second of it!

Take today as an example. I got in at 9 and spent the morning taking pictures of retinal cells (my baby as of yesterday) on an inverted microscope, something I've never used before. Turns out it's not operated upside down, but it has lots of pretty coloured lights and twirly buttons, so I was happy. It took a good two hours to do all the imaging and it was lovely to immerse myself in a new skill. It has to be operated in a dark room though and, after not sleeping very well last night, I may have nodded off a couple of times! I followed that through with some analysis on the computer (see attached pretty pictures), which I'll do in my spare time when I'm not occupied with cell culture, before being called into surgery to help Lindy and Carole, who were "harvesting" last week's work. That was another pretty gory job; keyhole surgery on the rat's heads to hoik out their optic nerves. My part in this procedure mainly involved donning a very fetching (and highly scientific) pair of koala oven gloves and dashing to and from the freezer with samples. I nabbed a quick lunch of leftover shepherd's pie, then it was back to it, this time to the cell culture hood. Sterile technique is something I've always been terrible at upholding, with my uni group's work always getting contaminated by this and that, ruining our results in the process. Lindy watched me do it this time, so fingers crossed I've got through unscathed. It involved making tiny cuts in slices of spinal cord with a scalpel; I felt like a right surgeon, despite the tissues being chopped up and suspended in medium rather than actually in the rat's backbone. The only shitty job of the day was sitting by the light source, which has decided to switch itself off every ninety seconds. When you need a thirty minute exposure, that's an awful lot of button pushing undertaken far too late in the day for patience.

Just the 96 wells to align, focus and photograph. Twice.

Mixed retinal cells before and after analysis... pretty!

 Although I'm in my element learning the ropes and running errands for everyone, I'm not sure I'm cut out for an eventual career in research. I'm in awe of Lindy, who always seems to have a million things on the go at once. She must be running three or four investigations simultaneously which, when you think that each of those relies on each member of staff fitting what she needs of them into their schedule, is no mean feat. I'm constantly worrying that I'll forget to do something and completely botch her next paper. No major disasters so far, but there's plenty of time for that as I have a lot more responsibility over the rest of the week. I even have to come in on Sunday to do a couple of treatments. I did not sign up for this!

The difference between things here and your average university practical, which I have absolutely detested from day one, is so far unclear. Maybe it's the fact that I have to opportunity to explore one area in detail instead of reading up on something I've never heard of the night before, doing it for a few hours, then having to write a whole report on it. That's a very good point: No lab reports this year. In fact, no formal assessments full stop, which is just fantastic as far as I'm concerned. One little report and a poster on my findings to be handed in when I get back to Bath next September and I'm done. That'll be left until the end of the summer holidays then... My environment may have changed, but my work ethic certainly hasn't!