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Really, how much does it suck to be a student worker? I walked out the door thinking, what a beautiful day! I won't need warm clothes - I'll just throw on a t-shirt and my jacket! And I walked out into the beautiful day, enjoying the stroll to the shuttle. (incidentally, a little pre-frosh and her mom asked me directions to Garland - hee hee they're so young it's like a sign on their forehead that says "I am a pre-frosh!") Then I walked in the door of my lab, looked at the reagents on my workbench and screamed "Noooooooo!!!!!" because I was doing a biotinylation. What this means is I get locked in a cold room (which is 4 C) for the next two hours of my life. Which sucks right about then. Near the end of the experiment I was thinking "I can't feel my fingers any more. Come on, bend! Bend, you stupid fingers!!" I figure my supervisor does this to me whenever I've messed up or ticked her off. "You know, Justin has been slacking off lately. I think I'll lock him in the cold room for a few hours." It's a BEAUTIFUL night by the way. Nice and breezy, kind of cool, no humidity. The other thing that sucks is, no matter how broken a machine is, in the lab, it is still worth more than you get paid for the next ten years!!!! How humiliating is that? I was looking at the scale this afternoon. It was amazing. When I put stuff on the scale, it started registering in the negative numbers. I am so disgruntled. And have you noticed that everything costs more in a lab no matter what it is? Like gel plates. Gel plates are two pieces of glass. That cost $60 each - $120 if they're the long ones, but the plates are like 1 foot by 1 foot!!! Boy, if I ever want to get rich I'll go into business selling things to people who work in labs because they'll just bend right over when you overcharge them. This guy makes cell crackers by hand - which is a piece of metal with a hole running through it. That's it. The only moving part is a ball bearing which goes in the hole. Which he also makes by hand. The "machine" (i.e. hunk of metal) is like $12000 dollars. The ball bearing is like $60. I could bring in the ammo for my BB gun and they wouldn't even notice. Ok I'll see you all tomorrow (except for you Bert). And for everyone who didn't get the last story I sent you, that's ok - none of you got it, and two of you even sent me e-mails saying, "What the hell is this supposed to mean?" (others, like little Katiek and Mag just deleted it) I, of course, re-read it and was laughing my head off, but that's me. Ok gotta run! Return to the Table of Contents Return to Home |