Life and death of a minor side project: a photo essay (with a nod to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross)
Step 1: Denial
Step 2: Bargaining
Step 3: Anger
Step 4: Depression
Step 5: Acceptance
About Jenny
By day: cell biologist at UCL. By night: novelist, broadcaster, science writer, sci-lit-art pundit, blogger and Editor of LabLit.com. I blog about my life in science, not the facts and figures.
How well I recognise those steps! The joys of science – and I mean that, I get emotional about my work because I care about it and am interested in it and I wouldn’t have it any other way. That seems to be the case for you as well.
I think for me there is the distinct danger of an additional ‘despair’ step before the acceptance step but I guess the key is to try and avoid that!! Occasionally I also hit a panic step before the anger 🙁
No surprise that you keep a well written lab book, love the photo blog.
I decided to crop out my unprofessional use of the f*** word!
On despair…well, I don’t get that way much any more – at least not because of lab failures. I think it’s a symptom of my advancing years, and the cumulative number of failures under my belt which definitely blunts the edges after a while.
@Jenny, it’s not unprofessional, it’s technical.
I think about half my notebooks were negative results for a while…
Well, it’s true there’s a qualitative difference between different swear words as applied to bench experimentation. Some imply accidents, or disbelief; others are tinged with blame; while still others are sheer desperate cries from the abyss.
Ken, about a year ago I stopped putting utterly blank films into my notebook, for the record. I decided that was unnecessarily morbid.
Blank films make great “screens” for pinhole cameras 🙂
Also quite useful for mood sound effects in music.
My progress is usually goes like this:
1, 2, go back, 1, 2, go back (repeated a couple of times)
3, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 5
What, no negative numbers? Or imaginary numbers? You’re lucky, mate. 🙂
Loved the photo blog!
I, too, stopped putting negative gel pictures (especially the ones where all my PCRs had failed and it was just a nice picture of a ladder next to a bunch of “empty” wells) in my notebooks a few years ago. Like you, I’ll put a optimistic spin on it, writing, “no products observed, will try again”
Good for you. I suspect my earlier lab notebooks, on the other hand, could serve as good fodder for some sort of tragicomic humanities PhD thesis.
I got told off once, when I was a yolk-covered grad student, for a ‘shit’ in my lab book.
Oh, yes: because we scientists aren’t meant to have human emotions.
It’s precisely these cosmetic changes we’re expected to adapt that perpetuates all the harmful stereotypes – right up there with not bantering and playing music when the documentary cameras come to the lab: “do try to look more serious.” Hopefully blogs and flip cameras will help counteract some of this.
Two quick thoughts:
1. Even though I’m a theoretical biologist (a computational biologist), I maintain workbooks and separately an ‘ideas’ book that I’ve had going on-and-off for ~20 years now. Anyway, thing is, you really want to see some of the things I’ve previously written in the notebook 🙂 The only person who reads it is myself at a later date, so I just write whatever I think of so-so’s ideas, etc. Occasionally it makes for entertaining reading later 🙂
2. Even computer programming gets this development cycle thing. In an ideal world it wouldn’t, but it’s pretty much usual business for some part of the current work to not like the earlier work it relies on and you wind up cycling back to fiddle with the earlier work (or failing that hack a work-around, esp. if the earlier work wasn’t yours or you don’t have access to that code). Once in a while it’s better to simply start over. I sometimes think that some experimental people think that computational biology “just works”… if only 🙂
Don’t worry, Grant: the two computational groups who tried to analyze our screen so far didn’t have much success, so I’m under no illusions!
Glad to hear you have an ‘ideas’ notebook. I have been thinking about starting one of these myself – I scribble a lot of theories into my formal notebook, but nothing actually mad.
Maybe I should have a peek at it. Na, just kidding.
I don’t usually get mad at myself, but at others’ sloppy thinking 😉
Or at least I think it’s sloppy thinking! You know how it goes, read a paper. Shake your head in wonder, etc. 🙂
So when you retire you need to publish your ideas notebook and create a minor scandal amongst the scientific chatting classes.
Oh dear. Sorry to hear about all that.
Regarding blank/ugly films – the correct place for those is the
garbage candustbin. Done surreptitiously enough, you can convince your P.I. that you are a genius, because you only ever produce beautiful results and never, ever, seem to have bad ones.Not saying how I know this, mind you.
Unfortunately, Richard, I tend to wear my data on my sleeve. Besides, bosses aren’t that stupid, are they?
Grant, by workbook and ideas notebook do you mean a physical pen-and-paper affair?
I am computer-based too and I have a physical notebook. I am glad I don’t have to keep a formal lab book but I find my notebook useful for formulating thoughts and things.
I’m not sure I could ever keep an electronic notebook. My thoughts ebb and flow better when I use a pen in the lab. Oddly, when I write fiction the computer is essential. I never claimed I was internally consistent though! Maybe if they invented a waterproof hardy tablet thing, I might give it a go. But it’s got to be able to withstand copious amounts of spillage.
Just what are you spilling?
Loads of TBS-T at the moment, and running buffer, and ECL solutions. Also my ice bucket exudes condensate!
I’d look forward to the waterproof, autoclavable upgrade to the ipad!
I’d settle for summer student-proof.
God, a waterproof lab iPad. The mind boggles. And then I could also use it to read novels in the bath: bonus.
(Multi-reply comment…)
Jennifer,
So when you retire you need to publish your ideas notebook and create a minor scandal amongst the scientific chatting classes.
Oh, yes. Actually, oh no. It’s just my thoughts on others’ sloppy (to me) thinking written down. When I’m “thinking aloud” on paper I tend to go with the flow… jotting down the jumble of thoughts as they occur. (I must blog about this notebook…)
Besides, do scientists ever really retire? I get the impression that they just move to the projects that they never got around when they were being paid.
Erika,
It’s a series of small physical notebooks. I know it seems odd coming from a computational biologist. I’ve been a bit lazy of late, but I usually take the current notebook everywhere with me so I could jot things down as they occur to me; it sits besides the bed at night too. This might seem obsessive, but I don’t see it as any different to a writer’s notebook or whatnot. I wouldn’t carry a netbook around with me the way I take the notebook with me. Too big, too heavy, battery issues, etc. I have tried to put the notes onto the desktop, but it’d be a huge effort to get all the old notes in. (Never mind decipher just what it is I was on about!)
re waterproof iPads:
It’s already being done in a sense. Saw an article not too long ago of a dolphin researcher teaching dolphins to use an iPad via them pressing icons with their beak. Shades of the iPad-as-a-cat-toy blog post I wrote, wondering if cat owners could train their felines to interact with icons on an iPad. (Or should that be those owned by felines be instructed by their felines?)
Nicholas,
Autoclavable?? Just what are you doing to your iPad? Growing cultures on it? (I’m not sure Apple would want to know…)
It doesn’t seem obsessive to me, but I carry a notebook with me wherever I go too. It’s interesting that I seldom use this for great scientific insights, though. Is this a telling fact, that I’ll never be a brilliant scientist because I don’t dream about it 24/7? I wonder if all the greats did/do?
I love the idea of dolphins on iPads. I wonder if they like them more than fishy treats?
As far as I understand, not being an animal behaviour scientist, the dolphins-on-ipads story is amazing not because of the technology, but because the dolphins are able to recognize a 3D object (a ball for example) and then point to a 2D representation of that on the iPad screen. They could already do these things in general, but with the iPad they’re able to interact with the image and use the device to communicate back. They understand the concept of using pictures to talk about things in the real world.
As YouTube videos show, cats are much better than dolphins at interacting with the iPad because they’re quite handy (hah) with their front paws, but they have no concept of the relation between a picture of a fish and an actual fish. They might eventually learn, Skinner-box-style, that they eventually do get fish when they touch a fish picture, but unlike the dolphins they would then be unable to repeat that if the picture looked different, or if the iPad had a wrong shape (eg replace it with iPod touch).
They are also good at making words by nosing letters of the alphabet, aren’t they?
Grant, I trained as a bacteriologist, everything I took in the lab was either disposable, or autoclavable, or suddenly became disposable because of what happened in the lab. Maybe a super-tough sleeve could do, but how to interact with the screen, hmmm…
But here are three good reasons to produce autoclavable electronics (although I am told by the internet that you can wash your keyboard in the dishwasher):
Hartmann, B. et al. Computer Keyboard and Mouse as a Reservoir of Pathogens in an Intensive Care Unit. Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing 18, 7-12 (2004).
Neely, A.N. A Survey of Gram-Negative Bacteria Survival on Hospital Fabrics and Plastics. Journal of Burn Care & Research. Journal of Burn Care & Research 21, 523-527 (2000).
Schultz, M., Gill, J., Zubairi, S., Huber, R. & Gordin, F. Bacterial Contamination of Computer Keyboards in a Teaching Hospital. Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology 24, 302-303 (2003).
And Richard, summer student-proof is completely unattainable, as soon as you perfect your student-proof device they come up with new, “improved”, more destructive students!
Ah…nothing like a good fomite to spice things up.
My PhD was in Microbiology, so we were well-indoctrinated into these matters – so much so that I don’t think I drank from someone else’s glass for the 5.5 year duration.
I’ve got a blog post up: What is your relationship with your notebook?
I might have to re-work the title unfortunately, as some people will probably think I mean the computers… Sigh
It rambles all over the place… entertainingly I hope.
Sigh… for some reason the URL in the link I gave above links back to this post.
Let’s try again: What is your relationship with your notebook?
Jenny – sorry for the delay – getting back to your comment… bosses aren’t stupid necessarily, but I knew a student who worked all day and all night and his boss thought he was the bee’s knees – every experiment worked. Everyone else on the floor knew that he was putting in at least twice the required hours and hiding the experiments that failed. 😉