bq. My friend Jenny and I are moving in perfect reciprocity at the moment, so we thought it would be entertaining to plot our opposing curves simultaneously. I am leaving science for a career in publishing, funnily enough at the same publishing company where Jenny had her first editorial job. She left there to return to the bench, and is finding herself ramping up in the lab, as I wind down. Here is my perspective:
Wednesday, late afternoon.
The rattle of the roller door, closing off the loading bay, disturbed my reverie. I had just rounded the corner on the last flight of stairs: ice bucket under one arm, key to the freezer room in hand. With my dirty lab coat I even looked like a scientist.
I unlocked the door and put the ice bucket down. Lifting the lid to our lab’s minus 80 and scrabbling for my secret stock of DE3 RILs, I suddenly wondered,
What am I doing here?
Because, as you know, I’m leaving this lab at the end of February. Leaving this lab, leaving Australia, leaving the practice of science as a career. A one-way trip into publication, communication, whatever next I happen to think is a good idea.
So why is it that I’m doing experiments? More than that, starting experiments? I ordered some primers and ran a PCR last week. Ran a Western for my young apprentice, who was at Lorne. This week I’m going to set up a knock-down experiment and see if I can confirm the exon microarray data. I’m going to start cross-linking chromatin to see if we can do CLIP assays. I’m even (help me, please) about to autoclave some media so that I can grow up some protein. On Friday I made up three years’ supply of mountant for fluorescence microscopy.
I am supposed to be winding down. Maybe the last couple of months, where all I have done is analyse microarray data and document the perl programs I’ve written, are responsible for spurring me into a last-gasp frenzy of experimentia. For this is, quite probably, the last time I’ll set up an RT-PCR. The last time I’ll design and order primers. The last time I’ll mix together marmite-smelling powders, or certain salts with lactose and glycerol, and book the incubator overnight at 34°C.
My cells! Who do I trust to look after my babies? Who will keep the list of frozen cells organized, who will maintain that instinct of passage dilutions and timings? Who is there to get annoyed when students from other labs stick their dirty fingers in my pasteur canister? Who, in fact, will do the lab’s cell biology?
I have two weeks to ensure my notes are up to date, that my stocks are labelled and catalogued, that, basically, the next person can pick up where I left off. This should happen whenever anyone moves on from a lab; but there is an air of finality about this time.
Soon, although I might not know it at the time, it will be the last time that I’ll hold a “Gilson”:http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2009/01/15/in-which-i-remain-precise-–-to-two-decimal-places in anger.
Your only responsibility to the next person is to update your notes and stocks – 3 years worth of medium is above and beyond the call of duty! Of course, some people don’t even fulfil the minimum responsibility (still bitter about wasting the first few months of my PhD trying to replicate experiments that the last guy did using mislabelled plasmids).
I agree it’s probably not a good idea to start new stuff at this stage — but can deeply sympathize with your urge. Interestingly, I didn’t know I was leaving lab life when I left my last bench job, so I didn’t have this time to know I was winding down. It must be a very strange feeling.
Yes, it’s a bit unusual.
Thing about the mountant Cath is that the PVA is mine. I got the powder when I did my DPhil, and it’s staying with me.
You could always start mounting things around the house, whenever you feel nostalgic for the lab.
For me, it was the breadmaker. Measuring liquids and weighing things. Got me every time.
“Interestingly, I didn’t know I was leaving lab life when I left my last bench job, so I didn’t have this time to know I was winding down. It must be a very strange feeling.”
For me it was like a mini party every day. Last miniprep! Wheeee! Last time I have to deal with the stupid film developer! Wheeee!
Richard, what are your chances of getting it back into the UK unchallenged?
Cath, interestingly, it is the most tedious things that I don’t mind doing now. They were the techniques that I didn’t forget in the four-year gap, and so became doubly precious when I returned.
bq. thank god for fossils. You can ignore them for days – years, even – and they are still just as dead as they were the first time.
sounds like some of the faculty around here.
And in the ultimate of noodleness, I have just written today’s date… in a new lab book.
I just wrote today’s date on a rather important form as Feb 16th 1977. Happens every year.
Ha ha hah!
You young thing. Fancy a drink?
As long as it smells Canadian
Did it take you long to make the decision to leave? Sometimes I wonder if I am just still in this gig because I am too afraid to jump. The “if I leave, I’ll never get back in” scares me, a lot. How did you know you were ready to leave the bench?
It’s a decision that has been brewing for a few years. I always thought that moving to Aus would be my penultimate science job—I wasn’t expecting to land the gig I did quite so quickly.
Not complaining, mind…
Interesting: why is lab->journal winding down, while journal->lab ramping up? I thought those were horizontal moves, not vertical. Is lab work really higher than editorship, in general, or in these particular cases (which lab, which journal, what an individual does there, etc.)?
Bora, I don’t think they’re considering the non-lab part of things at all. So it’s just “winding down in the lab” vs “ramping up in the lab”, regardless of what lies ahead or behind.
Eh, Bora, I’m winding down the bench work. I doubt very much that f1000.com will want me to do any cloning or immunofluorescence. I could be wrong about that, of course.
But I don’t think so.
You know, I had a similar kind of experience leaving my first (and only) postdoc for industry… worrying about my C. elegans stocks and that kind of thing. Looking back now, it all seems rather unimportant, but the anxiety was there at the time.
Good luck with the move, mate. Extra points for liveblogging from the plane. 😉
Richard, please give yourself some time to actually wind things down a bit. You’ll need a few days to pack up and organize yourself – not just your stuff.
(from someone who’s always been frantically overdoing it to the last minute and later wished she hadn’t)
P.S. other than basic labeling of your leftovers, as Cath mentioned, nobody is going to notice what other great stuff you left behind. Seriously.
bq. You could always start mounting things around the house, whenever you feel nostalgic for the lab.
I, um. Errr.
Sorry, but that’s how my brain works. Luckily I didn’t get as far as visualizing the scene.
If something is amusing you, O’Hara, perhaps the Headmaster would find it just as funny.
You could always start mounting things around the house, whenever you feel nostalgic for the lab.
@Bob (rolls eyes)
@Richard If you’re ever really nostalgic you are welcome to pop over to the Natural History Museum and do some lab work. Or, on a more serious note, I wonder how long before the coworking phenomenon translates to science. Coresearching anyone?
Ha ha! Brilliant idea, Karen. And not the first time I’d have worked at the NHM, either.
Damn, Bob beat me to it…
I remember clearly getting ready to leave the lab (it wsa only two months ago). Once the final decision had been made, the paperwork signed etc., there was a wonderful feeling of finality to everything. I was surprised at how little nostaligia I felt doing my cell culture for the last time, patching cells for the last time…although, actually that last…there’s a talke there I should tell one day soon…
No nostalgia whatsoever? I find that difficult to fathom…but I guess if you were really loathing what you were doing, it wouldn’t be any other way. I guess it’s probably a good sign that you made the right decision.
Yes, I’ve felt like that for all the jobs I’ve left too – getting used to the idea is quite good therapy, though. In one job I had as an R&D scientist I was made redundant mid-experiment. It added to the trauma.
Someone was telling me yesterday about someone who was just made redundant from Flickr. The employee was in the far east, sorting out a contract. In mid-negotiation, the phone rang – the person was told that s/he was now unemployed, right in the middle of the meeting. No notice, just like that.
Yegods, Maxine. That’s…
Wow. I hope s/he just walked out of the meeting. I would.
I’d have done more than just walk out of the meeting!
A mate of mine visited me in the States a few years ago, on business from the UK. He was traveling round the continent shutting down franchises, pink slip employees etc. He was promised big bonuses and a promotion for having to do such a rough job (and he was in a terrible state by the time we hung out…firing dozens upon dozens of people, tears, shattered dreams etc.)
he got back to the UK… and….
They fired him.
My last cell split is likely to be Monday. I might throw a small party.
Ian – sounds like the plot for a novel that no editor would approve because it was too improbable.
Richard – just give some champagne to your cells, then. That would really be their last split.
Ha ha! Yeah, that might be fun.
I can imagine the look on my apprentices’ faces when I tell them to check ADH levels.