The Hierarchy of the Lab
In light of finishing exams and my blog being back to normal, I thought I might do a short post on my very first time working in a lab.
I say my very first time working in a lab. Obviously, like anyone doing any kind of science-based subject, I had been in labs and done experiments. Remember chemistry at school where you were given some labelled glass bottles, most of which were a dirty brown with some unknown flaky white substance growing round the top, and you were told to add A to B and then shake it and see what happens? Except, actually, you were also told exactly what would happen. And there were tidy nice little ‘yes it worked’ or ‘no you did it wrong’ answers. Well, most of my undergraduate university lab experiences were exactly like that. So when I say ‘the first time I worked in a lab,’ I don’t mean the first time I stumbled into a lab which looked exactly the same as secondary school chemistry just ten times bigger and clung desperately to a lab partner who was just as confused and clueless as me.
What I mean is: the first time I worked in a grown-up lab with, you know, real scientists and shit.
And, well, actually, it mostly looked like standard grade chemistry all over again.
Said lab was in a building I’d had lectures in most of the time I was at university. During third year, I had been in there nearly every single day. Only, what I didn’t know about said building is that there is a secret labyrinth of corridors underneath it. I got lost. Repeatedly.
When I eventually found the place I was supposed to be at, it wasn’t a lab at all. It was an office buried deep underground with no windows and about half an inch of space between the desks where people were supposed to sit. No one was there except an unfriendly PhD student who had no idea who I was and no time to talk about it. I was sat at a desk (which I would later find was the absolute-wrong-desk-to-sit-at-how-dare-you desk) and told to do some reading. I got out some journal articles I’d already read and underlined some things I completely understood and got very very bored. (more…)
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