Another truth.

In the six months that I have been 21 years old, I have learned quite a bit about myself, if not about the world in general. Which is okay. At least I'm learning something. 


Today, I learned another basic truth of life. If you want your supervisor, or people in general, to think well of you, don't disclose your failures to said parties. My immuno failed last week, of which my supervisor was informed yesterday morning. I'm pretty sure I know where I went wrong, but I made the same mistake again yesterday when I began an immuno on another set of tissues. In this morning's lab meeting, I felt the need to detail said retardedness on my behalf to the room full of mega-smart scientists. And they (the supervisor especially) just looked at me in the weirdest way. And then I had this epiphany. Don't mistake me, they were very nice about it, and their suggestions were really, really good. But I felt like an idiot. And then I realised there's no need to give people lists of your faults and mistakes. They'll find out in their own time, if ever.

This leads me to my second point in today's session. It doesn't bother me so much that the immuno didn't work - I'm happy to repeat it a hundred times till it works, if necessary. It's the fact that I'm not meeting anyone's expectations, and that it isn't working because of my own silly mistakes and not because there is an issue with the tissue or the protocol or some other unknown variable. 


But why do I care if they think I'm retarded? It doesn't change what I want, what I'm doing, or the fact that in science, as with life, things just like to go wrong. Other peoples' immunos don't work all the time - it's part of being in the lab. But I think the fact that I only have to master a just a handful of techniques (let's be honest, there are only three...) and I can't seem to make it work...Plus I don't know how to cut the tissue sections so I would have to wait for the RA to get back and ask her...I know it's not my fault I don't know how to cut sections - it's not like I've been taught - but I'd like to be self-sufficient to as great a degree as possible. I don't want my failures to inconvenience others. And as much as I'd like to think that I am my own person, at the end of the day I am paranoid, awkward, and eager to please others. Which is sad.

But not as sad or troublesome as other things. Like heartburn. Or working incredibly hard for years to get your PhD and taking care of your baby at the same time, and then six months before the end your family situation bubbles over, you get the wrong advice from people and suddenly you have two weeks to leave the country because the organisation that's supposed to support you has decided to cancel your visa, and you can't get credit for any of the work you've done to date so you can't graduate. See, now that is sad and troublesome.

On a slightly less depressing note, today I had my first can of V in several years. It is awesome. I'd totally forgotten how awesome it is. And it's pretty awesome.


Also, I'm starting to realise that instead of living inside your own head, stressing out or just making plan after plan, get out there deal with life as it is right now. You need those plans, but planning alone doesn't get you anywhere. Successful people didn't get there just by dreaming - they use every moment they have, try different things, and keep at it after every failure. People can make life harder, but if you don't get involved with these sort of people, and you keep your own thoughts, happiness and life on track, their grumpiness doesn't matter. So essentially detach yourself from that awful moment and focus on the bigger picture and work towards that instead. Hopefully this reasoning will get me through the rest of this year. If not, at least I had the chance to work in a lab for the time that I did.

Peace and love,

S.