Research

Ahh, the joys of research...

My experiment failed today. It is really not a big deal. It just means I lost hours of time I invested in prep and planning - not to mention the cost of supplies I used up in the whole process. It is amazing how quickly things can go wrong when working with cells and biological material. One bad step, one bit of bacteria, or even a bit of bad timing and everything is done. Because of the nature of the research, every step is like a point of no return. Meaning, there is no fixing mistakes. It is like the idom, "You can't unscramble a scrambled egg."

Two weeks ago I submitted an outline of my proposed research to my faculty advisor. A week later he returned it to me with the objective to complete the necessary experiments and have the paper ready to publish by Christmas. By Christmas!? Additionally, he expects the first round of experimental data before Thanksgiving. With this expedited timeline, I scheduled and prepared for today's tests. I spent all afternoon and evening yesterday and the whole morning today laying the groundwork for the experiment. Finally at 6 p.m. today everything was set and the experiment underway.

Interestingly, once the experiment actually begins, there is very little to be done. I just leave it under a time lapse microscope for data acquisition. The test was planned to run for nine hours. After I was sure all was well (or so I thought), I went home to get some dinner. Before long, I returned to the lab (now actually getting back into a building on campus after dark on a Saturday night was quite an undertaking - Columbia's campus can be like a fortress). When I got back to the microscope and looked at the cells I could tell something was wrong. Upon further inspection, I realized the entire system had dried up. The cells were dead; the experiment was over. I cleaned up and headed home. We'll see if I still have enough time to meet my before Thanksgiving deadline...