Sucky Sucky I'm loathe to add a new entry, because it's not gonna be positive, and who wants to read negativity? Ugh. But I want to vent. Work sucks. Completely and absolutely. It's because I'm an idiot, it must be. Nothing ever works in the lab. Ever. And something happens every day to make feel stupid or incompetent. I hate it. So what happened today, that I can add to my list of things proving my worthlessness? 1. I said something wrong in group meeting. I don't really remember what it was, but at the time I remember thinking to just keep my mouth shut; I was talking too much. 2. I have a meeting with my boss, and I show her some good research articles that will help with my research. She asks me some questions about them, and I can't answer them. 3. I'm in the lab pulling films. Here come a few fuckups. I know how many grams I'm supposed to add of my reagents, but when I've tried taring the syringe and then adding reagent, I can't good weight after because it keeps changing due to the reagent reacting with the water in the air. I only tried it once or twice, then gave up and switched to the less accurate method of using milliliters (volume) instead of grams (mass). So today I'm doing the prep with a coworker, who's done it two or three times (I've done it 17 now), and he weighs it, and it works. I'm an idiot. 4. The films we pull look spotty. Erik tells us as much. He saw it immediately, whereas it took me a bit to see it. I said my films haven't come out that spotty. He says, yes they have. And I felt stupid. Of course they have, just not recently. But why does he know my stuff better than I do? Fuck. 5. This guy Erik has been making this type of film for less time than I have, but whereas I have just copied a published recipe, he has come to an understanding of the different components of the system and what effects what, what is important, and what isn't. Me? Nowhere close! My whole life, I've been good at following recipes exactly, but never been able to cook very well on my own. Now it's that way with chemistry. 6. I blew up at a coworker because he put glassware away in the wrong place, after I told him that every place was labeled and talked to him about it before. (I'm in charge of keeping the synthesis lab organized.) I know this guy cares not one bit about the order of lack thereof in the lab, but I've spent time organizing it, and today, after he did this a second time, I felt he was showing he just doesn't give a shit about the work done in the lab to improve things. See, even if he doesn't care about the lab, I at least thought he would care about the work I've done, and not deliberately undo it. He told me to tell him where the stuff goes, and he would move it, but that's hardly the point. I had already moved it anyway, and besides, there are obvious labels all over the lab. It would only take a minute to see where everything goes, if that. But I've not gotten to my stupid part yet. While I'm bawling him out, I say something to the effect of I've got a deadline of Sept 30 to get my shit done or I'm fired, and I don't have time to clean up after him. This was a mistake, because I'm sure he's now just blaming it all on my stress levels, when in fact this would piss me off anytime. Rule number one when arguing effectively is to stick to the subject matter. For instance, in this entire update, I stuck to the subject of my idiocy! Okay, back to (futile attempts at) work. |