Dominoes

It’s going to be a busy week for me. Seems to be a theme in my quest for that PhD to be honest. I’ve got data to process, papers to write, experiments to run, appointments to keep. It’s a lot of moving pieces that all need to be aligned at just the right moment. Dominoes, if I can get everything lined up nicely, the tasks will all fall just as easy.

I try to be an organized person. I have a checklist, I meticulously keep up with that checklist, and I check it about 24345324654654231687 times a day, give or take 10 times or so. I’m an anxious person, it helps keep me calm knowing that I didn’t forget anything or that if I have my checklist will help remind me.

This week is one of those weeks I’m glad I have my system. There are a lot of things that need to happen in a particular order this week. Last week one of my experiments failed because the equipment broke. It happens, my PI isn’t even upset, he wants a quote to get a replacement and a couple of spares just in case. Unfortunately that’s where the good news ends.

It’s made a lot of work for me. Now I need to go onto campus to get replacement equipment, test that equipment, and reschedule my participant. One of the main issues is that we have a limited number of the part that broke, four to be exact. I know for a fact one is broken and now I have a second that is broken. This leaves two, one of them is in another lab and I’m not certain I can get it. One, there is one of the part I need that is unaccounted for, but I didn’t see in the lab. I know this for certain because I would’ve grabbed it had I seen it.

As I stated at the beginning, I’m an anxious person by nature. I don’t like the thought of not knowing where that extra part is located. That’s just part of the struggle this week, although a major part obviously.

I’ve also got my journal paper that I need to work on. One of my co-authors is super unreliable and has been this whole process, so I’m forced to do the work he was going to do and I’m going to be doing it today or tomorrow (on top of the other work I am doing already!) which does not make me happy.

I have data that could validate my super secret technique that will revolutionize the world!!!!! (not srs… semi srs). If only I could find time to sit down to process the data and see if what I have is real or just some well timed noise.

Next, I’ve got meetings with my mentees. That’s a weekly occurrence, but at the moment it seems a bit overwhelming. No matter, they will get done, I don’t want to be a bad mentor and I know for sure one of the meetings is absolutely needed.

We’re also meeting with a potential postdoc for my Co-PI’s lab. That sounds like fun until I realized I was invited to dinner and brunch with them… out… in public * insert horror movie soundtrack here * I’m supposed to give my honest opinion about what it’s like working in the lab since I’m the senior grad student and have been attempting to be a fake postdoc, or at least fill in the void our old postdoc made when he left. I have nothing, but good things to say about the lab, so I don’t mind. The meals are going to be, well scary, but hopefully it won’t be what I expect.

This list isn’t even exhaustive! There are still so many other things I really don’t want to list them all, but the nice thing is there is an order of operations and as long as I can do everything my little order it should go smoothly. Again, like dominoes, as long as everything falls into place the way I need it, the end result will be spectacular. Will it happen? Well stick around and you’ll know by the end of the week!