Start of summer experiments

Well today is the day! I’m just hours away from collecting my first dataset for my summer project. I’m excited, it’s a cool project and I get to be first author on the paper. The topic is impressive to me so I think it will be a good way to get my name out there in the field since this will be my first paper in my Co-PI’s lab (well first, first author paper). It’s a lot of responsibility and of course I don’t have any time to prep. The first experiment is always the hardest…

There’s a lot of prep for an experiment. You need to check equipment, test the protocol, setup the equipment, write code, create data templates, basically there’s a lot of moving parts. Traditionally speaking experiments get easier as you go and since we’re collecting roughly 10 subjects worth of data I suspect that things will go easier as time goes on. Unfortunately today is not going to be a good day.

The problem is that I had a lab meeting in my main-PI’s lab this morning. Which means instead of having hours to setup for my experiment (which is traditionally how long it may take based on the fact that this is the first and the amount of equipment I’ll be using), I will have minutes, maybe 30 minutes.

The silver lining here is that I get to be the first subject! Since we now have other lab members, it makes sense that I get to be the first on the experiment to make sure everything goes smoothly. I’m hoping that today I can get the others in the lab to setup the equipment and what not for me before I arrive then I can double check and adjust anything that needs to be changed.

There’s a lot happening and not a lot of time to do it, so of course I’m writing before I need to leave. It’s basically all I can do right now because I’m not in my Co-PI’s lab yet. There’s a lot of stress at the moment, mostly on my end because I want this to go well. I also don’t like letting my Co-PI down, the original plan was just to go directly to his lab and join the lab meeting virtually, but it didn’t work out that way.

Hopefully this is making sense, I feel like things are a bit all over the place and this post is probably not quite as coherent as I am hoping it will be. To summarize, the good news is I’m starting my summer experiment and I’m excited about it. The bad news is I’m not there to set up and it’s a little scary.

Okay, time to go figure out if my ride is here…