Two wild days!

If you’re reading this then it’s too late for me. Or rather it’s too early for me since I need to be up super early tomorrow, which is today (when you are reading this). Confused? Well it’s supposed to be a daily blog of my progress, but I’m cheating and writing today’s post last night. That’s because really, if you’re reading this I’m in an experiment. No, it doesn’t matter when you read this as long as it’s the day I posted because I’m definitely in an experiment. Don’t worry, I’ll explain.

Yeah it’s one of those days. I’m going to be writing this the day before you read this, so let’s pretend that I posted it the same day I wrote it to make life easier for everyone involved. At least you know I’m honest about this blog. Any who, back to the story. Yesterday we met with our out of town collaborator, the one I was excited to see. We got to play catch up, talk about the last time we saw each other (which I talked about here), and I got to ogle his super nice equipment. It’s the same setup I was attempting to convince my PI to buy last year.

We set up the equipment and I got to be the first subject for the experiments that we will be performing over the next two days. So one down, seven more to go. Of course, at the time I didn’t know we needed seven participants, my calendar only shows four. That’s where we had to pump the breaks a little and have the dear PI talk, which went a little something like this.

I reminded him we had two experiments tomorrow and he replied with the suggestion that we do four tomorrow. Now I was confused because the most we’ve ever managed to do was three in one day, which we repeated for a whole two weeks, but three was the most we could squeeze in. I reminded him of this and we went back and fourth about how long the experiment will take, setup, etc.

In conclusion we have four experiments today and I had to flat out tell him no to doing five. Then we get to do the other three on Friday. I will also be desperately trying to convince him that having a fourth on Friday may be a bit much. We’ll have to see I guess. I’m looking forward to the experiments and the time spent with everyone, it’s a lot of fun and we joke a lot. Frankly my Co-PI’s lab is probably the most sarcastic place a person can work and I absolutely love it. I’m just not thrilled about working sunup to sundown.

This of course ties into yesterdays post about saying no to things. This was something I wanted to do, so I didn’t say no to it (plus it’s on my Co-PI’s time and not my main-PI’s). I just needed to make sure that I had enough time to work on everything else while I was doing this. It’s a delicate balancing act all around, which is not easy when you’re in the middle with no say in almost anything that goes on.

The next two days will be exhausting, but worth it (hopefully). I probably won’t feel that way after we finish on Friday, but for now I’m happy to be a part of all this. It will be a learning experience, but it’s also nice to work with our collaborator friend again. He does some super cool stuff and if I were closer to finishing I would’ve taken him up on his postdoc offer (maybe) depending on what the heck my Co-PI is doing with his life (a story I’ve covered).

In any case, I’m already exhausted from yesterdays efforts and we’ve barely started, so this will be… interesting. Wish me luck, because I’m going to need a lot of it. Oh and send coffee, I’m going to need a lot of that too.