Over the past week, I've been going through various training sessions; everything from learning how to use XRD (X-ray diffraction) to identify solids to how to do an amino acid adsorption isotherm. Oxide preparation, operating the Zetasizer, phosphorous assays and many other protocols are spinning through my head as I try to nail them all down in preparation to break free and finally do some work on my own. With my background in molecular biology (mostly), I have a lot of catching up to do in the geochemical department. So far, I think I'm keeping up with everything but it's still tiring and I don't quite trust myself to remember everything after seeing it just once. So after each session, I'm left with a bulging folder of chicken-scratch-saturated sheets of looseleaf paper that must be typed and organized before it can be added to my growing collection of lab protocols. For those of you who don't know what a protocol is, it's like a recipe or a set of instructions that tells you how to conduct a given experiment or procedure in the lab.
The sudden upsweep of activity means that I've progressed from the first stage in which all I did was read papers all day, to the second, where I not only spend every spare moment I have reading papers, but learning new procedures as well. Shortly, this second stage will give way to a third; independence in the lab (at least, where my bench work is concerned). No, this doesn't mean I get to go crazy and spend all my PI's hard-earned grant money-- she still gets the final say about what I will do when-- it just means that I will become responsible for balancing literature review with prep time and experiments such that a reasonable amount of progress is made each week. Progress is guaged at informal lab meetings which, I'm going to discuss in greater detail once I have a little more time to do justice to this particular topic.
For now, I think that's about all I can handle. I have a lot to get done tomorrow and if I don't get to bed soon, I may find myself falling asleep on my desk after lunch (not how I want my PI to find me if she comes looking for me!).
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