Do you ever have those days where no matter how hard you try, experiments just don’t work? You can’t help but make mistakes only expected from summer interns? You can’t even seem to assemble in silico DNA sequences without inadvertently typing an extra “T” or “A” or “G” or “C”, making your translation sequence look like someone is cursing at you with all those “*”s to indicate stop codons. Argh!
Never fear, young scientists. I have been there. My spell lasted over a whole month! I was forgetting important controls when setting up experiments, adding wrong buffers to samples, and misplacing important reactions. PCR contamination seemed to follow me like a little lost puppy. I drug my feet and pushed down the sick feeling in my stomach each time I had to go into the boss’s office to explain yet another failure. By the middle of it all, I was questioning my choice of career and state of mental health. I also feared the worst – premature ageing or early onset Alzheimer’s disease. I was one hot mess.
The cure was to work through it, one day at a time. I wrote down every mundane detail for the impending task at hand and took more deliberate time to set up and execute experiments. I gave myself time during the day to compose myself, even if it meant stepping out of the lab for a little while. Eventually, the slip-ups became less frequent and returned to a minimum. Eventually, I was able to critically think through problems. Eventually, I was able to get my scientific mind back. If you’re losing your scientific mind, remember it has just gone on vacation for a while and will be back refreshed and ready for work in no time! In the meanwhile, print yourself out some good journal articles to read to stimulate whatever is left.
