My lab

As much time as I spend in the lab, I realize how little I talk about it. It is a place I feel comfortable to watch television online, nap, and read a copy of the Scientist (think of a People equivalent aimed at researchers). I drink my coffee in the morning, and eat most of my dinners in the break room. For instance, this morning I toasted my Eggo waffles and drank tea for breakfast, and I just heated up some food a postdoc brought for lunch but decided not to eat. Yes, it is my home.

We are sectioned off into little units called labs. It makes us a little defensive of our fellow labmates work. It makes us band together against mutually offenses like administration. It makes us identify ourselves with the name of our Principal Investigator, our boss and he is our mascot.

Our PI carries little to no authority. He is kind of like the bumbling dad in so many romantic comedies. Slightly bumbling with an occasional wise word. I'm sure he has the power to fire me, but if it hasn't happened yet, it will never happen.

As for us lowly peons, we spend our time going to lectures, designing experiments, drinking hot beverages, drinking various forms of cold EtOH, and chatting. Everyone in the lab plays their role dutifully. There is the organizer, the social chair, the annoying braggart, the uber scary nerd, the calm leader, the cheerful postdoc and the confused student. There is an inexplicable bond between you and the other members in the lab. A twilight zone in which they are your family, but you know nothing about them. I wonder if this is what it is like in other workplaces. But I can only imagine other workplaces being like the Office and Dilbert.

Most biological wet labs look the same. Benches that stand higher that your waist littered with tubes and pipettes. Above my bench, I have the same set of chemicals I always like, my buffers and salts on one side, special chemicals on the other. Unlike in the movies, all the rows of bottles and conical tubes are filled with colorless bottles.

While houses have creaks and whistles, the lab has its own set of noises. The whir of 5 refridgerators, the gentle hiss of the vacuum, ocassional beeps of the hood and the bustle of people. People seem to be in constant motion here. Tubes are in one bay, centrifuge is accross the room, the water bath in the center, the freezer at the end, and the laminar flow hood is in another room altogether.

Right now its quiet. I can only hear the machines singing their gentle songs. But soon any minute now, my alarm will ring to remind me to plate my transformations and I can get the F#$@ out of here to see some of the real world again.