Before getting into the lab I made a few job search stops that I knew were on my way (more or less). This involved dropping in to my alma mater of 14 years ago, the second street preschool. I was warmed to the core on that somewhat chilly day by my reception. They even recognized me without the tap dancing shoes I felt were so necessary to wear every day back then! After the brief rendezvous, I made my way to the lab.
For the past couple weeks I have been working one a single experiment that is the focus of my project. Unfortunately, each repeat seemed to expose errors that hadn't been there in the previous attempt. Because it is a longish process and our total sample reservoir has a finite limit, I was worried about the fate of my entire senior project. In a last ditch effort to yield results, I doubled my experiment. The benefit I saw behind this was that any small mistake that had a snowballing effect for each ensuing step would not be repeated in both of the tubes I was using for a reaction. The draw back is that the time required to go from start to finish is also doubled. In order to minimize the draw backs, I attempted to multitask whenever possible. This also had a catch: my attention was noticeably beginning to break down. Luckily I held it together until 5pm on Friday when this pretty little picture came up on the computer screen after I took the picture of my gel in UV light.
Results.... Feels good....
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