I took a day off today (friday) because I m going back to the lab on saturday to do a 3 hr lab work.
Well anyways.. I m supposed to start writing but I m feeling a bit too complacent so its not good.. Plus I m pretty excited about the BBQ tomorrow and I am going to Michelle’s place (in the city) tonight to help her with the food preparation. She stays in the apartment which her parents bought for her and its location is just a street across Melbourne Central ( the big and nice shopping mall that I usually frequent) . How fortunate!
Well back to the stuffs that I need to grumble and let it go… I was in the lab yesterday and was chatting up with the new RA who is a nice girl… and we were chatting about how my talk went on Friday. And so happened that the *jealous* RA from another group was in the pantry too. Why did I assume/think that she is jealous?
Well.. from the past encounters that I had with her for this year- Apart from being bossy towards me , she probably tried to say certain things/ hint to me that things come to me easily, so I had it all easy or in fact she would totally gave me that ” how could you not know” expression whenever I ask her trivial stuffs. In short, I can sense she dislikes me which is fine with me after all she is just an RA , I don’t really care if we see eye to eye or not and we are not within the same group. But it eventually pisses me off when all those encounters were added up together.Afterall I’ve been nice and tolerant. I did voice out once I find that she was picking on me over like the container I used as my waste container. Maybe it was my fault but then definitely when I mentioned a post doc did that in the group as well, she kept quiet. So I can’t help but to think that she is deliberately picking on me.
And yesterday, I basically could picked up lines that she meant that things are easy for me because I m enrolled through a wrong department- this means that everyone has no idea what I was talking about in my project when I do my presentation in the department because they are doing different things so assuming that the professors and the scientists there would not have the brain to think and ask me clever questions. She said that Biochemistry department is difficult and her supervisor was a honorary lecturer in that department. ( she was an ex student who enrolled through that department and I wondered if she failed her oral?)
I could only say, since they are not doing project in this similar line, they can’t ask very technical questions, but I have to say they are scientists and they will ask relevant questions which I did encountered. And so far I have not met anyone who asked stupid questions since they are professors and scientists. Like wise in biochemistry department, it may seem that they are dealing with the difficult stuffs / more technical with all the complicated pathways they need to know or study… but come on everyone’s work does involve a bit of biochemistry unless you are doing epidemiology and that’s STATs you need to worry about. So I don’t know what’s the point of comparing. If you are so sore about which department I enrolled in and you are jealous about it, then you should have not try to do an honours project. Come on.. I haven’t even tell you about my experience last year. Try doing a project with a supervisor who
1) knows nothing about the project that she offers to you thus she is not able to give you any advise /help in your project- this means that if things go wrong, nobody knows that you are doing the wrong stuffs because the *expert* herself isn’t an expert afterall
2) try writing a thesis when your supervisor goes away 3 out of the 5 weeks during the time when she should be there for you to discuss about your results and how you should go about writing
3) try doing the experiments all by yourself for the first by just reading the protocol and no one to supervise you and when it goes wrong, you get all the blame- what’s more, waste all your precious time by getting crappy results and have to redo all the experiments all over again.
4) try to be in a deparment where no one knows the field that you are doing, they can be working in stem cells or placenta but not the cells that you are culturing therefore there is no one who basically can share knowledge about the cells that you are working on
5) if you are in a department where people aren’t very supportive of your presentation , or even bother to sit down to listen to your talk so you could improve on your actual presentation to be graded – how do you feel and how do you learn to deal with it as an honours student.- worse of it all , when you present a crappy stuffs people tell you that it’s all crap and ask you to redo everything midway through your presentation.
6) try working in a lab group without any post doc nor RA… just you and the supervisor and sometimes you need to double it up as an RA because she doesnt know how to operate the plate reader.
Therefore all in all , I don’t think we have any grounds to compare. I m secured and confident that I made it this far because of what I ve been through since RP days. Don’t give me that crap that getting through RP education system is easy. How many people do you know actually made it to a proper uni after graduating in RP ? How many people dropped out of RP because they can’t stand arguing for their slides everyday or doing talks about it? How many people do you know could withstand the scrutinization gave by fellow evil schoolmates who want to make you fail during your final year project and also some “I m a high-up there scientist in singapore who came from Canada but you can’t find my name in the pubmed” telling you that you can’t make it as a science student…. Surviving those 3 years did make myself doubt if I m suitable to stay on in this field… and I know some fellow bmed science students decided to leave this field because they confidence were pulled apart and not because they didnt have the interest. This field is really difficult because it requires alot of hard work… a lot of physical effort to maintain the consistency in each experiments. The brains… it comes from everyone in the group… and not just you alone… some people look at your results and they can come out with reasons for that which at times you can’t even think of it. A pity that the arrogant culture in the education system would intimidate the new, budding young research students.
I don’t think the scientific world is all that sad. True , we all have to learn to think critically and look at things in an analytical manner, but it doesn’t mean that the people there in the scientific world have to be mean , obnoxious, rude and arrogant people to put others down to be analytical or to be able to think critically. Sometimes I prefer to think that these people are just a tad bit eccentric as they have locked themsleves in the lab for far too long and they haven’t get out to socialise…Definitely, I m hoping to see the new generation of scientists are not that dull but are fun and not socially awkward nor socially offending. It’s just common sense to know what you are saying and what you are trying to put across… Some people don’t watch their mouths … and they ended up saying things offending people , cutting off social network which eventually may not do them good in a long run and that’s because you will never know you will meet them again and need their help in the future.
And to the jealous RA… I had my thesis defence too … but I don’t have to do it again this year because I have the confirmation . And that’s just like the PHD assessment . Why do you have to make it sound like ” you have it all going for you… you have it all easy.. and me the poor RA … I had the toughest life when I was a student last year… life is shit.. let’s emo…”
Well I don’t think anyone that I know had it easy when they are doing their project. Some I know broke down and cry… I did cry over my project and equipments even… I grumble on every Sunday night because I have to go back to the lab on Monday… because it’s all hard work and we all love to complain. Don’t we? But piecing up the picture together, we are all working for a good cause.
Like Joanna’s work is looking at the alcohol effects on the fetal’s heart- so this would give a scientific indication if mothers could drink during their pregnancy… Some mothers do drink for your information be it red wine , white wine, yomeishu.. they all contain ethanol… but it may all not be healthy for the baby that is still growing in the momma’s body.
And another girl looked at the ultrasound effect on fetal brain development and they found that it does have an effect on the brain development – good or bad… we are not sure but ultrasound which is frequently use on pregnant women to look at the baby development during the gestational period are regarded as safe… But is it really all that safe, people are looking into that as well.
I do not want to blog about my work lest my supervisors found my blog in google search… hahaha
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