Yesterday the consequences of not having my Western blot working sank into my head. I cried fat continuous tears on the lawn between Barker Hall and Warren. Maria tried to console me but nothing, except talking about it, worked. After crying so hard I got the worst headache but I went to class, continued my experiments, and went on with the day. All day and night I couldn't even bear to think about lab or the project or the westerns. It was too painful. This morning I had to force myself to come to lab. I was thinking all night long how I suck at science. How nothing has ever worked for me. I thought, "in Albert Einstein it was the ELISA's, in Berkeley it is going to be Western Blots" and the words of my ex-boss kept repeating themselves in my mind, "You have absolutely no talents in the sciences".... Yeah those were my ex- bosses last sweet words and I carry them arround like a ball and chain wrapped around my ankle. Assholes....There are sooo many of them out there. Specially in Science.
But here is the speckle of sunlight after the big storm. Today when I came in, I looked at my IFA cells (that I had infected the night before {yesterday}) with the same virus as what I had infected my western with. Anyways, I looked under the microscope and there was nothing. I thought there was something wrong with the microscope, I wasn't using it right, so as always I called Rick and he walked over patiently to help me just once more. As we were looking at the cells he asked:You know these cells that you are infecting are RPE's right? I said yes. He said RPE's are harder to infect. You need more virus!
Of course a million things went through my mind like, "Why the hell didn't he say this before?"
The good news is that I am not cursed. There is no troll that comes in and pees in my western cultures, there is still hope for my career. All that is wrong with my Westerns is that there isn't enough virus to produce proteins! I feel relieved. This is why no one should commit suicide. Because things HAVE to get better, SOMEDAY.... The one line that I liked from "
The Crow" was: It can't rain everyday.....
Remember guys that song that I like I told you is my phylosophy to life?
"
Pick myself up....Rub myself off....And start all over again!"
On another note...
Yesterday night, Maria and I were writing our statistical analysis paper (this is for a statistics class) based on a paper about Homosexual behavior in birds (80 species studied). Here is the title and stuff if you are interested:
Same-sex sexual behavior in birds: expression is related to social mating system and state of development at hatching. MacFarlane, GR., Blomberg, SP., Kaplan, G., Rogers, LJ. 2006. Behavioral Ecology 18:21-33.
We started writing it at 6:30 pm and finished writing it at 12 midnight. We managed to write the same exact number of pages required without cheating. It actually turned to be an easy assignment. No headaches.
Anyways.. Keep leaving me comments. They let me know there is someone out there that understands...after all.
Luv you guys....
