I love my lab Part II

So. Today I gave lab meeting after almost 2 months. My lab meeting only had 2 slides of data. So ofcourse I know that is preaty pathetic. Of course I wish I had at least 5 more. But my project is a slow running one. See for me to get data from 1 experiment I must wait 2 weeks. So imagine if you are learning a brand new system of experiments and you find that after 2 weeks your experiment failed. BUT you must present lab meeting every 3 weeks. What would you do?
This is what I have done to remedy the situation:

1) I set up as many experiments as possible so that 1 can work.
2) I wash my cells a lot so that they will have a fresh amount of nutrients every 3 days.
3) I try to be as careful as possible so that my experiments have every single control possible.

What this has led to is to most of my experiments either dying or not staining right etc etc. and maybe only 1 or 2 experiments that give me something interesting and interpretable. This is preaty normal for a grad student.... I think. SIGH.
I mean it took a post doc 8 months to get this system going. I am half way there after 2 months of trying to initiate the same system. Really. I have it almost working.

SO here is the real story.
I gave lab meeting only had 2 slides of data. After lab meeting various people from the lab were discussing who should go next when (to present in lab meeting). So one of the other graduate students suggests that we give Shawna time before throwing her into lab meeting. And I said well Shawna already has data and she hasn't presented in a long time. Not that I have anything against Shawna but I don't want any of us to get special treatment. And she has the data...
So all the sudden Maurice says, "Yeah you know every grad student that has been thru here has been able to do all the lab presentations with a lot of results to present"
And I asked, "So does that mean that we suck?" Since I had just given a 2 slide presentation.
And he answered, "Well to be honest, Yeah you do suck."
I responded, "Oh Go to Hell Maurice" And walked away, infuriated, but at the same time happy that Linda (our new postdoc group leader) was able to see, hopefully, how nasty these people really are.

Infuriated because these people keep telling me that I shouldn't be comparing myself to anyone whether it is past post docs or past students or current. AND yet look at the shit I have to deal with.

I hate, I mean Love my lab.
The sarcasm is making me nauseus I have to go.

I love my lab, I love my lab

So my PI has been canceling lab meeting for the past weeks. I have basically not presented for almost 2 months. :O Then all the sudden just like 3 days ago he decided that we will have lab meeting on Tuesday after all. Now I have to put my lab presentation all together in a matter of seconds and make sure I find something I can publish on Nature so that the lab will not bite my head off.
It can't be anything I do not comprehend, nothing I messed up on, no mysterious dissapearances, it has to be ready to publish on Nature.

I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab.

Yeah, I wonder how many times I have to repeat that for it to happen.

Switching gears now...
I was studying for quals last night by reading about viral Assembly and then I found out that the Nuclear capsid is involved in almost everything. It is involved in entry, in reverse trancription, in integration, in transcription, and in exit. I got this idea for Garry's project. I emailed it to him and then new Post Doc leader, Linda. When I tried to discuss the idea with Garry he said, "Oh we tried that idea out 4 years ago."
Garry is sooooo sweet. Sarcastic sigh..
Then I explained to him how my idea is actually different from the one he had before and he admitted that my idea was an interesting one.
Now if I can just come up with ideas for MY project everything will work out great.

I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab.

Good scary Times....

Well I feel like it has been a long time since I've written. Enough time so that something good was allowed to happen. We finally found a suitable apartment for us. It is a loft 2x's the size of the 1 bedroom in which we live in. We actually painted the walls so I think it is going to look SUPER cool. I can't wait til I have all my stuff over there, organized.
Another good thing is that my friend passed the Qual! YEY! So we are all back on track. Now it is just a matter of Maria and me passing it.

Oh yeah, I finally found 3 suitable aims that I feel confident about. I've talked to 2 professors and they approve. I had a practice Qual with my friends and tomorrow I will practice with a professor and my classmates. I've gotten to the point where the desire to get this over with is overshadowing my fear of taking it. I've written a couple of sentences on the background.
So everything is on track for that..

I have so many experiments I have set up. And so many others I still haven't analyzed at all. I am kind of scared to analyze them because if the results that I need/expect are not there then I'll be in big trouble. I will have to deal with Post docs and lab meeting heckling all over again. At the same time the reason why I haven't done it is because again I have soooo much shit to do it is not even funny. The worst thing is that I keep getting pulled into doing all of these things around 5pm outside of lab so I haven't had the chance to just stay in lab a whole 20 hours and just get everything Done....

But cheerios. Who cares. I am happy that nothing terribly bad has happend and also that I am finally on my way to finishing this Qual Crap... I just can't wait to have it done. I can't even imagine how good it is going to feel to pass it, to actually be done with it and tell my PI right to his face that I passed it. I really wonder how he will react. Probably like if a fly is buzzing around him. He'll pass his hand in the air to push the fly away.
Maybe he'll murmur a good, now get me some real results. Who knows, who cares. I just can't wait to visit my family to go to the Dominican Republic for Christmas to get back to my hobbies. ETC ETC ETC....
I just can't wait to get back to LIFE!

Fears eating me alive

Trying to come up with an outline for my Qualifying Exam. In the mean time I preaty much know where to start on my BackGround! Like I know kind of what I want to say. I already wrote 3 sentences. This is so scary!

I tried putting 3 aims together but I fainted and hit my head against concrete and then I was taken to the Hospital and was having outer body experiences from the concussion.
Conclusion: Must repeat experiment. What if I don't find the factor? I am exxagerating about the hospital and all that but the 3 aims were just not good enough especially together. Aim #2 was dependent on #1 and so on and so on. So... Back to the drawing board.

I am so scared my experiments didn't work that I am not collecting my FACS Samples. More than 100 FACS samples have accumulated.