Our lab is filthy. There is no glassware for buffers, no stirrers, no hot water, no distilled water system functional yet. Students leave beakers, spatulas and stirrers in the sink for washing, and let it stay there. Like it was their house where they leave the dished to wash them up later. We have very few pipette tips and no weight boats. They use weigh papers, so there is a lot of powders spilled around the balances. We have two permanent markers and one scissors for the whole lab. Trying to do anything is like a scavengers hunt.
There are no paper towels. I asked students if we have them. They tell me that they have them in the lab in the other building, but not here. For them this is just a fact of life that you’ve got to accept. One suggested that I should go to the toilet and take some toilet paper.
Our office is filthy too. Again. I vacuum cleaned it on Saturday as the cleaners only clean the corridor and toilets, and not our office. I washed all the coffee and sugar spills the around the coffee maker. After the weekend of "hard work" of bunch of students who ate and slept here it does not look good.
Fig. 1. State of our office after students write-up deadline.
And I am not a tidy person – my household is usually a mess and I am not a big fun of washing, tidying or cleaning. I do have a big tolerance for mess. If I feel uncomfortable here it must be really bad.
Auch! Kitchen of a shared students flat as a vision of a lab... Too many students not enough people they are afraid of...
ReplyDeleteThankfully they are going to finish on Wednesday - to keep sanity avoid office at all cost until then. %-o
How is your supervisee doing withthe write-up?
I would've even taken a break from blogging not to sit in there more than necessary.;-)
How would I avoid the office? By sitting in the lab? I have started working in the lab, but so far it looks like I am getting nowhere on my own... Things are labelled in Japanese, I do not know where things are, or how to operate them - I need the students' help with that, but they are not available. I got one MSc student to help me for 5 min today so I moved forward a little bit, but when I asked Talented Postgrad for 5 min help he told me he is terribly busy and that he will be available to help me on Friday. And what should I do until then? Sit and wait for three days? And he is the only person who can show me how to use that thing.
ReplyDeleteMy pseudo-supervisee is an undergrad, he is working in the lab and making progress (whoo hooo!) and his write-up comes later.
And I am not usually blogging during work (with a two exceptions yesterday when I was going mad here). I write all my ideas in the evenings/weekends and I only use the network connection here to copy and paste and upload my voice to the world to hear! :-)