Hi brotherfuckers! It's your boyfriend Josephi Krawaski with FLEX TAPE! How is you doing? I don't really care anyway since that's never the point of my blog. But before diving into my topic of discussion today, I shall write about what happened in the past few months.
So 1st: I got "fired" from my previous lab because I did not give any good results and also I did not seem to "follow" her standard. Well, was I wrong? Yes, but by how? Firstly, my professor gave me a lazy looking mentor who I simply followed. So what did I do? I literally just copied what he do. But guess what, I WAS supposed to do more! But, was I told to do more? No, but shouldn't I knew by myself that I should have known what she wanted me to do? No, because it's my first time working in a lab. My professor literally just go with me finely until one day she decided to break my ice and said that she wasn't happy with my results and confidence. So ok.... All I did was exactly following what my mentor did. Furthermore, she said I should discuss data with her before I leave; but everytime I would leave the lab, I would ALWAYS(and never had I not) ask my professor nicely, "Is there anything I could/should do?" And she would reply nicely "No. Thank you so much for your help!" All the time. How do I know it was my part of duty when I was literally a blank canvas? My mentor never mentioned any of that discussion to me, so I never thought about it. Some of you may say "If there are results, wouldn't it be very logical to discuss it with your professor?" I could. I could do that if I was told that it was another part of my duty; because all I thought was to run experiments and that's it. I never knew what undergraduate research meant to be, nor anyone told me. However, I do admit my mistake here, which is not to ask.
Why do we ask question? Curiosity? Uncertainty? Uncertainty for me. Eventhough I didn't know about what it meant to be an undergraduate researcher, I do know 1 absolute thing, which is the presence of un-calming/un-satisfied feeling in the lab. I felt these when I realized that all I have been doing was to do Western Blotting every week, and no other experiment were done. I expected more, but I never asked. If I would have asked, I would probably be able to save my position in my lab.
It was awkward because my professor still invited me over to her house party for the 2 senior students who were graduating. I felt sad, and disgust to be eating in the house of a professor who don't seem to accept me as her student. But with that, I tried my best to eat as much food before I left just because hanyiah.
And that was it. I was left with no lab to work in. My early summer was sad and empty. I was only in 1 class in order to find myself a good lab to work in. It was a Vertebrate Biology class, where we memorize different animals, their trait, latin name, relationship (phylogeny) and other craps that I, by this moment, have already forgotten. I applied to many different labs, and no one came back to me.
I was afraid that I might not be able to make a good resume and have to go back to my hometown and work (which is a big No for me). So then, I kept on applying until 1 lab accepted me. It was a muscular degeneration related research, which I never thought of. I went and for the "interview" and I got accepted in. The people there were much different from my previous lab, there were more people (bigger lab) and I never used to work next/with many people. There were laughs and happiness around the lab, but the PI does look angry sometimes, but I know that she is just busy. But what came next was unprediced. I was also accepted into a Stem Cell lab. I was shocked and immediately accepted the interview, which ended me now working in 2 labs.
The Stem cell lab... is much more... tense and strict. The professor is a very busy person who travels across the world most of the time, and in the lab there are many people working on many different projects (quite like my muscle lab). But here, we have to Journal clubs (share with everyone about a research paper you read) and group meeting, where PhD students are showing their progress of research. It is very interesting, but the atmosphere is very tense during these meetings, as if 1 wrong sentence will lead up to 1000 questions. Not many people "appreciate" other people's work because many come and goes during the lab, which is not surprising for big lab and many experiments are running at the same time. But overall, this was the lab where I was able to do more things that I really like, which was to research the properties of cancer stem cells, AKA the one cell that divides slower, but created multiple quick dividing cancerous cells. Also they are the one that undergoes metastasis and lead to stage 4 cancer.
And we can see, when I was out of the lab, I was in depression because of the fear of failure. But instead, the negative effect of having me out of the previous lab had led to research what I REALLY LOVE MORE. Eventhough I know that the previous lab has it's own importance, I have always wanted to work on researches that are more direct to cancer cells.
With that said, I am going to give you all a very cliche lesson of mine:
1) Failure comes in and you are allowed to be depressed by that, but make sure you don't stop working on your future.
2) Take a failure as an opportunity for a better future.
3) Ask me wha Ligma, Sugondese and Updog is.
Bye.
Lousy Update
