Why I haven’t written anything lately
You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t posted anything since last Friday.
There are several reasons for that. The main one, which will be the topic of this post, is kind of long and drawn out… and I really wasn’t sure that I wanted to go into it, but well, maybe it will be cathartic for me to just write it out.
I think you all probably realize that I’m trying to finish all of my experiments for my Ph.D. thesis right now. What I’ve only mentioned in passing is that I’ve had some major set backs the past couple of months. This would be same set backs where I asked all of you for prayers of support and good vibes for one of my really exhausting experiments where I was trying to get the right dose of a certain chemical. Um, I never said what happened with that, did I? Well, cause we still couldn’t get the right dose with that stupid fucking lot of chemical they fucking sold us.
um. yeah.
Anger?
Me?
Not at all.
Never.
*ahem*
HOWEVER, I found a lab in a different department with a stock of that chemical from a lot that was similar to the ones that had worked for us in the past, redid the experiment and bammo! It worked great. This is reassuring in that
A) I wasn’t going crazy, and there really was a problem with recent lots that are 99% pure or less (the ones that worked were 100% and 99.5%).
B) Everything else that can affect the experimental outcome is still fine.
C) I hadn’t somehow “lost my touch” or done something flukey i.e. it wasn’t me! (which is always a worry in the back of my mind)
The bad news is that because it is so expensive, they hadn’t bought a whole bunch of it, and there is just barely enough to do the experiments that we’d thought about doing originally, but only if everything would go perfectly.
On top of that, the Clock Is Ticking. We are set to close on our house in Mnnpls/St. Paul August 29th. Our house here gets packed and loaded right around August 25th. Which means that as of the 25th or 26th I will not have a place to live to do any additional experiments.
What all of this means is that last week, I sat down with my calendar to try to figure out how to squeeze in all of my experiments before then. And well, I couldn’t see any way to get the experiments done that we’d originally thought about doing. I ended up with my stomach in knots and a migraine.
I sigh now, just thinking about it, and well, my stomach still turns over when I think about it.
I discussed it with my advisor and we both agreed that the fact that we had “just enough” of the compound, combined with the timing issues, meant that I ought to do a slightly different set of experiments where I can get the results faster. Faster in days. But lots and lots of man-hours of work.
Now, just in case I’ve confused anyone, I should just say that ever since my experiments got that wrench thrown into them, I have faced the possibility that I may need to write my thesis while living in Mnnpls. The plan would be that I’d fly back to Boston to defend it. But I’d always imagined that I’d get my experiments done with time to spare.
Now, I face this time crunch and have had to at least bat around the idea of could I live with my advisor for a couple of weeks to finish stuff if anything goes wrong.
So, I’ll be working pretty much constantly (weekends included) until late August. Yesterday, was the worst, 12 hours of experiments, very grueling.
Today was better though. And hey, I’ll have the beginnings of my results on Sunday, with the final results on Monday. So, at least I’ll KNOW something soon.
The other minor reason I haven’t written this week, will all come to light in my Flowers for Friday.
(to be continued)