Lab Madness

I guess I am starting to struggling a bit too early. Well it wasn’t really my fault, but the last two weeks were a bit crazy and busy. It all started when my supervisor asked me to prepare a sample and ship it into Canada within the next 2 weeks. It was a bit of a late notice, but never mind. Just to make it clear both my supervisors went for a conference in Canada, so in addition to being in different time zone they were also extremely busy. They asked me to create a plan for the week, so that I can finish preparation of my sample and ship it on the 2nd week so it arrives to Canada on time. I have made it and was really happy about my plan. I had to sterilise my fibres, create a collagen gel, seed the cells within the gel onto fibres and perform 2 types of freezing techniques (to figure out which is better) and finally section my sample. The sectioning of my sample was needed in order to get it into the tube used for micro computed tomography (µCT), the field view is extremely small, so it had to be 100µm in diameter. I can cut it this thin, but then I would need to get it into 100µm in diameter tube, just to give you an idea of how small it is – your hair is around this size. So I though this will be tricky, but I would manage.

This is my new office computer :)

It all went down hill, when I was waiting for my supervisor to send me a protocol. Since she was busy with all the flights and etc. I only got the protocol on Thursday night meaning that most of my week plan couldn’t be done. In addition to that, I am new in the labs so finding stuff is extremely tricky. I went to stores to buy some Eppendorf tubes. Imagine stores as a big room filled with closed boxes on shelves. I asked a guy who works there to help me to find Eppendorf’s. I realized that he has no clue what they where, when he was showing me pipette tips and telling me that they are what I’m searching for. (In case you don’t know Eppendorf’s are small tubes with a lid. There is a difference!) Anyway, I managed to find everything, had to borrow some stuff from other people but I was ready to seed my cells on Friday. Well my gel didn’t really work well, as it hadn’t gelled after incubation but never mind it was a first trial so its ok. On Monday I was expected to talk with a lady who could train me on cryostat for sectioning my samples. The lady said that she doesn’t have time to train me, but she could do it for me. I started to realize that I won’t be able to send my samples in time, so I thought at least I can get them ready for my µCT booking. Little did I know, the lady forgot about them and now I’m leaving to Edinburg on Tuesday for the CDT conference and will be back on Wednesday. The µCT booking was for the 3rd of Thursday, meaning that I will not have time to get my samples into the tubes, as this would be a challenge by itself so I would need a whole day for it. So I had to reschedule my booking, luckily they weren’t too angry at me as this machine is the busiest and you are not supposed to cancel at such a short notice. Well now it’s all done. I will come back from the conference and on Friday I will section my scaffold, so I should be ready for µCT on the 7th.

The next post will be about my first experience presenting a poster and my first trip to Scotland. Hope it all goes well.