Holy crow

Experimental set-up: done
Exam 1: done but not typed
Exam 2: done but not typed. (As both of those exams are for a week from tomorrow, I will have time to type them between classes. Yes, I still write out nearly everything longhand first; it's harder for me to think at the computer.)


Experimental set-up, including time to deal with colleague's comment of "Oh noes, you're not going to use WATER in that room, are you?" (um, yes? I'm growing plants, they kind of need water). And time to deal with some lab equipment that failed and made a big mess in the middle of things, took about 4 hours.

I have to say, I kind of hate the research lab I have. It's small and cramped and the person I share it with has taken more than his share of the storage space. And the equipment's all old and everything I have is jerry-rigged and crappy and at one point this afternoon I was sitting on the floor scooping pea gravel into my planters and almost crying and I said to myself, "This is all just a big bag of FAIL."

Because I HATE inelegant solutions and messy duct-taped-together hasty solutions. I hate things that look cheap and ugly because they are cheap and ugly. But the problem is, short of writing a grant (and it's one of those Catch-22s: just like you need experience in order to get a job and a job in order to get experience, my experience with granting agencies is that they take one look at proposals from schools like mine - where there are not shiny new greenhouses and growth chambers a-plenty - and they go, "Who are these clowns? Do they think they can do science without any equipment? We can't give them money unless they've proven they can do science, which we do not believe they can do without equipment..." and they ashcan the proposal).

Or maybe my research just sucks, I don't know.

But it does frustrate me. And I realize we're not a high-powered research school; hell, outside of my department and maybe one or two others, no one really even does research. But I have a vision of what I'd LIKE to be able to do and what I actually CAN do never quite lives up to that. And it frustrates me.

But at least my three big requirements for the day are done. I think I'm going to go our for barbecue tonight to celebrate the fact that I survived the day even with exploding labware and colleagues who don't like the fact that messy nature sometimes has to be brought indoors to be studied...