Back to the Bench...

It's surprising (or perhaps not) how many graduate students I've met who couldn't wait to be finished with school so that they could get the heck out of doing research. I suspect that a significant part of such feelings comes from a disconnect between the expectations of what it will be like to do science based on what one learned in undergrad vs. the unfortunate-but-necessary tedium that underlies the routine practice of experiments. Counting embryos all day for weeks on end, for example, is not a uncommon part of a typical developmental biology project.

In addition to the above, I think that some degree of being turned off from research probably stems simply from doing a project in which one has no interest. I recently attended a lecture by Micheal S. Brown, who shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1985 for elucidating the mechanism of cholesterol biosynthesis. The work that he described was both fascinating and inspiring, but also, at least in terms of my interests, very tedious. As was pointed out after the lecture (I'm paraphrasing): that 35 years of work can be represented by one PowerPoint slide with a few arrows on it tells you something about the laboriousness of said work. The routine 'drudgery' of the lab is only bearable if you're doing something you're honestly interested in. 

After over a year of struggling through a lot of work that didn't pique my interest, I'm finally working on some projects that have got me excited. Furthermore, they're in two fields in which I'm personally invested1: the evolution of a) development and  b) gene regulation. The first (side) project involves doing working with some familiar data in Drosophila melanogaster, the organism that I've spent the last ~6 years studying, in order to pursue some of the interests I developed during my Ph.D. On the flip side, the second (main) project requires me to learn about a new model organism group, that of Saccharomyces (including S. cervisea, baker's yeast).

The computational tools that I've used in previous genomic analyses will transfer without difficulty to my new study group, but where I'll have to spend the most time (at least initially) is learning how to work with yeast itself - something I have done in the past while TA labs and such, but never using the kinds of protocols I'll be implementing soon.

Thus I find myself gearing up to begin practicing my mean molecular biology 'bench skillz' once again. I haven't actually been away from the bench for more than 4 months at a time (which is good), but the past couple of years have found me spending more of my average day sitting in front of a PC than ever before (which is bad2). This will soon change, however, as I attempt a grueling, week-long protocol which no one I know has any experience... 

I'm excited though, because, no matter how many times it fails, I still look forward to bench work!

1On top of the two reasons listed above leading to one being turned off of research, it's arguable that being stuck doing something one isn't interested in during a postdoc is even worse. At this point in an academic career, you're supposed to be spending a lot of time developing a research acumen of your own, and it's difficult to see how you could accomplish this effectively by doing something you dislike.

2My current issue with computational work is ergonomics. The majority of lab work-spaces were built long before the age of computers, and thus they're not well suited to long days of typing-away at a keyboard. I'm not tall to begin with, so I find myself sitting in awkward postures in order to reach the surface of my desk. I've been having off-and-on problems with my wrists and my ulnar nerves, which is not a good sign. Thankfully work is providing me with a fix for my desk (a keyboard drawer), but I'm trying to minimize my typing time until it arrives.