Mini-Retreat

After much internal debate, I’m currently in Dodge with Dr. Man. Barring Friday night, it’s been a relaxing weekend.

On Friday day, I had my entire week’s worth of experiments just turn out badly. I talked with Advisor about them and he (finally!) agreed with me on what the overall problem with these experiments (that the gene is not in the plasmid that we think it is and I may or may not be cutting out the correct part of the plasmid). However, he made me feel like a moron when he told me that next week he wants to watch me do my experiments.

::Begin Rant:: Grrr. I’m not a frigging moron. I can do simple DNA digests and ligations. I’ve done them before and they’ve worked. Plus, if he would have just spent the money to buy a plasmid with that gene or talked to the guy we got this plasmid from (to inform him that it was incorrect and the correct plasmid would be appreciated), I wouldn’t have wasted all this time! He doesn’t do this with labmate (want to stand over his shoulder)… ever. ::End Rant::

So, that was a pretty big blow to my self-esteem. However, Dr. Man pointed out that it was doubtful that Advisor would actually stand over my shoulder and that I’m not incompetent. (As I’ve had other experiments, etc. work out just fine and dandy.)

Because of all this I almost decided not to visit Dr. Man this weekend. I feel guilty about taking time off because nothing worked last week and that the deadline for abstract submission is coming up so soon (mid-March).* I feel like I should be working twice as hard because nothing is working. On the other hand, I would be unhappy to not see Dr. Man for three weeks. He’s very important to me and he helps keep me sane. And the less I see him the more distracted I become in the lab (and that causes me to make more mistakes). So, I decided the two and half days that I would take off would balance things out. Or at least that has been my justification.

So, I’m here in Dodge. I’ve not done much work-wise. I’ve read part of a journal article that discusses a method I’m going to use in the near future, but aside from that I’ve done nada. Yesterday we hung out, we each read a book (I read The Amber Spyglass), went out to dinner (yum.. Mexican), and watched a movie with a friend (Hot Fuzz). Today Dr. Man is on-call. But he can take the majority of his call from home. So, I’ve been catching up on my blog reading and drinking coffee. He’s been reading and doing laundry intermittently. Later today, I think I’ll give the dog a bath and go grocery shopping for Dr. Man (he can’t go because it’s too far away for call). As you can see, this hasn’t been a very exciting weekend, but I’m beginning to think that my justification might have actually been justified.

* I should note that Advisor is very flexible about me going to Dodge. I told him that I was going this weekend and he said that was fine and to drive safely.