11 Things I hate at work

1. Getting up early. And early to me is what i decide it is. Today was early and it was 10 AM.

2. Absence of summer holidays. Afterall 50 days of zero-productivity is like 15 failed experiments. Who doesnt have enough of them.

3. Aboslute freedom. You read that correct. Its fun to break rules when there is someone who cares you are breaking them. When noone cares when you come in, whats the fun going late?

4. Low salary. Enough has been said.At this point, I dont care much.

5. Need to produce results. They say publish or perish. The later is looking more attractive (read as 'realistic') with every gone day.

6. Need to repeat results. If everyone knows the difficulty in getting something to work once, why the hell do they always insist on seeing it work more than twice "atleast"? We should learn to trust miracles more !

7. Too many humans around. I am not your normal type, I agree. I prefer being alone when working and even otherwise. I cant work (especially) when humans are around. Explains why I hardly work.

8. Food at commons. Eat it. I fear I'd add taste to it by describing how bad it is.

9. Setting up PCRs. They are just monotonous and boring. And they'll work no matter what you throw in. The numbers that we pretend are so important are nothing but a lie most times.

10. Measuring protein concentration. Again, there should be better ways to do this. Bradford assays are uncool but quite accurate. But there is no thrill doing it. Sadly I have no choice till they find a more fun way to do it.

11. Sequencing. Dead boring, uncool, time consuming, accurate and totally un-PhD like. What happened to imagination? Just imagine the sequence is correct and proceed.

11 Things I like at work

1. Lab coats. Although I never wear them, I feel they are cool.

2. Cold rooms. As a child have you ever dreamt of walking into a refrigerator someday? I have on most days. As a 7 year old that was probably the coolest thing to me. Now I get to live my dream everyday.

3. Glass windows. We have huge glass windows with pretty decent view of the student life here. And I like to go blank and stare at things. I see so many random people walk around everyday sitting at my desk. Some are funny some are not.

4. Cigarette coffee. My friend put this idea into me and it was so perfect. The coffee they serve at my office tastes like cigarette ( If you could imagine the taste based on the smell). To me, who hasn't smoked, this was probably the closest I could get. 50 cents a day and I walk head held high among smokers. After all I am one among them.

5. Lab meetings. From what I hear from people I may be one in a million. Who cares? I like to listen to other (read as 'selected few') people talk about their work. I like thinking about their projects. Talking science is more fun (and easy) than doing it.

6. Western blots. This is a perfect experiment. A days work, with adequte incubation time in between to walk around, talk, and maybe go have a good lunch.

7. Mass spectrometry. Atleast sounds cool. I'll take the pain for a cool sounding name.

8. Tissue culture. Feels like real work. The pink media used to grow cells looks tempting. One day I shall taste it.

9. Kinase assays. As a child when someone says scientist thats what you think of- 'radioactivity'. I feel like my childhood superheroes whenever I do this. Unfortunately, its actually not that cool.

10. Mini Prep. Even an undergrad can do it correct. In other words, I can get it done by my undergrad.

11. 5'o clock. Thats when most people leave work. On days that I decide to work, thats when I start getting something done.