Saturday, April 12, 2008

Reasons my PI is making me crazy #s 3-5

Crazy man emailed me at like 7:30 this morning wanting to know if I had done this experiment last week.  Somehow this week I was supposed to go from one phosphatase activity assay that looked promising (that's right, not glorious, promising) to mass specing these two different time points to look for modifications.  Might I just take this moment to say, yeah right?

So I had this promising phosphatase assay.  That needs to be repeated.  It's probably the most variable, touchy, spastic assay I've ever (and hopefully will ever) do.  I seriously think it changes based on the weather, who's in lab, whether or not I talk to my cells...  Yeah, one of those.  Not only that, I also needed to do a western to look at at least 3 different known modifications.  Which I haven't done yet.  Which will also need to be repeated.  And at least one of those antibodies is also touchy at best.  Of course, it's been months since I've done any westerns, so I may have lost my blotting mojo.  

So he's asking me if have prepped the samples to send to mass spec.  Would you believe that's a resounding no?  Why haven't I done it?  Mostly because I was pissed that he spent half the week on vacation without telling anybody.  I have the cells.  I have the reagents.  I had plenty of time early in the week.  But I didn't do it.  Is that spiteful?

However, I did do lots of other stuff, not that I really have much to show for it.  The question now becomes how do I tell him that I haven't done this experiment he's been dreaming about?  What do I tell him when he asks why I haven't done it?  Each repeat is basically one day worth of work.  I could conceivably have my mass spec sample ready by the end of the week.  If I wanted to.  And that's assuming my first prep is clean enough to actually yield anything.  Which is doubtful at best.  Grrrrr!!!

And to top it all off, he seems cranky that I didn't meet with him yesterday.  I would like to know when exactly I was supposed to do that.  He came in a little after 10.  By 10:30, he was talking to the golden child, which lasted at least 2 hours.  Then he ate lunch.  After that, he talked to post-doc dude for an hour.  After that he talked to other female grad student for an hour.  Then he went to a seminar.  Then there were refreshments.  Then he wanted to sit in the lab and be buddy buddy with us.  Then (at 5:30) he starts talking to female post-doc.  I had been in lab since 8:30.  So when the hell did he want me to talk to him???

Annnnnnd he's reviewing grants for a society that we are funded by.  He's making each of us read one of the grants and share our thoughts on it with the lab.  WTF???  Why?  He made us do this last grant cycle, and it was dumb then and it's still dumb now.  I'm sure in his crazy little head, there's a reason, but he hasn't decided to share that with us.  GRRRRRRR!!!

He is not supposed to be able to piss me off this much first thing on Saturday morning.  I could go into the lab and do at least one repeat of the stuff I need to do.  But I won't.  That would be letting him win.  He will not control my life like that.  I'll skim the grant at some point.  Hopefully it will suck as much as the one I read last time did.  That one was easy to pick apart.  I am going to go ahead with the plans I already made and do some hardcore spring cleaning.  So THERE!  You will not win, crazy man.  You will not!

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