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Progress!

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Progress! I have an office now, comes with a fabulous chair and a giant table!! All this excitement for a chair and table? Well, if I had had to order, I would have probably ordered a much more modest one. I still have to learn 1) how to spend other people’s money 2) how much is okay and how much is too much.

Progress! I have a student trainee working with me now. I think I was as nervous on his first day as he. What will I give him to do? Will it make sense? Would I be able to show him the experiment without seeming too controlling or too lackadaisical? Well, the first day is over. Phew! Now two more months to go, and if he decides to stay!!??!! 

Progress! My reagents have arrived from Boston. The dry-ice box that my labmate carefully packed and sent from Boston to arrive within the week, did arrive within the week, into the airport customs cargo hold. Then it sat there, for a day, a week, nearly two weeks. While a magical person called the ‘clearing agent’ filled in, exchanged, submitted masses of paperwork….I imagine. And finally on Friday evening at 9:00pm it  arrived at the lab. Thanks be to all dedicated student all-nighters. There is always someone at the lab, working away.

I feel a respect and something resembling envy for these students. They are there before I arrive in the morning, they are there after I leave in the evening. They are working hard at something meaningful. While I drag myself to the lab, ask people hundreds of questions, fill in paperwork, figure out what to order, where to submit the indents, what grants to apply for, how to cut paste my much abused research proposal(s). And then run back home, telling myself, I can work on this work plan at home, after all it is computer(and brain) work and then get home, drink tea, chat with my family, stuff myself with food, stare woodenly at the TV and it is time for bed!!!

Oh if I could only recapture the purpose, the will, the wish and energy of those PhD days once again! Soon. I know all will fall into place and life will start flowing like a well traveled river carving out its own path. Soon.

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