A day in the Life (Hons Week 10)

Tuesday – Anzac Day
9am
Arrive at close-to-deserted Genetics department. Walk into the smelly, smelly upstairs fly room and take my tray to the fly lab. Also locate some smelly fly food from my tray in the cold room. I find I have three virgins to collect, all of which are my white-eyed strain. I incorrectly sex two of them, Chris tells me when he eventually rocks up.

Put my flies away and head to Bio21.

9.50
Arrive at Bio21 and sit and chat to Lee about nothing in particular for a while.

10 am
Turn on my computer to find that the bassist (Pauly) from Magneto (band from Firday night) has e-mailed me. That’s kinda cool.

10.10 am
Decide it’s going to be a low work kinda day and that as such I’m going to keep an account of the entire day, just so you guys can see what it’s all like. This has nothing to do with the fact that I’m reading Jeffrey Archer’s prison diaries for the second time. No, nothing.

10.12 am
That stupid song “Apple Eyes” by Swoop is playing on my mp3 player. I have 2251 songs on this damn thing, yet it’s always playing Apple Eyes by Swoop. I may have to delete this song.

I am now turning my attention to finishing my essay referencing. I’m so sick of this essay.

10.26
It occurs to me I forgot to rant about the agriculture library last week. I never went to the place in undergrad, but found myself headed over there three of the four days last week to photocopy junk from “Bulletin of Entomological Research.” On the Thursday (I think) I arrived in the morning before the librarian. Now that is service.

10.33
I just found a reference that I have been searching for for AGES. The paper happens to be in the world’s most hard-to-access journal, but I only mention it briefly so I’ll live without it.

I seem to have a never-ending supply of easter eggs in my drawer. I consider this incredibly cool.

11am
Wander into the lab as I’m bored of the computer. I leave a little note for Alex before deciding I may as well stay in the lab and set up for DNA concentration determination.

This involves taking samples from the massive DNA extraction I did the other day and diluting them in water. Easy, right?

Well it was.

Although, I think I’ve been out of the lab for a while as Henry and Adrian have spread their stuff all over my bench (three to a bench, I’m in the middle). Not only this, but a whole lot of my stuff has been “borrowed.” Fortunately, it was all labeled with my name so I simply “borrowed” it back.

I edited my essay before going into the lab, which means it will be easier to find the reference I was, as I don’t have to get them to say exactly the same thing. It may mean I have to read all the things I already said and see if they’re useful in the new context. Damn.

I should save this document, It’s starting to get long…

11.43
I’m eating carrots. I’m a hungry girl.

I’ve filled in another reference point. I gave up on trying to find one article to say what I wanted it to say, and wound up putting in three. Much easier.

That leaves one I’ve got and I’m not sure if I need to reference it, and another where I know who to reference (ironically enough, it is WHO) but I don’t know how to. I need Sam.

I’m just about out of carrot now.

11.56am
I have just closed the document that contains my essay. I put in that reference I wasn’t sure I needed. So I’m happy.

I just gotta wait for Sam to do the last one, which will probably be tomorrow.

A few people have shown up now, so there’s a little more noise. It’s now me, Lee, Tamar and Ariadne. In an office that holds 17. None of the people with more lonely offices, or no offices are here. The only person who isn’t a student is David, a visiting academic from Germany I think.

I need to find something to do…I think it’s going to be something very un-geneticsy.

12.06
Keep getting texts from Se so we can arrange lunch.

12.15
Wow. The phone’s ringing in the other room, which is essentially this room. There are desks in the middle with pin boards and overhead lockers, so you can’t really see over them.

12.34
Ariadne wanders in to make a hot drink. The lab is normally more exciting than this, I promise. I continue to work on my art journal.

12.46
I give up, I’m going to lunch.

1:45
I turn on the UV spec lamp to let it warm up

2pm
I return to the UV spec machine and realize I don’t remember how to use it

2.15
Turn off the UV spec lamp and use a different machine (one that Chris knows how to use) to check my DNA samples.

2.50
Return to Bio21 with $40 worth of chocolate and results for my DNA concentration. Spend some time in the lab doing calculations and checking calculations to make sure I do my later experiments properly.

3.20
I fill up the chocolate box with my newly acquired treats. It’s a full three minutes before one gets purchased.

3.26
Go to the park and play Frisbee for 40 minutes. Come back and prepare DNA digest.

5.26
Finish preparing the digest. I have been given some shoddy advice on picking enzymes and as such had to go through the process again. That took sometime. It involved me running from the lab to the office about ten times, keeping in mind that nearly everytime I did this I had to take off my labcoat and gloves.

That got annoying.

That should have taken me 10 minutes to prepare, for the record.

5.30
Check my flies. There’s a few new ones. Nothing to be excited about. Go home (finally).

Fly count: A bunch of white adults, 6 isolated transgenic survivors and a few vials full of babies.