Here's a happiness scale for you (based loosely on this book). The listed numbers act as a point of reference:
10- Incredible result that explains all the data amassed by a field and resolves various conflicts between different models.
9.5- Fantastic result, all your pet theories are proven.
9- Great result indicating that you may have something interesting.
8.5- You've repeated that great result, it looks pretty solid.
8- You've successfully cloned a gene.
7- You're not sure, but your result might indicate that you have something interesting.
5- Making buffers.
4.5- Passaging cells in the tissue culture hood.
4- You screwed up your cloning.
3.5- You screwed up an experiment.
3- You have a negative result, but your not sure whether the experimental procedure worked.
2.5- Your cells are contaminated.
2- You have a negative result, and you're sure its negative.
1.5- You can't repeat what you once did on a regular basis.
1- You've been scooped.
Please add on your own lab experiences with the appropriate number. Or add anything else. (Since "orgasm" will be counted as spam, I'll save you the trouble and say ... orgasm=9.5-10 depending on a few factors.)
(Yes Bil, this came out of one of our lab coffee breaks.)
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I dunno, I find making buffers to be more tedious than passaging TC cells even neuronal cells.
You don't have a rating for making media, or for making large batches of media and then discovering that it is all contaminated (never happened to me, though)
9, potentially more, if I ever get it written up.
Happiness in the lab:
Your boss, all other postdocs, students and technicians left for the weekend, your family is on holidays and nobody tries to phone you.
Is this a linear scale, or logarithmic?
Performing a cool experiment that demonstrates that your boss is wrong: 9
Telling him/her that it was his/her idea: 3
scopius,
Give us your thought and/or ratings. (I'm not trying to be sarcastic.) Making media: in my PhD lab we got a technician to do that, in the new lab the technician makes LB and we get our DMEM from Gibco. Contamination in general (without needing to figure out where the hell the contamination came from) would be about a 3. The problem with contaminated tissue culture cells is figuring out the source of the contamination and going through the rigmarole of decontaminating the tissue culture incubator. I hate that.
Michael Andresen,
Good question. I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it. Any opinion out there?
definitely logarithmic, otherwise I wouldn't have thrown my mouse on the floor yesterday (I must emphasizes that it was my computer mouse and not one of our pets)
In some cases, I would switch the two types of negative results so that the unambiguous negative would get a higher score than an ambiguous negative. If you've been working for weeks on something without getting anywhere (pretty much the norm), and you get a definite "no" answer, you can at least finally move on to something more interesting and less frustrating. Here, the negative result is a relief. But an ambiguous "no" only leads to more frustrating work trying to figure out what, if anything, went wrong.
Well I had my 9.5 moment at the beginning of the year, but given that the papers I wrote about it are still stuck in reviewing limbo after 6 months, I'm currently at about 3.5.
lazybratsche,
I'm glad you brought that up, because that is exactly what we were talking about over coffee. And to be honest I think that it varries from time to time. But in many ways you're right, the uncertainty of what is causing the problem is often worse than a falsification of your model.
Really using NEB time saver enzymes for only 5 minutes and having a gel ready to be loaded = 7
trying to make partial digests with time saver enzymes = 2
homologous recombination in ES cells = 6-8
chimeras = 7
germline transmission = 10
serum testing for ES culture = 2
detection of mycoplasma in a single ES cell line = 1
checking all other lines for contaminations 0.1
share the lab with a postdoc who can prepare buffers with the correct molarity only in 1l = 0.01
9: Having a comment/editorial highlight or short write up accompanying your paper in print. Almost makes you believe that your work was important.
9: Some one writing to you saying a paper you published was actually useful or resolved some questions they hadn't figured out.
2: making gels
Most days in the lab are about a 4, but on that special day when the moon, Saturn and Jupiter are aligned and you get that perfect result, 9. The overall average is about 4.1.
a perfect 0
Today the door of our lab broke out of its frame: several e-mails to the safety department, discussion with the craftsman and really wondering why we take all these precautions like wearing gloves, labcoats and safety glasses if one can not be sure to survive entering or leaving the lab