You Know You’ve Been In the Lab Too Long When…
Posted in: Dealing with Fellow Scientists
This has been doing the rounds all over the web, so I thought I’d post my 10 favorites.
You know you’ve worked in the lab too long when…
- You wash your hands before you go to the toilet
- You tell your family to store the milk “at 4°C”
- You cry when your cells die
- you wonder what it would be like to experience ‘death by autoclave’
- You suddenly realise you’ve been using sterile technique when opening a jar of mayo
- You can tell the OD of your culture just by the smell
- You can’t watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy
- You’ve worked out that a trained chimp could probably do 90% of your job
- You are strangely proud of the collection of junk you’ve stolen from vendors at trade shows
- You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid
…any more?
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How bout this one… You know you’ve been in the lab too long when the midnight shift janitors have to let you back in to your lab after you locked yourself out while developing a gel.
You become a diehard believer of Murphy’s laws
Those are great! I really loved #4 – I’m VERY relieved to discover that I’m not the only one!
Just thought of another: you talk to your cultures in an effort to get them to grow faster (yes I have done this)
it’s a bit like me, i shout “go go go!” when my DNA is running on gel. my scientist friend suggests me to do that 🙂
Ha! Love #5. I’ve been out of the lab for nearly three years but I *still* open drink bottles one handed and close them (again one handed) between each sip…
Here’s another: you go to shake hands with someone without realizing you have gloves on. Bonus points if you don’t understand why they’re giving you a strange look.