So here I am, trying to organize oligonucleotides into a spreadsheet that makes absolutely no sense. This spreadsheet, when I've finally given birth to it, will be a central database for clones and PCR primers used by our research group. Somehow, I've been commandeered to 'take care' of the chaos within all of the fridges that belong to the group. This entails not only defrosting them, but also throwing stuff away that's been growing in them since, oh, I don't know, possibly the late 80's.
My problem is this: once you've shown the ability to organize stuff, together with a can-do attitude (inherited from my people-pleaser father, I'm sure) everyone else just sits back and expects me to fix stuff. Aaargh!! What they've all failed to realize is that I'm actually not a nice person, am inherently selfish and just don't do favours. If it wasn't for my obsessive compulsiveness, I would've sent them all to hell by now. The fact is that I like order. I like lists. What I don't like is people abusing this weakness of mine so that I make lists for them. Make your own lists, damn you! I know they won't be anything as efficient and ordered as mine, but make them nevertheless. I'm now struggling to make sense of things acquired for the lab before I even came here. Hundreds and hundreds of references to little bits of synthetic DNA ordered from biotech companies that went bust when WindowsXP was but a dream, ordered for students who probably graduated when I mistakenly thought science would be a great career move after seeing this new Jurassic Park movie.
This has to stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment