January 14, 2011

Shadowing Experiences

So for our class we were supposed to take around 30 minutes or so to follow somebody else around while they worked on their project. The goal was to make them feel extremely nervous and to judge their every move, as well as possibly learn something new.



I was lucky enough to shadow Ty, a senior in the lab, who was very instructive when things were going well in the first 10 minutes of me observing him. His project involves inserting a ligation-independent cloning vector in from a plasmid. I have yet to take Genetics, and it only partially makes sense to me so I apologize if I have difficulty putting it into layman terms. I know many of you reading this blog are not biologists, or even scientists (Hi Mom). Basically, he's taking plasmid DNA (circular DNA), cutting it in a certain place that will leave appropriate overhangs to be pieced together like a puzzle. This piece is the "ligation independent cloning vector." I may be wrong, and if so I apologize. It's a delicate process that involves using appropriate enzymes to cut in the appropriate places to fit the appropriate piece of DNA to make the appropriate cloned sequence. You can read Ty's blog here.

I was very lucky to shadow him for a few reasons. Like I said, he was very instructive and he shares high seniority. One unexpected benefit to shadowing Ty was how things did not go well while I observed him. After 10 minutes he realized he was missing the appropriate concentration of a certain chemical he needed. The next 20 minutes were him and our mentor frustratingly trying to figure out how on earth they could make enough of the necessary concentration with their limited supply, beating themselves over the head for not checking and ordering some ahead of time. While Ty was frustrated and apologized repeatedly for my boring shadow experience, I'm actually really relieved that I got to see an upperclassman run into problems. It was comforting in a way, actually. I'm new to the whole lab experience and at times make novice mistakes that reveal my n00b status.


But Ty made me feel a little better about my situation. Even the best of us at times make mistakes, and it is frustrating. And if I decide to go into research, it will continue to be frustrating, as mistakes will continue to be made (though preferably in smaller and smaller amounts). Something to look forward to, and I don't mean that   sarcastically (well, mostly). The challenge is part of the adventure that is science.

2 comments:

  1. Liz,
    Love the pictures! I also agree with your statement that in a sense its relieving to see others who have been in the field make mistakes. It eases the pain of feeling like a newbie (even though I am) when others are having the same difficulty as you. Are there any similarities or differences in your research compared to Tys?
    Casey

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  2. Elizabeth,
    First of all, I enjoyed the way how you presented your blog post, it's so funny and interesting so that your followers and readers read your post without getting bored. Good job. My only concern in relation to your post is that you haven't covered that much of the science part of Ty's research, even if you have clearly told us that you don't know that much about it. And besides feeling more comfortable about your own research as you came to understand that a research going wrong or being frastrating is a common behavior of researches in general, what new techniques and/or ways of approaching a problem have you learned out of your shadowing experience? Thank you in advance.

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