Thursday, October 3, 2013

A Day in the Life of Mordecai Lancaster

So my day starts as such:

12:00 am = Final touches on Beltie clothing designs.
1:00 am = Attempt to go to sleep.
2:00 am = Laying in bed wide awake because my mind is racing through many different things at once and it won't shut up.
3:00 am = At some point I realized that sleep was nearly impossible and went on my computer to do something stupid and mindless so I might fall asleep.
4:00 am = Somewhere in the last hour I finally fell asleep.
5:30 am = Alarm goes off for my meds. Take them. Fall back asleep.
6:30 am = Hit snooze so many times that I started putting my phone on my face to remind me that I need to get up.
6:50 am = Finally up and gathering things for school. Remembered my wallet. A+
7:00 am = Leave for UMass.
7:10 am = Stop at Dunkin for breakfast. Realize that my back aches but doesn't remember why. Then remembers that I carried a human being on my back down a hill from a dining commons to the car.
7:20 am = Park my car. Realize that I left my lab goggles in my room like a boss. B+
7:35 am = Trying to eat my breakfast when one of my tater tots attacks me from the pile when I try to take another. Dangerous mofos I tell you.
7:40 am = Put following picture as the background on my phone for inspiration:
8:30 am = Lab lecture starts. So far so good.
9:30 am = Reach lab room, inform the TA that I forgot my lab goggles like a boss. His sarcastic response:
"That's bullshit. You fail. Get out." Then proceeds to hand me a pair of goggles and smiles. I have just solidified the fact that this kid is my brother's doppleganger if he had ever decided to pursue a science degree. Also find out that our 3rd lab partner (out of a total of 3) wasn't there so it was just my friend and myself.
10:30 am to 12:00 pm = Lab commences with the following chain of events:
~Have the sanity scared out of me by the other TA when he had told me to pour the Lysate into the resin filter column, then proceed to pour it, and he decided to yell "NO!" and make me jump and make my heart skip a beat.
~Realize that I converted 1.6 mL to 160 uL instead of 1.6 mL ro 1600 uL. Spend 20 minutes with TA trying to figure out how to salvage the experiment.
~Continue experiment, trying to re-write correction calculations in a legible and understandable format.
~In one part of experiment, accidentally caught liquid in filter column cap, went to return liquid to column and proceeded to drop cap into column. Started crying a little bit in both frustration and from laughing so hard at that which was happening with my life at that moment. The TA's kindly fixed my misfortune.
~After second to last part of the experiment, initial TA chases us out of the room so that we would go and bring our samples to be tested upstairs.
~Send samples through machine, TA from different section had to run the test 3 times because of miscommunication between TAs.
~Our results were so weird that they got some strange looks. Professor helped in explaining how our data isn't technically bad.
~During clean up, TA that helped with calculations presented me with the dropped column cap as a souvenir from this day in lab.
~Was the last of any non-TA or professor to leave the lab area.
12:30 pm = Leave campus.
1:00 pm = Contemplating previous picture. Not sure whether to see it as a warning for what was to come, or the universe's way of throwing me off my game.

Surprisingly, the rest of the day went rather well.

1 comment:

  1. All that and a nice pair of boots. Thanks for the wild ride!

    ReplyDelete