PhD progress

So how is the science going and when will I finish? Not fast enough and not soon enough! I was hoping to have the benchwork (that's the actual science/research) finished by August 1st, but I wasn't done then. Now I'm hoping to finish in just a few more weeks. After that is finished, my committee thinks I'll need 3 months for writing. That's to write my paper and my thesis. At least the end is in sight.

I had a little setback on the benchwork this week. I had a long day on Wednesday, setting up and running over 1000 reactions. These were in 3 plates of 384 rxns each. When I came in Thursday morning, I copied the data from the machine onto my USB flash drive to take back to lab to analyze. I stopped on my way up to read a joural article in the library reading room and then went back up to lab. After 15 minutes of chatting, I went to look at my data, and I couldn't find my USB drive! I looked every where, retraced my steps multiple times, contacted the library, and the security folks (they are in charge of lost and found) to no avail. I was able to recover 2 out of three plates from the machine, but not the 3rd (long story why, but my dumb mistake). So I went in to lab today to re-do the lost plate. I screwed that up, so I gave up and went home. Maybe I'll get it right tomorrow! This isn't the way to finish quickly!

At least I am making progress on the blog! This makes 2 posts in less than 7 days!