The devil is in the details

Good Chemistry makes for Bad Work

This has been a fun week in the lab. All of our current crop of graduate students are now underway and kind of working fulltime (at least for now...we were all slacking before because the boss was out of town and things will change a bit when the semester starts) and we all get along really well. When I started in the lab there was a large group of 7 graduate students here that was pretty static, then there was some turnover, but now it looks like we have a rather stable group of 8. The particularly bad part of this scheme is that only one of the other students was here when I started, which makes me "a senior graduate student," therefore making everyone think I know things. It's sort of weird, because I don't feel all that knowledgeable, but it is nice as well. I've spent a lot of time this week helping other people get things going because I am "a senior graduate student." Icelend (the other "senior graduate student") and I were discussing this the other day: we realize that we have now passed the point where our experience is a time saver and gone on to the point where our experience holds us back because everyone needs advice (as in, we have passed the 50% advice time). We just have to hope to graduate before we get to the point where we give advice 100% of the time, because then we will never get anything done. I'm thinking fat chance of my getting out of here by then.

The really good thing is that the eight of us, as a group, get along really well. We all went out to lunch together (along with JP, who was dubbed an honorary graduate student) and were making jokes about funny things we could do at our formal graduate student meeting later in the afternoon. (Examples: recite Shakespeare, since the boss just got back from the Stratford Festival, think up "words of the day" that we get points for incorporating into our presentations or having one person decide that they will interrupt and answer all of the questions all day. Please note that we are 8 dorks.) We had a fun lunch and then a fun meeting afterwards. A little intense, but fun. The boss came by my desk afterwards and mentioned what a great group of students we were and how impressed he was with us. We certainly do have great chemistry as a group, and I am looking forward to working with the group for a long time.

The worst part about the group? In an extreme outlier from both the lab as a whole (biased towards females), the previous group of graduate students and the graduate program as a whole (50:50 ratio), this particular group of students is 6 guys and 2 girls. This, of course, leaves me more than slightly distracted....(couldn't my advisor find some ugly graduate student boys for me to work with?)

For future reference (so that you know who I am talking about in the future), these students are:
P. (the other girl)
Iceland (described elsewhere)
Evan (previously refered to in this blog as E., but now referred to as Evan because he comments here with his name, and because there is another student who is E. If this is a problem, it is no problem to change.)
A. (described elsewhere in very brief detail)
M. (new rotation student whom I'm sure will stay, his desk is next to mine)
T.
E.

Also in the good chemistry department, I'll give a little bio sketch of JP....JP is a research assistant who works in our lab who was assigned to work with me a few months ago. She is awesome because she is so enthusiastic about the work and she does a great job with it. Also, she is quickly becoming one of my closest friends...we have similar senses of humor and dorkiness and she is giving me excellent advice about guys. JP rocks!

posted by Immunegirl @ 3:06 PM