Trial and Error

So it's been kind of a frustrating week. As I already posted, I was supposed to get some bloodwork done Monday, and it didn't happen. I arranged to do it on Wednesday at 11:00, but more problems cropped up. Some student was talking to Dr. Ahmed, so we didn't even start til around 11:30. I had to clean some bottles and put my samples in a supercharged microwave to digest any bacteria and other organic material in the blood. Then I was supposed to do an elemental analysis on the ICP -MS. Here's where things go wrong. Not only does the pressure valve pop in the microwave (translation = I can't use those samples), but the ICP-MS isn't working properly and needs to be serviced. By now it's practically 1:00 P.M. and I teach at 2:00 so, once again, my bloodwork has been put off til Monday at 11:00. Hopefully it will actually get done then.

On top of that, I started what I thought would be my last experiment yesterday morning, bright and early, got to the lab at 7:00, knowing it takes at least 18 hours to do this due to slow equilibration time, plus I had to add in more data points, which makes it even longer. To give you an idea of how long it takes, I'm waiting for the last data point now, and it's 11:30ish. Anyways, before Brad (my advisor) left yesterday, he said I should try doing the experiment again and altering the pH. I mention that I"m already using my last frozen sample, and he said I couldn't trust the others. Let me explain. Most of my samples were put in a fridge for a couple days before moved to a freezer. On the last day of collections, I put 4 samples directly in the freezer. During the summer, Brad said I should just do experiments on those, and that I couldn't trust the results of the others because of the fridge factor. But now I should do more experiments? Lloyd pointed out that I could just do more experiments, use everything I have, and then just write in that the results may be a little off due to the freezing factor. Which makes sense of course, especially considering the scant amount of data I have. But really, had I but known, I could have done like 10 more of these experiments during the summer when I had no other obligations, as opposed to now, when I"m trying to research and write a paper/presentation. I mean, I can read and write while the experiment is going on, but it's just frustrating because I hadn't counted on doing so many more experiments in the last weeks of the semester.

Which brings me to the title of my post. You know how science is all a bunch of trial and error? I seem to be really good at the error part.