>>3722 I'm doing one right now, sitting in an office full of final year students. They've sort of soured the experience for me, and I'm thinking of ditching academia altogether when I finish.
>>3725 In my own lab it's actually quite good - I only wish shit was fucking working instead of pissing away months on repeat experiments.
As a group, the other labs are cramped, and packed with people who have a tendency of back-biting, gossip, shouting matches, cunt-offs, and the sort. Not very healthy. I try to minimize my interaction with that part of the building.
I just finished writing my second year report and realised how everything I do for the next year needs to be something worthy of putting in my thesis.
On the plus side, I just got some samples back from a bloke with a great vacuum chamber and he's managed to help me prove my method without a doubt, so I'm now ready to publish my PhD work - which will take a lot of pressure off my external examiner next year.
Reading you guys complain about lab issues makes me glad that I work in a lab that barely anyone knows exists and spend all of my time on my own in the dark. :'( I am getting some lab buddies this year, though, in the form of a new PhD student almost thrice my age and a Chinese postdoc, without mentioning the ocean of undergrads. Unfortunately, I'm going to be spending a vast amount of my final year helping them with their work rather than working on stuff to go in my thesis.
Great to see other PhD students here, especially scientists (I did like how >>3725 jumped straight to "lab" without entertaining the thought of a non-science PhD). What's your fields, ladmates?
Good luck with all that, hopefully it'll be smooth sailing.
I find Chinese postdocs to be a double-edge sword, not being racialist, but despite their amazing dedication, diligence and intelligence, they are sometimes hard to work with - and if their English isn't great, it's a real chore to listen to presentations.
I'm lucky in that after hours if I find myself staying behind and analyse my wee lads, I always have someone to mess about with. One particularly excellent, if not over the top evening, involved 5mL eppis and dry ice. You could hear the bang from the next lab. The it went from just eppis and dry ice, to putting in agarose and watching a cool gel explosion. Ah good times.
I just spent a couple days analyzing physiological data that I knew wasn't going to be significant for the sole purpose of having one more graph for my thesis.
My funding is up this month, and my thesis isn't complete.
I will be homeless from Friday.
Where do unemployed people live in Broken Britain (TM)?
My uni also wants me to pay £240 to submit, after having worked unpaid for an ill-defined period of time up to 1 year following cessation of my contract.
Starting mine this week. Managed to bag a scholarship for 13-14k a year too. I couldn't be happier with making a 'job' out of my true passion in life, but it seems like on the other hand my life is being put on hold for 3 more years. I don't want to advance my personal life (marry my gf, maybe have kids, stop renting a place) until I have some sort of stability. A low income and no guarenteed future employment seem like a pain at times.
Oh, or you can have thirteen kids and live in a mansion. You have to share that mansion with an imbecile fit only for procreation and thirteen grubby, attention-deprived, mewling little shits, though.
