I love lab!!

Stranger: "Are you THE [lab geek's real name] who did the [high impact factor journal] paper?"
Lab Geek: " (pause) ... yes."

Rather unexpected, given the completely non-lab and non-science context (they'd seen my name written down on a rota for something).

Even more unexpectedly, there appeared to be a legend that had built up, about this wonderful student who'd produced a great thesis, written a fantastic paper, and slain a dragon armed only with latex gloves and a pipette. An example for us all to aspire to!

Time to demythologise.

• I set up my critical experiment that led to the "wonderful" paper at around 3am. That wasn't because I was diligent - it's because I'd slacked earlier in the day, over-run badly, and was working with a protein that would have degraded if I went home to sleep.


• I thought this experiment hadn't worked for several months, until I decided to give it one last check. Then found out it had worked after all. Oops.


• I got round this awkward situation in the paper by saying that it had happened "within x months" - with the figure there to give it extra "authority".


• Ah yes, the paper. You don't think the 1st author actually writes that, do you? If it's important, they do the methods section, the introduction is culled from their 1st year report, and the profs write the rest.


• Though I admit, by the time it came to write up my thesis, I did actually understand "my" paper, so I'm not all that bad really.


• When I did computer work, I wrote down what I did each day in my lab book, and used the timestamps to tell the files apart. But when I came to write my thesis there'd been a hard drive fialure on the system and the files had been restored from tape. The datestamps were now the time of restoration. D'oh!


• So when I wrote that bit up for my thesis, I couldn't work out which file was which and had to try all sorts of stuff until I came up with settings that produced the same data as the paper.


• Apart from what ended up in that paper, everything else I tried didn't work.


• That is, with the exception of something I branded an "in silico study" that took me two days from conception to finish and ended up being half a chapter. To this day, I still don't think my absentviser knows it's in there.


• Much to my surpsire, rather than tear it to shreds, one of the examiners thought the "in silico study" was a great idea, and offered expertise and a decent name on the paper if I decided to follow through with it on a larger scale.

So there you have it. Maybe that last bit proves that I am brilliant and wonderful after all. But just not for the reason most peple would think.