Power Trip

Its good to get away for a bit, but not so good if you get blackout at a bachelor party. I think that jo shmo off the street will not get nasty under extreme intoxifying conditions. Some argue we all have it in us to throw punches. I think it takes first something being wrong or out of place mentally. However temporary, events like this cause me great discomfort for days. Going to work is a joke, but I have someone to supervise. And a poster to make. Luckily I didnt pull out, but now I have to work with the submitted title. People should be constantly updating there poster and lab meeting file for the next one.

Its amazing how fast my undergraduate associate is picking things up. As long as he maintains interest in being smart I think that he will go a long way. Teaching him has produced some data that I needed, but not the reagents and data that I need more. I think that this week can be quite successful if I can pull together some plans for him and I. Its great to be working for the two of us in the lab, instead of just for me. People have to work in teams to get anything done. Lazy bosses cant set things up so that people can share the data and get several manuscripts out of a problem worth collaborating on in the lab. A big lab can afford to have post docs competing with each other, but it blurs the collective experimental reality for the group as a whole, making the system much harder to understand. I am working with this kid to do a project that the boss wants, but I would not have been convinced to work on, because we previously decided that what I have to do is make transgenes. Cloning can be hard.

On being an asshole, I have to say that I dont think my boss is a bad man. Right now. He is an incredible scientist, and he can be very personable when he feels good about you. He means the best and wants us all to succeed, but he makes life particularly difficult by answering questions that most people are not asking. He obtains data through his minions, and then he says thats very interesting. People consistently end up writing obscure papers that get sent back pretty hard. Thank the lord the man is in with some good journals, our post didlies would be stumped. I think a grad student has the world available to them when they get out, but a post doc really needs to be ready to rock.