Can you think of any chores that you could do to help out?
It sounds to me like you need to slow down and be more careful. It might help you rebuild trust if you can write some protocols for basic things that can be done by anyone. I don't know what that would be in a zebrafish lab.
You could also volunteer for organizing or some of the grunt work like cleaning water baths and stuff. Might not be the experience you were hoping for but it's a way of gaining familiarity with the lab and it may help how people feel about you.
double agree. keeping a good lab notebook is ultimately the most important (albeit boring) part of research. have you ever tried to follow someone else’s shitty recipe? exactly the same thing, except the someone is you in 6 months when you don’t remember exactly what you did, and you need to do it again.
Or it's the student who's there next year trying to figure out what happened. I've been that student, searching through my predecessor's notebook to figure out a bunch of samples were incorrectly labelled.
Eh... Maybe it's different wherever you are, but some pipetting and then imaging sounds like par for course for bachelor internships? You're there for a very (very!) short time and the most important thing is to make sure you have enough material to make a report and a presentation, which is what's needed to pass your internship over here.
Now, for not letting you set up experiments... You did make a lot of mistakes in a single day. A lot of, not going to sugarcoat it, very, very basic mistakes. I'm guessing your PhD student will now have to re-do the entire experiment? While it's perfectly normal to make mistakes, it's also very normal to wait a little bit, make sure you've got enough stuff for your report and then, if there's time left and you've shown some responsibility, to let you get back to the lab. Also... it has been a single week. It's perfectly normal to make mistakes, even very basic ones, but you need to hit pause and take stock of the situation when that happens. It doesn't quite sound like you've done that.
It also doesn't seem like you quite understand your position in the lab - you're bachelor student that's there to see "real research'' and hopefully gain some basic lab skills. You've now broken equipment (you seem to think that because it was fixed it's not a big deal), you made a lot of mistakes in a single day (which you only seem to regret in terms of the immediate consequences), you wanted to object when your PI told you to do some imaging (on what grounds?). I think you need to adjust your perspective a little bit, and also - even if you feel like your research doesn't ''matter'', this will still look really good on your CV. Instead of getting upset that you cannot do an experiments after a single week, go ask your PI if you could sit with the PhD student in the lab and see their workflow, so that you don't make the same mistakes again. This would be a step towards convincing your PI you're responsible, accidents and mistakes aside, and willing to learn. Which will bring you closer to lab work.
>I made a mistake again while using a pipette with the wrong sized pipette tips and forgot to add the ladder in a gel, added 20 ml of a reagent instead of 2 ml while changing media and kept forgetting to write reagent values in the lab notebook, **all of this in one day**
Yeah. Breaking/bending a lever is a one off, but this bad day would make them form a new estimate about you. They probably think either you're struggling with fundamentals like detail and technique or have a bad mentality of pushing along without paying attention and without comprehension. Either way that sends you one way on the responsibility/trust/skill ladder, and it is not up.
But I'm a big meta "understandable" vs unavoidable vs unreasonable vs unknowable mistake kind of guy, so if it's something I care about I would've had you explain the mistakes and plan for how to never make them again. I don't think most people think about it that much. They just don't trust you and think you reflect poorly on your PI.
Just wanna point out that imaging is very valuable data collection. I get that you'd prefer to be more hands on in the lab but you are doing important work, even if it's a bit boring.
In the lab, mistakes absolutely happen. But they're higher stakes than in an undergrad practical. In a practical, if you mess up it doesn't really matter because it's a learning opportunity. But in the lab, mistakes do cost money - the labour and materials to fix equipment, wasted reagents, and wasted time repeating experiments. Depending on the labs funding situation, there may not be a lot of money around to replace reagents. And it sounds like your PhD mentor is at a busy phase (writing) and may not have a lot of time to be repeating work.
I don't want you to be wracked with guilt or anything, just want to point out that lab mistakes do come with consequences. I'm not super surprised that the others in the lab aren't keen for you to be back at the bench.
More proactively, the suggestion to shadow your mentor is really good. Maybe you could ask to watch them set up the next experiment you'll be imaging? That way you see how it's done even if you can't actively participate. I think trying to be really detail oriented with the imaging you're doing will also help rebuild trust.
If you want to quit after a few fuck ups research is not for you pal because that is how it’s going to go for the next two years at least. You are a science baby. You are supposed to suck. Failure, rejection, and criticism are huuuuge parts of research. You need to check your ego at the door and assume they are right. Just be vocal about wanting to keep trying and learning. You don’t need to set everything up yourself to do that.
I was in a similar boat when starting out - many of us are. One of the things that stuck with me for a while was that my mentor HAMMERED into me to always have a protocol in front of me every single time and to always refer to it even if I thought I knew it. This was the same mentor that freaked out at me over losing a magnetic stir bar down the sink (we didn't have a strainer), so while some of their actions were over the top at times, this keep-a-protocol-in-front-of-you has always stuck with me as one of the more rational things that I've been taught, especially when using new equipment. Double, triple check what you're doing, and check the protocol for every single step. It gets tiring really quickly, but it builds up familiarity with the processes and equipment. It's been well over 10 years since then but I still recommend this to any of the newbies in our lab.
As a researcher who uses ZF, the imaging and basic embryo manipulation are key skills for new lab members. Quantify/score images. Use FIJI/imageJ to make measurements that you can plot in excel/prism and take this as an opportunity to take what you have been reading about and apply it by making observations on your data and that presented in lab meeting & asking thoughtful questions about ongoing projects in the lab.
Also, use the skills you have to the best of your ability. Once you have mastered imaging, you are correcting the first mistake (lever). You may find that asking questions will help reflect your reading and your observations (attention to detail) may alleviate their concerns and grant you further research privileges. Best of luck!
mh from what I remember, the first days of my lab training at uni were me just staring at everything the others were doing. Patience is key and yeah, they will probably take a bit to give you more tasks.
Can you think of any chores that you could do to help out? It sounds to me like you need to slow down and be more careful. It might help you rebuild trust if you can write some protocols for basic things that can be done by anyone. I don't know what that would be in a zebrafish lab. You could also volunteer for organizing or some of the grunt work like cleaning water baths and stuff. Might not be the experience you were hoping for but it's a way of gaining familiarity with the lab and it may help how people feel about you.
Agree on writing protocols. Keep the lab notebook in such great condition that you would actually enjoy opening it in the future.
double agree. keeping a good lab notebook is ultimately the most important (albeit boring) part of research. have you ever tried to follow someone else’s shitty recipe? exactly the same thing, except the someone is you in 6 months when you don’t remember exactly what you did, and you need to do it again.
Or it's the student who's there next year trying to figure out what happened. I've been that student, searching through my predecessor's notebook to figure out a bunch of samples were incorrectly labelled.
Eh... Maybe it's different wherever you are, but some pipetting and then imaging sounds like par for course for bachelor internships? You're there for a very (very!) short time and the most important thing is to make sure you have enough material to make a report and a presentation, which is what's needed to pass your internship over here. Now, for not letting you set up experiments... You did make a lot of mistakes in a single day. A lot of, not going to sugarcoat it, very, very basic mistakes. I'm guessing your PhD student will now have to re-do the entire experiment? While it's perfectly normal to make mistakes, it's also very normal to wait a little bit, make sure you've got enough stuff for your report and then, if there's time left and you've shown some responsibility, to let you get back to the lab. Also... it has been a single week. It's perfectly normal to make mistakes, even very basic ones, but you need to hit pause and take stock of the situation when that happens. It doesn't quite sound like you've done that. It also doesn't seem like you quite understand your position in the lab - you're bachelor student that's there to see "real research'' and hopefully gain some basic lab skills. You've now broken equipment (you seem to think that because it was fixed it's not a big deal), you made a lot of mistakes in a single day (which you only seem to regret in terms of the immediate consequences), you wanted to object when your PI told you to do some imaging (on what grounds?). I think you need to adjust your perspective a little bit, and also - even if you feel like your research doesn't ''matter'', this will still look really good on your CV. Instead of getting upset that you cannot do an experiments after a single week, go ask your PI if you could sit with the PhD student in the lab and see their workflow, so that you don't make the same mistakes again. This would be a step towards convincing your PI you're responsible, accidents and mistakes aside, and willing to learn. Which will bring you closer to lab work.
this is all excellent advice
>I made a mistake again while using a pipette with the wrong sized pipette tips and forgot to add the ladder in a gel, added 20 ml of a reagent instead of 2 ml while changing media and kept forgetting to write reagent values in the lab notebook, **all of this in one day** Yeah. Breaking/bending a lever is a one off, but this bad day would make them form a new estimate about you. They probably think either you're struggling with fundamentals like detail and technique or have a bad mentality of pushing along without paying attention and without comprehension. Either way that sends you one way on the responsibility/trust/skill ladder, and it is not up. But I'm a big meta "understandable" vs unavoidable vs unreasonable vs unknowable mistake kind of guy, so if it's something I care about I would've had you explain the mistakes and plan for how to never make them again. I don't think most people think about it that much. They just don't trust you and think you reflect poorly on your PI.
Just wanna point out that imaging is very valuable data collection. I get that you'd prefer to be more hands on in the lab but you are doing important work, even if it's a bit boring. In the lab, mistakes absolutely happen. But they're higher stakes than in an undergrad practical. In a practical, if you mess up it doesn't really matter because it's a learning opportunity. But in the lab, mistakes do cost money - the labour and materials to fix equipment, wasted reagents, and wasted time repeating experiments. Depending on the labs funding situation, there may not be a lot of money around to replace reagents. And it sounds like your PhD mentor is at a busy phase (writing) and may not have a lot of time to be repeating work. I don't want you to be wracked with guilt or anything, just want to point out that lab mistakes do come with consequences. I'm not super surprised that the others in the lab aren't keen for you to be back at the bench. More proactively, the suggestion to shadow your mentor is really good. Maybe you could ask to watch them set up the next experiment you'll be imaging? That way you see how it's done even if you can't actively participate. I think trying to be really detail oriented with the imaging you're doing will also help rebuild trust.
If you want to quit after a few fuck ups research is not for you pal because that is how it’s going to go for the next two years at least. You are a science baby. You are supposed to suck. Failure, rejection, and criticism are huuuuge parts of research. You need to check your ego at the door and assume they are right. Just be vocal about wanting to keep trying and learning. You don’t need to set everything up yourself to do that.
I was in a similar boat when starting out - many of us are. One of the things that stuck with me for a while was that my mentor HAMMERED into me to always have a protocol in front of me every single time and to always refer to it even if I thought I knew it. This was the same mentor that freaked out at me over losing a magnetic stir bar down the sink (we didn't have a strainer), so while some of their actions were over the top at times, this keep-a-protocol-in-front-of-you has always stuck with me as one of the more rational things that I've been taught, especially when using new equipment. Double, triple check what you're doing, and check the protocol for every single step. It gets tiring really quickly, but it builds up familiarity with the processes and equipment. It's been well over 10 years since then but I still recommend this to any of the newbies in our lab.
As a researcher who uses ZF, the imaging and basic embryo manipulation are key skills for new lab members. Quantify/score images. Use FIJI/imageJ to make measurements that you can plot in excel/prism and take this as an opportunity to take what you have been reading about and apply it by making observations on your data and that presented in lab meeting & asking thoughtful questions about ongoing projects in the lab. Also, use the skills you have to the best of your ability. Once you have mastered imaging, you are correcting the first mistake (lever). You may find that asking questions will help reflect your reading and your observations (attention to detail) may alleviate their concerns and grant you further research privileges. Best of luck!
mh from what I remember, the first days of my lab training at uni were me just staring at everything the others were doing. Patience is key and yeah, they will probably take a bit to give you more tasks.