Lab Drama

So, First off I want to make a recognition and acknowledgment of "being emo". In general, most people believe "being emo" is bad in itself, that it's some entity that takes over people's minds and makes them want to kill themselves. On the contrary, I think its normal to have specific emotional fluctuations depending on mood. Typically, its the source that causes a person to become "emo" that is the problem, in my opinion. When someone is "emo" because of something, it means he or she REALLY REALLY cares about it. He or she may state, while being emo, that he or she hates (emo source), but in reality he or she probably feels like he or she can't live without it. In this general sense, I believe people who become "emo" over a game like Ragnarok Online should find something else to care about because in essence RO is just a game. I find people that become "emo" over love, personally, a bit silly BUT I acknowledge that they find it an important thing; I certainly respect their emotions if they are in a depressed state and will not try to state their rightness or wrongness in drowning in their emotions because of a loved one.

I bring this issue up because recently I've been having a LOT of issues regarding lab work in general. It is very difficult because I am not a person who will openly say "DEPRESSED LAB WORKS SUCKS RANT RANT RANT" because we need to have a people-friendly environment in the lab. But recent issues that have come up with my advisor and an endless array of mistakes that I never seem to improve on is driving me up the wall. Remember, I acknowledge that I like lab work and, for the most part, when I'm actually doing the work I'm quite happy. However, 2 issues is leaving me to feel like little more than dirt:

1.) My Advisor. I respect and honor my advisor a lot for teaching me so many techniques and introducing me to the lab environment. He has, for the most part, been guiding me, perhaps in his opinion too much, through various conferences, lab meetings, and experiments to get me where I am now. But one slight mistake I made and he decides to abandon all the guidance he has ever provided and treats me no better than anyone else in the lab. In one sense, I can understand this action. It is time, he believes, that I should be independent, solve mistakes on my own, analyze data and journal articles, and become ultimately the same level as he is in terms of stature. But I'm not, I'm still hanging. Its not that I don't do anything now that he's not helping; I'm going through experiments, doing more than I ever did before, trying to solve problems and read papers... but his lack of acknowledgement is discouraging. If even just once, he says something like "you're doing a good job" like he did before, even if he didn't help me, I think I'd feel much better. But he just treats me (if I dare say) coldly, not giving any acknowlegement to the work I'm trying to desperately do to prove to myself and others that I'm not just a child but someone who's actually devoting time and his life to research.
I believe that it's probably a selfish request, to request for acknowledgement. In the real world no one is going to care if you're a scientist or a toilet scrubber. But still, I can't help feeling down about it.

2.) Mistakes. I make them all the time. In midterms, while playing piano, and in experiments. I believe the lack of acknowledgement from my advisor and others also relates into this area, because if I keep on producing mistakes, I can't produce data, and without data I can't prove that I've been working hard. This is the sad truth of my lab life, that in spite of how hard I worked, I haven't produced any data on my own that I can say, "I did this, this is what I have shown". Yesterday I came so close, SO CLOSE, but then, I realized this morning, I did one slight stupid error... and ALL the data I ahve collected, as well as some of the experiments I had been doing, have been screwed over and wrong. So, I had nothing to present at the lab meeting today. This depressed me to no end, and my advisor of course gives no sympathy. But, lesson learned (or rather relearned, over and over again) that nothing ever goes according to plan. NOTHING... I just worry if I can make my experiments on time.

I stopped halfway through this blog post and began to do more experiments and now I feel a helluvalot better than I did before. I apologize for anyone that bothers to read this blog for this post, as I try to make my blog entries as emo-free as possible. But then again I suppose I now understand why others emo into blogs, because when other people (like, your advisor) don't listen to you anymore you want a place to "talk" to and and maybe just pretend people are listening to you. I love working in lab to its utmost fullest, but it being something I love, even more than a game, means I'm going to have some drama and emoness tag along as well.