Newbie

And so ends the first week at my new job.

Turns out my trainer is from Houston and actually worked a couple of floors above me for a little while. I think I recall seeing him in the break room once. Maybe.

I'm being trained to do a particular kind of experiment and that is going well. Nothing totally new. My biggest challenge is just getting used to the new environment and remembering the little details of the protocols so that I can work efficiently.

Going from academic research to clinical for-profit is probably my biggest adjustment. I have to clock-in and out now and have to be mindful of my hours. So that means I have to get work finished before the end of the day; I can't just keep working until the work gets completed nor leave if there is not much to do. Also, I don't think anybody cares if I understand what I am doing. All I have to do is put the right samples in the tubes with the predetermined amounts of solution, stick them in some machines that are already preprogrammed and report the results. Now I am beginning to understand how someone could have lab experience and yet arrive in grad school without knowing how to make a properly diluted solution. Everything is already figured out. It's like making cake from a box; you could probably make a few mistakes and it would still turn out okay. But honestly, the best thing in this industry is that since there are such high volumes of samples coming in, we have machines!!! that do a lot of the work for us. Machines are fast!

My schedule is currently synch'd with my trainer's so I don't really like it. I have to work Sundays and have a bunch of ten hour days because my trainer is going out of town. But I don't foresee having any problems with this bit of training so I hope to be on my own schedule very soon.

I work a strange second shift that most departments in the building do not have. Which means when I take my lunch/dinner/supper?/food break at about 5pm, there really isn't anyone in the cafeteria. And my department is kinda small. Lonely and sad little lunch. or Dunch? Linner?

I need to find me some friends around here.