Commitment and Experimentation

In regards to this small posting spree, I'd like to blame commitment to experimentation in addition to appreciating commitment to experimentation. Working from 9 to 7 certainly causes my mind to wander on many topics and in addition express some topics that I'd been dwelling on. My recent experience with dedicating myself to an experiment has certainly been an interesting one.

As someone who doesn't like to back down on issues I'm passionate about, working late in the lab isn't something completely horrible to me. Commitment to experimentation is highly important. Had I chosen to leave earlier, some of the data would have to be sacrificed. Whenever you pick up an experiment, you have to see it through. The idea of coming back and working on it some other time is a luxury rather than a regularity.

On many projects such as ones involving animals, time can be restricted. Perhaps you have to check on the animal every 24 hours or wait for it to give birth. Either way time can be of utmost importance and put a tax on your schedule. Last year, a lab member stayed many nights only catching winks of sleep because he needed to attend to animals giving birth and capture the data within a small time frame. Rather than abandon the experiment, the commitment of his experiment meant he toughed it out with the assistance of coffee.

While I have the convenience of being able to share the burden on some occasions which I'll touch on later, some people don't have the luxury. Certain people are the only ones with a good enough knowledge of a certain procedure to work on an experiment. In those cases, those people are the only ones that can work and as a result dedicate to their schedule to completing whatever they started. Another example could be animal operations where the experiment should be held as constant as possible: including the operator themselves. Any significant change from the consistency of the experiment could mean aborting the experiment entirely.

In my case with growth kinetics, there are other people who can help me out in simplifying certain steps or dividing up the tasks to work faster. However, schedules aren't so nice and sometimes I get stuck with working late. People have their priorities, and ultimately the burden is on me to see a project through. While it might seem like a chore from the outside, the whole concept of being committed to finishing what you start is something that really appeals to me and the payoff of simply seeing it through no matter how significant is worth it.