So this is what being a grad student feels like

I straight up failed yesterday...I didn't take a single picture. Whoops. Yesterday was a huge day in the lab- I was there from 6:45 am to 6:10 at night. I definitely don't intend to make that a habit. I was really glad I did, though, because I was able to get through the microarray protocol once! My results weren't as good as I thought they were, but it's all good. 

Today I was able to meet with Dr. Barrette, the mastermind of this microarray protocol. He works at the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab in Plum Island, New York, so we've been collaborating via email since this summer. He designed the array and is providing data analysis until we get a system figured out that I can use on my own.  I'm really not exaggerating when I say I'm pretty much helpless without him at this point. Today I finally got to spend the afternoon talking with him about all things microarray and it was BEYOND helpful. We pinpointed a lot of issues that might have taken months to figure out via email. Little issues that were discovered via small comments that lead into a whole other discussion. For example, one HUGE issue we discovered is that I had my PCR run programmed totally wrong. He said something about his PCR taking 3 hrs and I'm thinking "uhh mine only took an hour and a half...umm what?" I'm not surprised my slide didn't work very well after brainstorming a list of things that I need to do differently next time, but the timing for this meeting really couldn't have been better. Rather than being discouraged I've got a whole arsenal of things to try next and a way better understanding of why I am doing what I'm doing. The picture posted above is a third of the giant whiteboard diagram we made to help me understand the mechanics of all of the reactions. I took pictures since I didn't have time to write it all down in my lab notebook!