I think I’ve been stuck in this space where nothing is quite working right and everything is up in the air. It’s not atypical for things to be this way, but it’s an odd place to be and hard to exist in for long.

Science-wise, I’m living out a strange laboratory series of unfortunate events (who isn’t, really). For instance, I ordered a peptide for one project and it keeps getting delayed, another protein I’m trying to make is still stuck at the cloning stage (because I somehow ordered the wrong primers three times), and I can’t ever seem to make everything I need at the same time. I finally got to try to crystallize my proteins, and got crystals, but they’re uselessly tiny and uncooperative. Then after two months of trying to produce something else, I finally have all the proteins ready, only to learn that the microscope is down…and when I left for interviews last week, the building it’s in caught on fire…all is (mostly) well, but still. It kind of feels like I’m going in circles without making progress sometimes.

Of course this is a totally normal part of science, but it does get kind of discouraging. Oh well, nothing to do but press on…

And then there are grad school applications! I applied last fall, and thus far I’m really stuck. My favorite professors at one school are retiring, the more I learn about another program the less I’m interested in it, and my top choice/dream program did not accept me (of course). I just went to interview for the last program I applied for, and while everything was shiny and pretty and the people were nice, I just don’t see myself fitting in there. A lot of this I could have learned if I had done more research in advance, but let’s just say there were numerous obstacles to me applying at all this year. So now I’m stuck. Do I apply again next year? Do I go with whatever I get? Do I try to find another job that would give me more experience in the subjects I actually want to study? Or do I settle for something safe that I’m actually more likely to get accepted for?

So many questions, so little time to deal with them all.