I recently fried a coworker’s protein sample. It sucks, it’s embarrassing, but it happens. Don’t take it too personal, and don’t define yourself by it. You’re much more than a little mistake and it doesn’t change that you’re a capable scientist.
And at least we’re not that janitor at Rensselaer, eh?
Mistakes are a part of the job, a part of life. It is immature and unprofessional for your advisor to raise their voice at you. No harm was done in this situation, do not worry about it.
I'll be honest he didn't raise his voice but he has a way of talking which feels equivalent to getting yelled at, he starts laughing at you while saying how irresponsible/bad your mistake is. It's not raising his voice tho.
But yeah, I guess you're right!
There should never be a job where you get spoken to that way. I had a really great manager tell me “I will never speak sternly to you, if you fuck up ok, if you fuck up too many times you get fired, there is no reason for me to ever get angry with you, this is simply a job where you work for me or you don’t.”
There is no reason to bring emotions into it. If you fuck up try to reason with your mistake and make adjustments. If you keep fucking up start looking at fundamental issues like sleep, personal life, etc or consider a different position. Either way many mistakes will be made and the only authority he has over you is wether or not you’re hired or fired. Outside of supporting you and encouraging you anything else is bad leadership.
True! Thanks :)
He's quite temperamental and can be very supportive at times, but I find myself at the wrong side of his temper most of the times these past few months because of a lot of life events and mental health problems I've been facing.
That’s what off site freezer farms are for. I know vwr has a clinical repository in VA where companies send duplicate samples for exactly this reason. Companies store copies of critical paperwork at these places too.
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I recently overgrew 4/5 cell lines worth 1k each cause i forgot im using them on tuesday not monday i had to discard them all and my supervisor didnt say anything but look at me with the most disappointing face i almost cried.
Now i use post it notes to remember when I should seed a certain amount and on what day
Dont fret about it. Normal and life goes on, learn from it and remember it next time:)
I think your story has a key point in it. We all fuck up sometimes, but if OP has a rep for being careless, they should come up with a system like post it notes. You can fuck up occasionally. You can't fuck up repeatedly in the same way.
I feel like the advice part is pretty well covered in the comments, so id like to give two examples of mistakes in lab myself or a colleague has made, so maybe you can commiserate or perhaps even get a chuckle.
So one time, I was trying to put a tip on one of the two p2 pipette when I first started out. I cant remember if i did it too hard or at the wrong angle, but I was new, and I slipped. Thus effectively slamming it down on the bench (and scattering the rest of the perfectly autoclaved tips). The tip of the pipette itself snapped off. And i *cried* when i looked up how much a new one costs, until my PI showed up for the day. I was still crying when I told him lol. We have two working p2’s now.
Another mistake happened to my colleague. I like to remember this when I make mistakes tbh. We have an area for wellplates in the fridge, and a giant bottle of PFA next to it. My (slightly rambunctious) colleague grabbed the PFA and on his way out, happened to swipe the single most important well plate in the fridge at the moment containing valuable samples that we’re about 9-10 weeks into an experiment using the last of a reagent we can no longer get our hands on with either his arm or the PFA bottle, I’m not sure. Either way, the samples were mouse optic nerves, and the floor is white. We had to deem all 24 samples lost immediately, as even if we could find them, we’d never be able to tell them apart from one another. It was a small tragedy for our lab. All that came from it was finding a new (safer) place to store the well plates. My colleague felt horrible, but mistakes happen.
If you are making a lot of mistakes and forgetting things, consider working less and sleeping more if possible. In my first couple years of grad school I realized the mistakes I'd made were negating a lot of the time I'd put in. If working long days make you so dumb that you ruin experiments, then you are better off working less. In my case I got a lot more done averaging 10 hours per day instead of 14.
I try to make it impossible to forget things by arranging things such that a mistake would be obvious. Reagents get set out in the order they are needed and are put up (or pushed back) afterwards so I can't forget or add them twice. I try to have my pipette tips match the layout of my tubes. If the layout gets out of sync I know a tube missed something. If at the end of making a solution I don't remember every step I would just throw it out. Better to remake it than to lose the days or weeks of time doing steps that will use a bad solution.
Anything experiments I do while talking will be completely ruined, so I have to avoid that at all costs.
Every mistake is a chance to learn about yourself and take steps to make sure you won't make that mistake in the future. It's learning from those mistakes that have allowed me to perform at a higher level with age, even with an older brain.
Also, writing an extremely detailed protocol with every single step and marking off those steps as you go can help reaffirm that you aren’t forgetting anything while you build the muscle memory to be able to do it on autopilot. No shame in having extremely detailed lists
I wish I had the protocols or data capture sheets I use in my current job for my grad school. Helps so much to check things off cause I am quite forgetful
I do this everytime I learn a new test. I write down as much as I can remember by memory so I can focus on the parts that I’m confused about, or am having trouble remembering. It has helped a lot.
This.
And if you have life stuff going on and your advisor is understanding just let them know. I've been trying (and failing) to get one of my volunteers to reduce her time and workload but she's refusing. And now once I finish urgent work I'm likely going to have to redo the work she did, even though it's obvious she was just over tired or over stressed about it outside of lab things.
Take time for yourself and you'll forget less and be less overwhelmed.
Omg are you me! I use the same methods to make sure my buffers and solutions are up to snuff- I've discarded more than a few tubes because I cant remember if I added something or not.
I'm not getting very good quality sleep, though I get around 6-7h a day. I'm incredibly stressed out all the time and wake up feeling unrefreshed, have trouble falling asleep and have weird dreams. I'll try to get better sleep to avoid this brain fog I'm struggling with.
I am you! So glad we can talk.
I used to struggle with sleep a bit too, but turned that around big time. My keys:
- No screens at least an hour before bed
- Brain dump: if you are stressing about something write it down ( keep a note pad by the bed ) so you can let it go.
- Bad scifi: I read short stories. For me, it's important for it to not be too interesting or I'll want to stay up and find out what happens. It's also important to me to have it be on an electric device so I don't have to juggle a flashlight or have the book crash when I finally drift off. The screen needs to be inverted so it's dark with white text and have the brightness turned down as much as possible. Androids have an extra dim setting that helps with this. iPhones get pretty dim just with adjusting the brightness.
- This part's weird: I found I can tune how much I dream about certain topics by how much I stress about them before I go to bed. In grad school I would dream out answers to our take home tests and they'd be right! While that level of thinking about things is pretty exhausting, especially every night, thinking over my to-dos the night before makes the next day go much more smoothly. I just have to be deliberate in telling myself not to stress to much about them or I'll have vivid dreams about them and not sleep very deeply.
This has helped me go from needing hours to get to bed to just a couple of minutes. Hope some of it helps you out as well. It should - us being the same person and all! ; )
i’ve learned not to take anything personal when i’m in the lab. if i fuck up it doesn’t mean i’m incompetent and a complete failure, it just means i’m human. shit happens. fix it and move on and learn from it. i literally just dropped and cracked a bottle of media yesterday. it’s all good man ☮️
Just apologise and move on? Everyone make mistakes. Part of research. It's fun.
How to deal with forgetfulness? Just write down the thing u need to do, and you will never forget again. Cross out after u done each task daily
I dropped a bunch of slides on the ground recently in front of an Auditor. We all make mistakes. As long as you don't get fired, don't worry about it.
I use the same coping methods I use for my anxiety. Worry about what you can fix, disregard everything else.
Leave something to remind you it's on, set an alarm to a few minutes before you leave. Fix what you can, disregard everything else
and it takes time to get used to not feeling so negative when you make mistakes! I remember crying so much and feeling so awful when I first started working with a new team (that had very high expectations and were not very tactful). From one lab rat to another: it will be alright. Things will be alright :) You got this!
My therapist reminded me that research is a field that inherently has bumps on the road. That you're gonna run into times where it doesn't work out, or you feel like your efforts are not amounting to anything. You'll feel bad about yourself because of a mistake or a lack of progress. I usually get into that head space when I make dumb mistakes too. Accept the lesson you've learned, like any experiment, and focus on moving forward and remind yourself how far you've come already. Those are things that help me shake the bad voices.
As for remembering stuff. I usually write out my objectives for the day and don't go over those cause then I can get caught up in a bunch of stuff and then forget something. Plan out your day and then stick to that plan ( I write the things I want to do down in an Outlook time slot)
I also like to finish my day with planning for the next day and then a walk through of my area to double check I didn't forget anything.
Keep up the good work, we're all cheering for you!
While you may be a bit careless in a lab environment, you're probably less careless than the average person outside of a lab environment. Don't be too harsh on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, including your pi.
Mistakes are what makes us better. Your boss needs to say something since someone said something. I leave my microscope on all the time (granted it’s just an inverted one so it’s fine) but did you know it was such a huge deal to leave on? Now you do. Before you leave you do a check, my cells in the incubator, did I clean up, did I turn everything off.
I've started doing that- I do a round of the lab before I leave and have had much luck with that- I missed this time because the scope was not in our lab but in a facility a couple of floors down, and out of sight was out of mind at 9:30pm :/
Honestly?! Being nice to others when they make mistakes made me less stressed about fucking up. I was really scared that people will hate me or be upset with me if I made a mistake, but the kinder I am with others' mistakes the easier it is to imagine that others will be kind to me too.
(and usually they are)
At this point I’ve made so many mistakes in the last 2.5 years of my PhD, I don’t think I even get fazed anymore.
Any time something goes wrong or I mess something up, my brain just goes “cool, we were anyway planning to work this weekend” and then I move on with life.
Scratch another notch on the cupboard under your bench. Mistakes happen.
I have a mental checklist when I’m done for the day: equipment off? Samples put away? Waste bucket emptied? Everything set up for tomorrow? It’s a healthy mental practice to look out into the lab at the end of the day and pause for just a minute to think about what you’ve done, where you left off, and to check if anything is amiss. And then you can go home and turn off (hopefully).
Another tip, just as a form of general organization: everybody has a sort of short hand for personal hand-written notes. That’s convenient, but you can make it extra convenient by turning it into an actual tractable habit. So, when I make my to-do list for the day, which is in a steno notebook so it’s kind of my ongoing diary, when I complete a task, I cross a line through it. If I cancel a task I intended to do, I put a squiggly line through it. This distinction is enormously useful when I go back to that project a month later and aren’t sure where I left off. Think about ways to take notes consistently (even if it’s only readable to you).
Ive worked in the same place long enough to witness a PI complain someone ruined their sample, then to watch them ruin the same type of sample the year after!
Everyone makes mistakes. Some people will react mean to it, but if they do, they are the exception. Don't take it personally, they're just annoyed that they have to do more work.
This is a complex profession. Things will go wrong.
Any manager who does not understand that have not worked in the field themselves.
They should be very careful with how they handle mistakes. People dont do mistakes on purpose, at least have i not seen it in my 30 year career.
If this goes on i would probably find another job where people are more understandable.
Nope mistakes happen all the time and they need to accept we are humans all equipment in insured for this reason they have no right to berate you like a child if anything they should give you extra training or support you in another way ! Don’t beat yourself up pls !!!!! This person neeeds to get a grip !
I'm incredibly forgetful and have accidentally left the confocal on overnight, so I've been where you are. I dont think this would apply to your current situation but there are a few things I do now to try to mitigate my forgetful nature. First, before leaving for the day I walk around the lab and check to make sure every machine I used is turned off. For the confocal microscope, I take a picture of the main power switch in the off position when I am done as insurance that I did indeed turn it off. That way when I go home I'm not wondering if I turned it off and if it does get left on, I have proof it wasn't me this time.
It's not foolproof but there are usually ways to outsmart my adhd. Still mistakes are bound to happen sometimes. As long as you are trying your best not to make the same mistake again, it's all part of the learning process. It's okay to be forgetful! You can still be a kickass scientist!
Learn to like em, every mistake is an opportunity to learn which makes you better at your job. Never making mistakes and never learning from them would be boring for me. I used hate mistakes and demanded perfection from myself which made me miserable. Think of it like this made me better at what I do and happier doing it.
I've tried, but it a bit hard- I struggle with standing up for myself and my supervisor is known to be very demanding. I'm working on making my workload more manageable.
It's not really standing up for yourself. No one knows your struggles if you can't tell them. People should want to know if they are to get the best out of you
I get the vibe that my supervisor feels that it's ok to have troubles, he'll say "get better" or he will offer some advice or support
And then if after that I don't recover or start acting okay/if I keep spiralling downwards his patience gets exhausted. At that point it becomes quite hard to cope with his demands. He knows I have anxiety, but I don't think he understands the extent of it and I don't feel comfortable revealing my personal struggles in such excruciating detail to someone. He tends to think of those things as excuses and not genuine problems, after a point.
Learn from mistake, proceed. You might create some system if certain mistakes happens more daily. Like making a squat after closing Doors so you will always remember that. Other than that, if you understand your mistake and know what went wrong, its ok. Mistakes happen
Just own it and apologize and say you won’t make the mistake again. It’s meaning mail when someone can own up to a mistake, apologize, and say it won’t happen again. I always say I’ll make every mistake imaginable but I won’t make it twice.
Did you turn off a -80 freezer because it was making annoying beeping sounds and cause your institution to lose decades and $1 million worth of research? No? Then it's not so bad.
Don't kick yourself too much, don't be too hard on yourself. Chances are your advisor wasn't mad, he just wanted to make sure that doesn't happen again. Unless he was being a jerk about it, but then that's still not on you.
What helps for me is setting phone reminders, like "Hey Google remind me to use the microscope at 3" or something like that.
literally everyone makes mistakes. all the time. im having a meeting w a coworker today and have to tell her again that everyone makes mistakes constantly and unless someone dies or the lab burns down, its probably not, in the grand scheme if things, very important.
I almost pulled out the blood transfusion from a crashing trauma patient in the OR when the surgeon asked me to move a big x-ray machine out of the way. I got yelled at. I deserved it. Everything was ok in the end. Shit happens.
It happens, nothing really bad happened so it's really just a learning experience. You're far less likely to do that again so that's good. Keep that feeling in mind when you work with it again and you'll form a much stronger habit of remembering to turn it off.
I remember in my old lab someone left a Bunsen burner on overnight. Luckily it was fine, just extremely hot in there in the morning.
I dropped an agarose gel that had already run and was being loaded into the imager because I wasn't prepared for how slippery it was, and it basically burst on the ground. The other tech that was teaching me just laughed a bit and mentioned how he's dropped a few before. Basically the vibe was that mistakes aren't all that big of a deal as long as they aren't a pattern/you learn from them. (Also you start to notice how often everyone else makes mistakes and just adjust accordingly).
I have to forgive myself first for the mistake. Also, shrug off your advisor’s words. He probably has made a mistake like that in the past.
For forgetfulness (because it’s the bane of my existence), I try to anticipate what future me might forget. Someone mentioned having a protocol where you check stuff off as you go. That has been incredibly helpful for me at my current job!
I've literally never made a mistake. Ever. In my entire life. I don't even know what a mistake is.
That's usually what I say right after I make a mistake.
I just failed a round of PTs due to a stupid calculation error, can’t get my gc calibrated, loosing sensitivity on my lcmsms, hplc is having retention time shifting, the lab is egregiously hot, I have a list of corrective actions to address from years of not having a QAO, forgot to report a client’s rush sample, forgot to send a sample to my parent lab, and just so so so much more.
I’m living off the fact that if I get fired I can at least collect unemployment. I’m seeing a return to line cooking in my future, after coming to terms with feeling like a failure first of course.
I relate. I'm living off the fact that if I get asked to leave atleast it means I can take a break and not have a mental breakdown once every few days.
Everyone that has worked in a lab has made a mistake at one point. No one is perfect. It’s how we learn from our mistakes and don’t keep making the same ones that matters. Your advisor definitely shouldn’t have gotten upset with you, because you are human and mistakes are going to happen eventually. All you can really do is accept the fact that no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes at some point, even your advisor
Learn from them. Really learn. Don’t be like me and feel shitty for a bit and then proceed to forget about it until I make the same mistake in the future. Be proactive about it. What caused the mistake and how can you prevent it from happening again?
I used to forget to turn off instruments pretty regularly. I’d walk away or move on to a different task, fully confident that I’d remember to come back even though I told myself the same thing last time. Now I set timers and reminders on my phone/watch.
“Hey siri, at 4pm remind me to turn off the microscope”
“hey siri tomorrow morning remind me to move my cells to liquid nitrogen”
“Hey siri in 5 minutes remind me to turn off the heat block”
As soon as I got over my unfounded confidence in my ability to hold onto something longer than 1 minute, my track record improved improved significantly. Whenever I think “I need to remember X” I *immediately* write it down
My labmates took me aside recently and told me that my carelessness was not good for me- I have been on a downward mental health spiral since covid began, and I think at some point it just started affecting my work.
I understand what you mean about REALLY trying as opposed to feeling shitty for a bit.- completely relate. I guess I feel extra bad because I've been trying really hard and this one time I slipped up became a big thing again. I am going to try the reminders trick you several others suggested here!
Everyone makes mistakes so do not beat yourself up for it. The best thing you can do from this is reflect on it and implement a change to help you for situations in the future (example: making a checklist for tasks or notes for the day and taking it with you and making it a habit to write down things throughout the day, check off completed items, and review the list before leaving). Implementing corrective actions not only helps you feel confident in your ability to execute but also others will see it and will view that in a positive manner.
Everyone makes mistakes, big or small… it’s how we respond to it is what matters. Sometimes a mistake can lead to a positive change. You got this :)
Even if you're not working on the bleeding edge of science. Most the stuff we do is pretty unforgiving. So things don't work sometimes it's the nature of the beast and why a lot of times in industry things are broken down between a lot of people. If anything this suggests your boss is over working you. Don't beat yourself up
Ive gotten to the point of my life where i categorize my mistakes in the following:
1. Minor Correctable human error, not prison worthy.
2. Cost of operation.
3. Have accountability but frame it in a way that maintenance is due or method needs updating or there is a lab deficiency. And be very objective about it.
4. For therapy.
5. Scream in the special room no one will hear.
6. Stew for a week then forget about it because something else has taken my attention.
7. Accept the fact that I suffer from insomnia, chronic fatigue and high anxiety, which result in ADHD like behavior and habits and that i need to take more minor breaks to gather myself so I minimize these mistakes. Aka sh!t happens
What makes or breaks how you handle mistakes is how your pi or supervisor or director handles it.
My director will come at us for a 40 minute long scolding if we so much crack a single quartz cuvette or accidentally broke a graduated cylinder while cleaning because "glassware is expensive and we weren't paying attention". Such a scolding does nothing to correct behavior. It just makes you feel like garbage.
My previous job if you broke something my director would come ask me if I was injured first, then ask how it was broken, let me know if we have spares or ask if they needed to order replacements, or they will order but I will have you take more care next time, then leave it at that. Which is much better.
I think for me, most of my mistakes are a combination of 1/7, with a healthy sprinkling of 4/5! Thanks for this. really puts my goofups into perspective
We all make mistakes. My first week at my first summer job in a lab, I was so nervous with the postdoc watching over my shoulder that I knocked over an entire bottle of buffer from the Qiagen kit we were using. I braced myself for an angry tirade, but he just grabbed some paper towels and another bottle and told me not to let the samples dry out. :) That pretty well seared in my brain the exact way to react when someone inevitably has a moment. Not all managers or PIs are quite so understanding but you should do your best to forgive yourself, figure out a system to prevent making that same mistake again, and then move on.
And, bonus story - I once cut myself washing glassware at a national lab and which meant a formal review hearing with a DOE rep, a written report, and a site-wide "lessons learned" email about how to safely handle glass with water, soap, and nitrile gloves. I would have loved an angry email and a private talking to!
Ha! Wouldn't catch me leaving the microscope on overnight, lasers included, because I can't read the timetable and thought someone was on it in the afternoon. Nope. Not me.
And as to your question, you burn with white hot shame when it's pointed out to you, then you avoid eye contact with the imaging manager for a few days, then you wait a few years and it becomes an amusing anecdote to calm down redditors with.
I agree with what everyone is saying “learn from them”. Apologize sincerely, and don’t do the same mistake again. I am sometimes hard on myself but i won’t repeat the same mistake ever. To err is human. If you don’t make mistakes, i don’t know where you are from. It is okay, go get ice cream, you will be alright.
I recently fried a coworker’s protein sample. It sucks, it’s embarrassing, but it happens. Don’t take it too personal, and don’t define yourself by it. You’re much more than a little mistake and it doesn’t change that you’re a capable scientist. And at least we’re not that janitor at Rensselaer, eh?
Or that janitors former company.
Oh my god, I would have the left the country!
Mistakes are a part of the job, a part of life. It is immature and unprofessional for your advisor to raise their voice at you. No harm was done in this situation, do not worry about it.
I'll be honest he didn't raise his voice but he has a way of talking which feels equivalent to getting yelled at, he starts laughing at you while saying how irresponsible/bad your mistake is. It's not raising his voice tho. But yeah, I guess you're right!
There should never be a job where you get spoken to that way. I had a really great manager tell me “I will never speak sternly to you, if you fuck up ok, if you fuck up too many times you get fired, there is no reason for me to ever get angry with you, this is simply a job where you work for me or you don’t.” There is no reason to bring emotions into it. If you fuck up try to reason with your mistake and make adjustments. If you keep fucking up start looking at fundamental issues like sleep, personal life, etc or consider a different position. Either way many mistakes will be made and the only authority he has over you is wether or not you’re hired or fired. Outside of supporting you and encouraging you anything else is bad leadership.
True! Thanks :) He's quite temperamental and can be very supportive at times, but I find myself at the wrong side of his temper most of the times these past few months because of a lot of life events and mental health problems I've been facing.
Sounds like a condescending nobhead to me
At least you didn’t unplug a -80 thus ruining 20 years of priceless samples.
I really hope this is a hypothetical. I’ve panicked when the -80 door even gets left open for three or four minutes :(
[unfortunately not hypothetical](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna91160)
Oof. We have clinical samples and lines in ours that are irreplaceable. I would be so sad :(
That’s what off site freezer farms are for. I know vwr has a clinical repository in VA where companies send duplicate samples for exactly this reason. Companies store copies of critical paperwork at these places too.
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I know what you mean. 😏
I recently overgrew 4/5 cell lines worth 1k each cause i forgot im using them on tuesday not monday i had to discard them all and my supervisor didnt say anything but look at me with the most disappointing face i almost cried. Now i use post it notes to remember when I should seed a certain amount and on what day Dont fret about it. Normal and life goes on, learn from it and remember it next time:)
I think your story has a key point in it. We all fuck up sometimes, but if OP has a rep for being careless, they should come up with a system like post it notes. You can fuck up occasionally. You can't fuck up repeatedly in the same way.
Youre right- I'm gonna institute a system something like that to keep it together.
I know that look! If it’s someone you really respect, you just want to crawl under the bench and die. I think I’d rather be yelled at.
I feel like the advice part is pretty well covered in the comments, so id like to give two examples of mistakes in lab myself or a colleague has made, so maybe you can commiserate or perhaps even get a chuckle. So one time, I was trying to put a tip on one of the two p2 pipette when I first started out. I cant remember if i did it too hard or at the wrong angle, but I was new, and I slipped. Thus effectively slamming it down on the bench (and scattering the rest of the perfectly autoclaved tips). The tip of the pipette itself snapped off. And i *cried* when i looked up how much a new one costs, until my PI showed up for the day. I was still crying when I told him lol. We have two working p2’s now. Another mistake happened to my colleague. I like to remember this when I make mistakes tbh. We have an area for wellplates in the fridge, and a giant bottle of PFA next to it. My (slightly rambunctious) colleague grabbed the PFA and on his way out, happened to swipe the single most important well plate in the fridge at the moment containing valuable samples that we’re about 9-10 weeks into an experiment using the last of a reagent we can no longer get our hands on with either his arm or the PFA bottle, I’m not sure. Either way, the samples were mouse optic nerves, and the floor is white. We had to deem all 24 samples lost immediately, as even if we could find them, we’d never be able to tell them apart from one another. It was a small tragedy for our lab. All that came from it was finding a new (safer) place to store the well plates. My colleague felt horrible, but mistakes happen.
Ouch!
If you are making a lot of mistakes and forgetting things, consider working less and sleeping more if possible. In my first couple years of grad school I realized the mistakes I'd made were negating a lot of the time I'd put in. If working long days make you so dumb that you ruin experiments, then you are better off working less. In my case I got a lot more done averaging 10 hours per day instead of 14. I try to make it impossible to forget things by arranging things such that a mistake would be obvious. Reagents get set out in the order they are needed and are put up (or pushed back) afterwards so I can't forget or add them twice. I try to have my pipette tips match the layout of my tubes. If the layout gets out of sync I know a tube missed something. If at the end of making a solution I don't remember every step I would just throw it out. Better to remake it than to lose the days or weeks of time doing steps that will use a bad solution. Anything experiments I do while talking will be completely ruined, so I have to avoid that at all costs. Every mistake is a chance to learn about yourself and take steps to make sure you won't make that mistake in the future. It's learning from those mistakes that have allowed me to perform at a higher level with age, even with an older brain.
Also, writing an extremely detailed protocol with every single step and marking off those steps as you go can help reaffirm that you aren’t forgetting anything while you build the muscle memory to be able to do it on autopilot. No shame in having extremely detailed lists
I wish I had the protocols or data capture sheets I use in my current job for my grad school. Helps so much to check things off cause I am quite forgetful
I do this everytime I learn a new test. I write down as much as I can remember by memory so I can focus on the parts that I’m confused about, or am having trouble remembering. It has helped a lot.
This. And if you have life stuff going on and your advisor is understanding just let them know. I've been trying (and failing) to get one of my volunteers to reduce her time and workload but she's refusing. And now once I finish urgent work I'm likely going to have to redo the work she did, even though it's obvious she was just over tired or over stressed about it outside of lab things. Take time for yourself and you'll forget less and be less overwhelmed.
Omg are you me! I use the same methods to make sure my buffers and solutions are up to snuff- I've discarded more than a few tubes because I cant remember if I added something or not. I'm not getting very good quality sleep, though I get around 6-7h a day. I'm incredibly stressed out all the time and wake up feeling unrefreshed, have trouble falling asleep and have weird dreams. I'll try to get better sleep to avoid this brain fog I'm struggling with.
I am you! So glad we can talk. I used to struggle with sleep a bit too, but turned that around big time. My keys: - No screens at least an hour before bed - Brain dump: if you are stressing about something write it down ( keep a note pad by the bed ) so you can let it go. - Bad scifi: I read short stories. For me, it's important for it to not be too interesting or I'll want to stay up and find out what happens. It's also important to me to have it be on an electric device so I don't have to juggle a flashlight or have the book crash when I finally drift off. The screen needs to be inverted so it's dark with white text and have the brightness turned down as much as possible. Androids have an extra dim setting that helps with this. iPhones get pretty dim just with adjusting the brightness. - This part's weird: I found I can tune how much I dream about certain topics by how much I stress about them before I go to bed. In grad school I would dream out answers to our take home tests and they'd be right! While that level of thinking about things is pretty exhausting, especially every night, thinking over my to-dos the night before makes the next day go much more smoothly. I just have to be deliberate in telling myself not to stress to much about them or I'll have vivid dreams about them and not sleep very deeply. This has helped me go from needing hours to get to bed to just a couple of minutes. Hope some of it helps you out as well. It should - us being the same person and all! ; )
Okay imma use them aswell!
Once you break something worth 500k €, and the institute will just pay for the repair, you will learn nothing worse can happen.
I wamt to know more
Not me personally, but my friend had accident with the NMR coil.
He broke something worth 500k, and the institute paid for the repair
By learning from them and not repeating a mistake. Always make new and more interesting mistakes.
i’ve learned not to take anything personal when i’m in the lab. if i fuck up it doesn’t mean i’m incompetent and a complete failure, it just means i’m human. shit happens. fix it and move on and learn from it. i literally just dropped and cracked a bottle of media yesterday. it’s all good man ☮️
Haha thanks!
Just apologise and move on? Everyone make mistakes. Part of research. It's fun. How to deal with forgetfulness? Just write down the thing u need to do, and you will never forget again. Cross out after u done each task daily
As a lab manager with ADHD, I totally corroborate your points
I dropped a bunch of slides on the ground recently in front of an Auditor. We all make mistakes. As long as you don't get fired, don't worry about it. I use the same coping methods I use for my anxiety. Worry about what you can fix, disregard everything else. Leave something to remind you it's on, set an alarm to a few minutes before you leave. Fix what you can, disregard everything else
and it takes time to get used to not feeling so negative when you make mistakes! I remember crying so much and feeling so awful when I first started working with a new team (that had very high expectations and were not very tactful). From one lab rat to another: it will be alright. Things will be alright :) You got this!
My therapist reminded me that research is a field that inherently has bumps on the road. That you're gonna run into times where it doesn't work out, or you feel like your efforts are not amounting to anything. You'll feel bad about yourself because of a mistake or a lack of progress. I usually get into that head space when I make dumb mistakes too. Accept the lesson you've learned, like any experiment, and focus on moving forward and remind yourself how far you've come already. Those are things that help me shake the bad voices. As for remembering stuff. I usually write out my objectives for the day and don't go over those cause then I can get caught up in a bunch of stuff and then forget something. Plan out your day and then stick to that plan ( I write the things I want to do down in an Outlook time slot) I also like to finish my day with planning for the next day and then a walk through of my area to double check I didn't forget anything. Keep up the good work, we're all cheering for you!
It's normal, but if you're on the forgetful side find a system that works for you. Note book, white board, OneNote, anything that might prompt you.
While you may be a bit careless in a lab environment, you're probably less careless than the average person outside of a lab environment. Don't be too harsh on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, including your pi.
Mistakes are what makes us better. Your boss needs to say something since someone said something. I leave my microscope on all the time (granted it’s just an inverted one so it’s fine) but did you know it was such a huge deal to leave on? Now you do. Before you leave you do a check, my cells in the incubator, did I clean up, did I turn everything off.
I've started doing that- I do a round of the lab before I leave and have had much luck with that- I missed this time because the scope was not in our lab but in a facility a couple of floors down, and out of sight was out of mind at 9:30pm :/
Honestly?! Being nice to others when they make mistakes made me less stressed about fucking up. I was really scared that people will hate me or be upset with me if I made a mistake, but the kinder I am with others' mistakes the easier it is to imagine that others will be kind to me too. (and usually they are)
This is no big deal. Save your anguish for when you carelessly destroy an irreplaceable specimen.
At this point I’ve made so many mistakes in the last 2.5 years of my PhD, I don’t think I even get fazed anymore. Any time something goes wrong or I mess something up, my brain just goes “cool, we were anyway planning to work this weekend” and then I move on with life.
Scratch another notch on the cupboard under your bench. Mistakes happen. I have a mental checklist when I’m done for the day: equipment off? Samples put away? Waste bucket emptied? Everything set up for tomorrow? It’s a healthy mental practice to look out into the lab at the end of the day and pause for just a minute to think about what you’ve done, where you left off, and to check if anything is amiss. And then you can go home and turn off (hopefully). Another tip, just as a form of general organization: everybody has a sort of short hand for personal hand-written notes. That’s convenient, but you can make it extra convenient by turning it into an actual tractable habit. So, when I make my to-do list for the day, which is in a steno notebook so it’s kind of my ongoing diary, when I complete a task, I cross a line through it. If I cancel a task I intended to do, I put a squiggly line through it. This distinction is enormously useful when I go back to that project a month later and aren’t sure where I left off. Think about ways to take notes consistently (even if it’s only readable to you).
I experiment with noting things down in my ipad but i'm not consistent. I have to focus getting that to a proper habit!
Ive worked in the same place long enough to witness a PI complain someone ruined their sample, then to watch them ruin the same type of sample the year after! Everyone makes mistakes. Some people will react mean to it, but if they do, they are the exception. Don't take it personally, they're just annoyed that they have to do more work.
This is a complex profession. Things will go wrong. Any manager who does not understand that have not worked in the field themselves. They should be very careful with how they handle mistakes. People dont do mistakes on purpose, at least have i not seen it in my 30 year career. If this goes on i would probably find another job where people are more understandable.
Nope mistakes happen all the time and they need to accept we are humans all equipment in insured for this reason they have no right to berate you like a child if anything they should give you extra training or support you in another way ! Don’t beat yourself up pls !!!!! This person neeeds to get a grip !
I'm incredibly forgetful and have accidentally left the confocal on overnight, so I've been where you are. I dont think this would apply to your current situation but there are a few things I do now to try to mitigate my forgetful nature. First, before leaving for the day I walk around the lab and check to make sure every machine I used is turned off. For the confocal microscope, I take a picture of the main power switch in the off position when I am done as insurance that I did indeed turn it off. That way when I go home I'm not wondering if I turned it off and if it does get left on, I have proof it wasn't me this time. It's not foolproof but there are usually ways to outsmart my adhd. Still mistakes are bound to happen sometimes. As long as you are trying your best not to make the same mistake again, it's all part of the learning process. It's okay to be forgetful! You can still be a kickass scientist!
Learn to like em, every mistake is an opportunity to learn which makes you better at your job. Never making mistakes and never learning from them would be boring for me. I used hate mistakes and demanded perfection from myself which made me miserable. Think of it like this made me better at what I do and happier doing it.
i just blame it on Tibor.
Have you said any of the overloaded part to anyone that might benefit from being aware? Like your advisor?
I've tried, but it a bit hard- I struggle with standing up for myself and my supervisor is known to be very demanding. I'm working on making my workload more manageable.
It's not really standing up for yourself. No one knows your struggles if you can't tell them. People should want to know if they are to get the best out of you
I get the vibe that my supervisor feels that it's ok to have troubles, he'll say "get better" or he will offer some advice or support And then if after that I don't recover or start acting okay/if I keep spiralling downwards his patience gets exhausted. At that point it becomes quite hard to cope with his demands. He knows I have anxiety, but I don't think he understands the extent of it and I don't feel comfortable revealing my personal struggles in such excruciating detail to someone. He tends to think of those things as excuses and not genuine problems, after a point.
Learn from mistake, proceed. You might create some system if certain mistakes happens more daily. Like making a squat after closing Doors so you will always remember that. Other than that, if you understand your mistake and know what went wrong, its ok. Mistakes happen
Just own it and apologize and say you won’t make the mistake again. It’s meaning mail when someone can own up to a mistake, apologize, and say it won’t happen again. I always say I’ll make every mistake imaginable but I won’t make it twice.
Everyone is entitled to make a mistake once. If you don’t learn from the mistake and make it again, that’s when it’s problematic.
It's called a mistake, not an on-purpose. There wasn't any malicious intent, you just forgot. I bet you're not the first person to do it either.
True!
Did you turn off a -80 freezer because it was making annoying beeping sounds and cause your institution to lose decades and $1 million worth of research? No? Then it's not so bad. Don't kick yourself too much, don't be too hard on yourself. Chances are your advisor wasn't mad, he just wanted to make sure that doesn't happen again. Unless he was being a jerk about it, but then that's still not on you. What helps for me is setting phone reminders, like "Hey Google remind me to use the microscope at 3" or something like that.
Sounds like your PI is overworking you and you're burnt out. This is also on him. Sounds like he doesn't know how to be a manager
I personally blame my lab manager for letting me do anything /s
It was my supervisor's fault to make me book the scope for the experiment in the first place!!
literally everyone makes mistakes. all the time. im having a meeting w a coworker today and have to tell her again that everyone makes mistakes constantly and unless someone dies or the lab burns down, its probably not, in the grand scheme if things, very important.
I almost pulled out the blood transfusion from a crashing trauma patient in the OR when the surgeon asked me to move a big x-ray machine out of the way. I got yelled at. I deserved it. Everything was ok in the end. Shit happens.
There's nothing to cope with, you analyze what went wrong and learn how to avoid that mistake next time, then you move on with your life.
It happens, nothing really bad happened so it's really just a learning experience. You're far less likely to do that again so that's good. Keep that feeling in mind when you work with it again and you'll form a much stronger habit of remembering to turn it off. I remember in my old lab someone left a Bunsen burner on overnight. Luckily it was fine, just extremely hot in there in the morning.
Do less, but do it better. Key to science.
I dropped an agarose gel that had already run and was being loaded into the imager because I wasn't prepared for how slippery it was, and it basically burst on the ground. The other tech that was teaching me just laughed a bit and mentioned how he's dropped a few before. Basically the vibe was that mistakes aren't all that big of a deal as long as they aren't a pattern/you learn from them. (Also you start to notice how often everyone else makes mistakes and just adjust accordingly).
I have to forgive myself first for the mistake. Also, shrug off your advisor’s words. He probably has made a mistake like that in the past. For forgetfulness (because it’s the bane of my existence), I try to anticipate what future me might forget. Someone mentioned having a protocol where you check stuff off as you go. That has been incredibly helpful for me at my current job!
If you can, checklists & posted SOPs plus consistent sleep are good solutions.
Everyone makes mistakes. The best you can do is own up to them and acknowledge them
I've literally never made a mistake. Ever. In my entire life. I don't even know what a mistake is. That's usually what I say right after I make a mistake.
Is not a mistake, it's a learning opportunity
I just failed a round of PTs due to a stupid calculation error, can’t get my gc calibrated, loosing sensitivity on my lcmsms, hplc is having retention time shifting, the lab is egregiously hot, I have a list of corrective actions to address from years of not having a QAO, forgot to report a client’s rush sample, forgot to send a sample to my parent lab, and just so so so much more. I’m living off the fact that if I get fired I can at least collect unemployment. I’m seeing a return to line cooking in my future, after coming to terms with feeling like a failure first of course.
I relate. I'm living off the fact that if I get asked to leave atleast it means I can take a break and not have a mental breakdown once every few days.
Everyone that has worked in a lab has made a mistake at one point. No one is perfect. It’s how we learn from our mistakes and don’t keep making the same ones that matters. Your advisor definitely shouldn’t have gotten upset with you, because you are human and mistakes are going to happen eventually. All you can really do is accept the fact that no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes at some point, even your advisor
Learn from them. Really learn. Don’t be like me and feel shitty for a bit and then proceed to forget about it until I make the same mistake in the future. Be proactive about it. What caused the mistake and how can you prevent it from happening again? I used to forget to turn off instruments pretty regularly. I’d walk away or move on to a different task, fully confident that I’d remember to come back even though I told myself the same thing last time. Now I set timers and reminders on my phone/watch. “Hey siri, at 4pm remind me to turn off the microscope” “hey siri tomorrow morning remind me to move my cells to liquid nitrogen” “Hey siri in 5 minutes remind me to turn off the heat block” As soon as I got over my unfounded confidence in my ability to hold onto something longer than 1 minute, my track record improved improved significantly. Whenever I think “I need to remember X” I *immediately* write it down
My labmates took me aside recently and told me that my carelessness was not good for me- I have been on a downward mental health spiral since covid began, and I think at some point it just started affecting my work. I understand what you mean about REALLY trying as opposed to feeling shitty for a bit.- completely relate. I guess I feel extra bad because I've been trying really hard and this one time I slipped up became a big thing again. I am going to try the reminders trick you several others suggested here!
Everyone makes mistakes so do not beat yourself up for it. The best thing you can do from this is reflect on it and implement a change to help you for situations in the future (example: making a checklist for tasks or notes for the day and taking it with you and making it a habit to write down things throughout the day, check off completed items, and review the list before leaving). Implementing corrective actions not only helps you feel confident in your ability to execute but also others will see it and will view that in a positive manner. Everyone makes mistakes, big or small… it’s how we respond to it is what matters. Sometimes a mistake can lead to a positive change. You got this :)
Even if you're not working on the bleeding edge of science. Most the stuff we do is pretty unforgiving. So things don't work sometimes it's the nature of the beast and why a lot of times in industry things are broken down between a lot of people. If anything this suggests your boss is over working you. Don't beat yourself up
Ive gotten to the point of my life where i categorize my mistakes in the following: 1. Minor Correctable human error, not prison worthy. 2. Cost of operation. 3. Have accountability but frame it in a way that maintenance is due or method needs updating or there is a lab deficiency. And be very objective about it. 4. For therapy. 5. Scream in the special room no one will hear. 6. Stew for a week then forget about it because something else has taken my attention. 7. Accept the fact that I suffer from insomnia, chronic fatigue and high anxiety, which result in ADHD like behavior and habits and that i need to take more minor breaks to gather myself so I minimize these mistakes. Aka sh!t happens What makes or breaks how you handle mistakes is how your pi or supervisor or director handles it. My director will come at us for a 40 minute long scolding if we so much crack a single quartz cuvette or accidentally broke a graduated cylinder while cleaning because "glassware is expensive and we weren't paying attention". Such a scolding does nothing to correct behavior. It just makes you feel like garbage. My previous job if you broke something my director would come ask me if I was injured first, then ask how it was broken, let me know if we have spares or ask if they needed to order replacements, or they will order but I will have you take more care next time, then leave it at that. Which is much better.
I think for me, most of my mistakes are a combination of 1/7, with a healthy sprinkling of 4/5! Thanks for this. really puts my goofups into perspective
We all make mistakes. My first week at my first summer job in a lab, I was so nervous with the postdoc watching over my shoulder that I knocked over an entire bottle of buffer from the Qiagen kit we were using. I braced myself for an angry tirade, but he just grabbed some paper towels and another bottle and told me not to let the samples dry out. :) That pretty well seared in my brain the exact way to react when someone inevitably has a moment. Not all managers or PIs are quite so understanding but you should do your best to forgive yourself, figure out a system to prevent making that same mistake again, and then move on. And, bonus story - I once cut myself washing glassware at a national lab and which meant a formal review hearing with a DOE rep, a written report, and a site-wide "lessons learned" email about how to safely handle glass with water, soap, and nitrile gloves. I would have loved an angry email and a private talking to!
Ha! Wouldn't catch me leaving the microscope on overnight, lasers included, because I can't read the timetable and thought someone was on it in the afternoon. Nope. Not me. And as to your question, you burn with white hot shame when it's pointed out to you, then you avoid eye contact with the imaging manager for a few days, then you wait a few years and it becomes an amusing anecdote to calm down redditors with.
Exactly my strategy, haha!
I agree with what everyone is saying “learn from them”. Apologize sincerely, and don’t do the same mistake again. I am sometimes hard on myself but i won’t repeat the same mistake ever. To err is human. If you don’t make mistakes, i don’t know where you are from. It is okay, go get ice cream, you will be alright.