Janitorial Assistant

Because that's the unofficial title of my job. Warning: another rant/whine, coming up.

Tasks in the past few weeks include cleaning tools, making soap (or, more accurately, diluting soap), handing out paper towels and solvent, mopping the floor when there are spills, and running several relatively docile gadgets (one of which is the much-abused pH meter). Charming, I am sure.

While the coworkers are decent people, nobody around here explains much, and I end up being so confused that I don't really have questions anyway. The company would probably have been better off hiring a mechanic or an electrician, because that's what much of the work is about. At any rate, there's no way they'll let an ikkle student help with this sort of task, lest the said student breaks something (which I admittedly have an unfortunate propensity to do).

Shoutout to certain senior coworkers: I will appreciate it if you treat me like the adult I am, not ten years younger, even if the work I do can be competently completed by such a child.

The "projects" aren't going too well because previously collected data are literally all over the place, poorly stored, and I obtain new data at the rate of one point every other day, at best. My "control" samples precipitate at the temperature where I want to make my measurements. My emulsions don't break nicely. Sigh.

Today I have a day off while the rest of the company pursues "teambuilding activities" from which, thankfully, I am exempt.

The only positive side is that I think I have a very rough model which fits the data. One can only hope that the coefficients of the model actually correlates with existing data to give something useful.

Filling out the timesheet is going to be fun. Three and a half more months remain in this term; with luck perhaps I may get to do something interesting.

Postscript: school research project is going extraordinarily slowly. I am stuck again.

[Edited]
Of course, I spoke too soon. The form of the model doesn't work for a particular type of data. Wonderful.