First Day - Thoughts

This is possibly the oddest first day of work I've had. Since the lab is an academic one, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but still.

Ok, let's backtrack a bit. The first thing that happened today is my realization that the stovetop's been tampered with. It's not broken, it's just that the heating elements aren't actually plugged in the right place (obviously, I fixed that in a hurry). Mix this with a semiconscious me, and you have one disgruntled student.

Second thing: got to work. Received HR papers. Stood awkwardly for awhile until people figured out where I was supposed to sit. Also: I thought I've read enough papers. Nope. One of my supervisors* gave me more. Ok. Fine. (*fights temptation to nod off*)

Third thing: Calculus 4 is disappointing. Curse the physics, curve-sketching, and calculations! (I like proofs. Why don't we just do proofs?)

Things started to pick up a bit in the early afternoon. A supervisor tells me to make a simple spreadsheet for performing particular stoichiometric calculations. I don't think I've messed it up - if I did, my high school teacher will no doubt lynch me. Thankfully, supervisor confirms this. (Although I must admit it took me awhile - my first way wasn't efficient, so I figured I'll try to save a few columns and make things shorter without sacrificing clarity too much.)

Then I got my lesson in making ampoules. It's actually really straightforward, thus far. Naturally, I had to wash them, too (I don't understand why they have pipe cleaners instead of test tube brushes, and spray bottles instead of squeeze bottles).

I also saw several actions that would've been safety violations in my previous workplaces. Some were understandable, others were not; I won't elaborate on them.

After that, there isn't much. I read a textbook out of boredom, one supervisor said my calculation was wrong (me: what?) but he didn't get back to me when he said he'll re-check it (so I assume that it's alright after all), and so it was till the end of the day.

Before everyone left, one supervisor said something very interesting to me (the following is a paraphrase) -
"I know you've been doing some labwork earlier today. You are an undergrad here, and you know all the safety rules. Using safety glasses, waste glass to disposal bin, that kind of thing. If you see a safety violation, always point it out. Always hold your ground, even if people disagree. It doesn't matter whether they have a PhD or a BSc or not. If they still don't follow the rules, talk to someone else about it."

Strangely enough, I actually thought she was going to say "be more tactful when pointing these things out", since "tactlessness" has been a comment on my student evaluation before. But this is good to know; I guess how one approaches these things really depends on lab/company culture.

*by "supervisor" I mean grad students/postdocs who are involved in the same project as I am, and therefore have to babysit me.