Wednesday, January 7, 2009

New Year, New Job

In addition to starting a new year, I started a new job. Today marks the third day of my new post-doc. The lab is full of equipment that I have seen from afar, but never used. It's kind of starting to freak me out, but I just keep trying to remind myself that I didn't know how to do anything when I started graduate school except Gram stain and pour plates.
It is intimidating to go in such a different direction, but at the same time it's exciting to be doing something completely new. At this point all I have done is mandatory training (snooze) and read paper after paper.
I don't know when I will get into the full swing of lab work again. Before that happens I will have to find out where everything is and how things work in the lab. At this point all I can say is that the lab is extremely unorganized, which will take some getting used to all on its own.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck XX

ScientistMother said...

exciting! good luck!

PhizzleDizzle said...

Good luck and enjoy the new lab!!! Happy New Year too! :)

Anonymous said...

Woohoo!

All the best.

Anonymous said...

Good luck!
(Don't make it a career...)

Eppendork said...

Congrats on the new postdoc - fingers crossed!

Ivan Privaci said...

Congratulations, and Hooray for new Toys!

Uh, "Tools". New TOOLS. Ahem....

Tom said...

Best of luck. Joining a new lab is always a bit stressful, I went from medical microbiology to environmental, and so there was definitely a learning curve ... but you're now a trained professional, a career scientist ... you're in your element.

Anonymous said...

Ah- on to a new stage in your career- Congratulations!!

I'm sure you are going to be great at it... though the first few weeks will be tough!

Cath@VWXYNot? said...

Congratulations, and good luck getting settled! I hope you're getting support from your new labmates, even if they are disorganised!

Dr. J said...

Yes, congratulations. There are many benefits to switching to a different lab as a post-doc, different equipment and acquisition of yet more techniques are a couple, I hope you're going to find others too, as I did.

Oh and Happy New Year too!

chall said...

Congrats and good luck!

Remember that even if you don't know where the ice machine is (like I didn't) or anything else, you have a PhD and you are a scientist :) Have fun!

Arlenna said...

Hey, congrats! :) Have fun in your new environment, learning new stuff is scary but usually ends up being a really good time!

Candid Engineer said...

Hope the rest of the week went well. Starting in a new lab is always challenging- just give yourself a bit of time to acclimate, and you will do great!

microbiologist xx said...

Thanks everyone. A little luck never hurts.
And Transient reporter - Yes, career post doc is not the goal. :)