Coconut in the Roaring 40s

Ok so its a Monday, and part of my Monday ‘routine’ is figuring out how much labwork I have left to do for my Masters thesis. And the answer is, as usual, about 2-3 weeks to go. AND THAT NEVER CHANGES!

Yes I am the queen of dragging things out, especially those things I most want to NOT be doing. Anyway, today after I figured all this out again, I found a paper listing all the things I had left to do dated the 24th April 2006. So I thought it might be a nice exercise to examine this and determine just how much I have achieved in the last…15 weeks (OMG thats almost 4 months! Eeek!)

Labwork	28 April	10 July	Progress
Embed samples in paraffin wax	20 left	All done!	YES
Cut slides of samples	85 left	still ~85 left	Have done at least 8hrs sectioning but figured out I underestimated original count SOME
Stereology	620 slides to process	540 slides to do	Processed 80 to date SOME
Counting of MODs	155 samples to process		NO
ELISAs	Estimated 8 to do	1 left to do	Actually done 8 already SOME
RIAs	Estimated 7 to do	Estimate 3 left to do	Actually done 7 already SOME
Freeze Drying	One 7-day session to do	Still one 7-day session to do	Machine was out of order for ~3 wks NO
Lipid Analysis	143 samples to do	95 samples to do	Done 48 samples with RL’s help SOME
IGF1 RIAs	Estimate 2 to do	Still 2 to do	RW hasn’t set-up assay yet NO

And in addition to all that I have recorded ~4hrs writing for Ch.2, 3.5hrs for Ch.3, 3hrs for data entry and 12hrs for statistical analysis. Of course these are only the stuff I actually remembered to enter in my diary, but then the stuff I haven’t entered definitely did not exceed that which I entered, if you get my drift.

Finally I must note that I also donated about 9.5 full days to working on the TMT experiment, which is no longer a part of my thesis, but which I originally developed before I changed from my PhD. Thus, I have to help RL and RW with it, because, in their own words, they would be lost w/out me… Also my mum came to visit me very briefly – I only gave her 3.5 days, and in the grand scheme of things I don’t think that was much at all. Obviously the things I need to work on are all those time I am not managing my time properly. Yes, like now – writing on my blog, when I could be doing something more constructive towards getting my thesis done. Okay, so on that note – Catchya later .