Formation Of A Polyaromatic Imidazole Based Compound. 

Double, double toil and trouble;

Reaction stir and oil bubble.

I have a lot of friends who are premeds, so they definitely aren't all bad. That said, some of them are pretty hard to be in class with. Especially the ones who are SUPER competitive - they dominate office hours and take up the instructor's time with questions that are sometimes only relevant to themselves. One of my TAs was complaining about one of the that argued with him for 30 minutes over half a point. There's a point where it goes past acceptable academic competition.

At the risk of being incredibly whiny, what exactly is everyone's beef with med students? D: I just finished my biology degree with pre-med and I guess I was just surrounded by med students because I do not understand

It’s just exhausting to be in a class you enjoy and are taking because you want to do science and be surrounded by students who are constantly complaining about how much they hate it, and don’t need it, and are only taking it because it’s going to be on the MCAT. Certainly not all pre-meds are like that, but even the 10% who constantly ask questions about if they’re going to get an A and look down at the mere science students kind of ruin it when you have to deal with them in every class.

I will say, a large part of the problem isn’t even pre-med students themselves, it’s the fact that biology departments have to bear the burden of the majority of their students being pre-professional in some capacity, who have completely different needs than pre-doctoral students who want to be biologists. Bio programs end up teaching to the MCAT almost out of necessity, which does a disservice to the students who want to be scientists. 

I know that at my university, I considered switching to bio from chem, but ended up staying in the science and engineering college because the bio college was so focused on pre-professional students that they did a really poor job preparing you to be an actual scientist. Just based on the classes I took for my biochem minor, it was really obvious. I suspect that this is the case at a lot of schools, which sort of compounds the issues and makes pre-doctoral students frustrated with pre-meds, even though it’s not their fault directly.

Lovely crystallization effect from an extraction the other day

That one time my roommate couldn't watch Shane's Asagao Academy stream so I live-texted it to her instead (part 2).

@didyouknowshaning‘s asagao stream part 2/part 1

Thanks to @secretagentpeptidebond for the documentation!

never don't reblog labphoto

Distillation of the reaction product from a pressure tube. 

This picture may look like that’s nothing special with it, but in the receiving flask (left side) there is a really-really special disulfide what I was able to prepare first time in pure form with a high yield. For months I was unable to prepare this molecule with a high selectivity from the starting materials. Always at least 2-5 side products formed and the product was only isolated in a low, 10-20% yield. 

fun things to do in lab

accidentally crushing a pcr tube when opening it with one hand

dropping… anything. especially an entire box of frozen samples. 

slightly too large gloves and getting them caught as you close tubes

when the magnetic spin bar spins too fast and does the thing

listening to someone else’s forgotten timer go off

“uh… what’s that smell..”

going in for a pipette tip and then overturning the entire box

16 hour time-points

srsly who invented 16 hr time-points

they’re inhumane

labelling rows and rows of 600 ul microcentrifuge tubes by hand

“we’re sorry but this reagent has been back-ordered for 3 months”

listening to the scraping noise of plastic culture flasks on metal shelves

getting your samples stuck in any sort of machine

“i need you to go and catalog every chemical we have”

cleaning cell culture incubators with aerosolized 70% ethanol 

having the fire alarms go off when you’re literally in the middle of something that can not be put down no i will perish in this fire before i forgo this damn experiment!

that sense of pure panic when you realize you miscalculated how much reagent you need

“one of your mice died and its cage mates ate half the body”

Chemist screws up:

Your lungs are now filled with hydrogen cyanide

Rhodamine 6G dissolving.

PC

Day in the life of a scientist

Me, at an art store: I need a paint marker with low toxicity and a delicate tip.

Employee: What kind of project are you working on?

Me: It's for a research project. I just need bright colors.

Employee: What medium are you using? Canvas or paper?

Me: uh....spiders.

Employee: Plastic or felt?

Me: ....live spiders. Like, from the forest.

Employee: ....

Employee: I have to get back to the counter.