Have you ever had your supervisor, or anyone else for that matter, tell you "Oh by the way I want you to do X"? And when they say "X" you have absolutely NO CLUE what to do? I had that happen to me recently. My boss says to me "to validate that this gene is present you have to perform rtPCR or run an ELISA." So for those of you not in science as lost as you are now about what my choices mean,this is how I felt about performing these procedures. I think that I am a fairly intelligent individual and have the ability to learn new things. But when I started to read over the protocols I felt like I was a fish and the water was being slowly drained from my bowl.
Luckily for me one of my co-workers has been recently performing rtPCR so he is being gracious enough to help me. He has been a total lifesaver because he is walking me through this pretty much step by step. He hasn't been holding my hand which is GREAT because I could probably do it myself next time. Well atleast with minimal assistance. I do I feel like I am driving him crazy with questions and saying ok I am ready for this and then this.
I do feel like the world's biggest screw up trying to do this procedure I have never done. To me it is kind of like cooking something new. You spend all of this time making it and hope that it turns out well. Then you sit there for 5 minutes before you get up the guts to eat it. Hopefully my "meal" turns out delicious.
Even though I have been struggling all day with this process I am beginning to feel like the bowl is beginning to fill up....
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