Loose Ends

Advice to all of us in temporary positions or really ANY position... start keeping protocols and inventories as early as possible and as organized as possible. Fight the urge to put off organizing all of your reagents and work. There's always a new experiment to run, but the loose ends will come back to haunt you later. And now I'm at the end... the later... I should of learned this after my graduate school experience, but some how its not the same -- field ecology/oceanography and molecular biology. 

Molecular biology has WAY more protocols, solutions, reagents, etc, etc, etc. The next few weeks will be spent sifting through catalog numbers, gene ID numbers and a freezer full of clones, probes and 5 years of work. Its amazing how much of that will literally be thrown away.

I guess it could end up being a cathartic process... like burning your notebooks at the end of school year or after graduation. It always made for a great bonfire.

The process brings home, like no other, that this phase is over. I'm moving on. Forward. For now, its just a couple metro stops away to a new realm - policy. Then its to start my own lab... scary but very exciting!!