BenchLife: Managing Your Life in the Lab

Getting Started in Lab

• The Path to Happiness in Research – there are no flying monkeys, but this yellow brick road will lead you straight to happiness
• Repetitive Strain Injury: The Hidden Lab Hazard – learn to recognize the early symptoms before ever picking up a pipette
• How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem – learning to identify the elements that make up a great project is vitally important
• The Keys to a Great Hypothesis – a poorly constructed hypothesis can waste time and ultimately kill a project
  
• The Importance of Side Projects – what’s that saying about all your eggs in one basket? Well it’s true in research too
  
• It Worked 3 Times…(Out of How Many?) – how many times do we need to perform an experiment before convincing ourselves the result is real?
  
• The Lab Panic Button – before even starting an experiment, go through these important steps to ensure everyone’s safety
  
• How to Keep a Lab Notebook – although they may seem like a pain, an improperly kept notebook could cost you millions
  
• H-index: What it is and How to Find Yours – this emerging author metric is a substitute for the widely used, and flawed, impact factor
• Wunderlist Task Management: Give Your Brain a Present – the only to-list manager you need (and it’s free!)
• What’s in a Name? – are you a biological chemist, biochemist, or chemical biologist? (Or does it even matter)

Be a Better Labmate

• A-Mean-Ol-Acid – an “amino acid” would be much preferred to the horrific scent coming out of your labmate’s mouth…here are a couple of solutions
• 5 Laboratory Techniques that’ll Get You Punched in the Face – avoid the most irritating and annoying lab habits if you want to keep your million dollar smile
• Make Labmates, Not Enemies – sure you may have been king or queen of the hill in your old job, but when joining a new lab, follow these tips to make the transition smooth for everyone
• Lab Etiquette: Don’t Make Us Call Supernanny – being a good labmate involves many of the basic principles we should have learned in kindergarten
• Could You Be the World’s Worst Labmate? – if you think there’s a chance, take this quiz to find out

Stay Focused and Motivated in Lab

• Laughter Really is the Best Medicine – the jury was out for a while and Xanax gave it a run for it’s money, but laughter came out on top
• The Arrogant Labmate: Face ’em or Forget ’em? – someone walking around lab with a bigger head than everyone else? Don’t hire Tanya Harding, resolve it yourself
• Bullying in the Lab: Are PIs Guilty? – the relationship between PI and student or postdoc can be volatile, but does it border on abuse?
• Words Your Boss Will Never Say – no need to get your hopes up, you’re not gonna hear it
• Five Ways Scientists Waste Time – when beginning a project, we should be sure we’ve checked off the items on this list or risk wasting a lot of time spinning our wheels
• Stay Motivated in Lab – sure it’s easy when starting or finishing a project – it’s just that whole middle period where things can get dicey
• Do You Recognize the 7 Early Signs of Lab Apathy? – sometimes apathy creeps up on us and before we know it we’ve lost interest in our project completely – here are some signs to watch out for.

Take Charge of Your BenchLife

• There’s Nothing Romantic About Watching the Sunrise…from Lab – unless your bench has 600 thread count sheets, you probably shouldn’t be sleeping on it
• The Tightrope: Finding Balance as a Scientist Mom – you’re crying for your experiments and your kids are crying for you – what to do next?
• Make Your PI Love You – being an employee is a game. If you play the game as your boss wants you to, you usually succeed. Here are some of the rules
• How to Behave Around the Boss – although the lab environment may at times seem more casual than a traditional office work place, our behavior around the boss should be carefully controlled
• What to Expect When You’re Expecting…in Lab – pregnancy is difficult enough without the sights, sounds and smell of a lab environment- how to navigate the lab and boss when you’re expecting
• Sleep Your Way to Better Science – no sleep frequently yields no results and now there’s science to prove why
• Organize Your Life: Getting Things Done – scattered thoughts? short attention span? feel overwhelmed? This simple system will help you gain control of your life and give your brain a much-needed rest
• Leaving Grad School Early: Get Outta Town or Hang Around? – when the going gets tough, is leaving the best option?
• Are You Prepared for the ‘Worst Case Scenario’? – sure best case scenarios are more fun to think about, but when stuff hits the fan in lab, it’s best to be prepared

Mastering Mindless Tasks

• Training Your Autopilot – even if your mind wanders during a repetitive assay, your body will always know what to do
  
• Assay Pipetting – prevent the horrible ‘Oh no! Did I already add substrate to that tube?!’ feeling with this simple system
  
• When in Doubt, Throw it Out – how can just a few words save days, weeks and even months of time? Take a few minutes to learn them
• Send Email Without the Worry – clicking ‘send’ prematurely can be one of the scariest moments in email. Never send an accidental email again with these tips and resources

.Lab Resources

• 5 Library Resources You Should be Using Now – a science librarian walks us through the resources we’d be foolish to overlook
• Five (Plus) Web Resources You Should Be Using Now – great (and free!) research tools that can manage citations, file sharing and much more
• Back of the Envelope Calculations – a list of some of the most common scientific numbers we should probably all have memorized
• The Art of Organizing Your Literature – technology affords us a number of upgrades on the old-school stack of papers – take advantage of them
• Three Steps to Mastering Literature Searches – you can’t organize literature if you can’t find it

Model Organism Primers

• Drosophila melanogaster: The Fruit Fly – this organism has been buzzing around the lab for over 100 years
• C. elegans: Getting to Know Your Worms – 19 reasons worms are a great model organism and a great introduction to their life cycle and biology
• Research’s Next Top Model: Zebrafish – this increasingly popular organism simplifies drug testing and has even been to space
• Neurospora crassa: The Almighty Fungi – this organism served as the foundation of biochemical genetics and played a central role in a Nobel prize
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Yeast Rising in Research – it’s not just for beer and bread anymore – see why yeast make a great model organism
• We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Lab: Large Animal Models in Research – sometimes bigger is better so see what larger animals are most commonly used in lab and why
  
• Eek! The Mouse – maybe one of the most famous model organisms used in research, mice have played a role in research in almost every disease imaginable
• Tetrahymena: Little Creatures, Big Discoveries – a mindbogglingly complex unicellular organism- it’s even got a mouth and a posterior.

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