It's rotations all over again

First year rotations. 3 rotations, 10 weeks each spent in different labs. The idea being, of course, to experience new things and hopefully discover what you would like to work on for the next 5.5 years. In reality, 10 weeks is just long enough to learn how to do one thing, say stain embryos, and feel like you're just getting the hang of it. And then you switch and start on something entirely new and different. Basically you feel like an idiot for 27 of the 30 weeks that make up the rotations.

My project is far enough and well enough along that is clear that I am going to have to do some biochemistry in order to complete "the derailed story." Let me just point out that I am many things: a geneticist (master of fly crosses), a developmental biologist (I know that anatomy of fly embryos), a bit of a molecular biologist (I know how to amplify DNA) and a teacher, but I am not a biochemist. Oh sure, I took that biochemistry course in undergrad and the graduate level course as well, but I have never actually performed a biochemical experiment, until now.

I have spent the last 6 weeks in this new "world" of biochemistry. Everything is new and I'd like to say exciting, but am more inclined to say frustrating. I have spent the last 6 weeks trying to express my protein, Derailed, in bacteria. The stupid bacteria want nothing to do this and are going to great lengths to keep me from turning them into miniature Derailed factories. So every week, I grow up the bacteria, try to get them to make my protein, isolate the protein inside the cells and run it all on a gel to see if I can see my protein. No luck. None. Zilch.

I no longer wish to do biochemistry. It seemed like an exciting and even sexy science at first, but no it is not. It is a frustrating field full of flimsy gels that break all too easily and protocols that take a week to tell you that the damn bacteria didn't even bother to make your protein.