As I think I've mentioned a couple of times now, I currently do 3 experiments a week.
When most of the samples are prepared, there's about an hour when something needs to be stained or placed in the fridge every 10-15 minutes. This is when I usually eat my lunch, which means I'm running back and forth between the lab and the cafeteria.
All this moving around got me thinking about Michael McIntyres talk about how we walk - and why our walking is so slow. He suggested that we stop walking and start skipping while moving our arms synchronously, which is SO much faster.
Standing at the end of the long, long corridor, with my lab in one end and my delicious, warm coffee and a newly baked cinnamon role in the other, I came dangerously close to testing the skipping theory. I took about to "skipps" (not anywhere near enough to reach top speed) before I realized that all the offices ahead had glass walls, and all had an average of two scientists inside.
I must confess I didn't take the skipping theory any further. I just ran.
Later though, skipping or any other kind of happy-walk seemed even more tempting. I managed to do a quick data analysis while the last samples were being analyzed by the flow cytometer today, and everything looked great. Results are clear, significant and simply very good - at last!
How do you walk from the lab to your office knowing you're getting great results, that your on to something, about to discover something?
(Yeah, that's how it felt anyway, we'll see later if it's true....)
At this point, I think McIntryes skipping might be the correct approach.
If the corridor is ever empty, I might give it a try!
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