Scared of labs in undergrad

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Latteandaprayer

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I'm gonna take a Genetics lab this semester but reading the manual makes me scared. There are a lot of things to remember and we're dealing with flies and worms, and it's easy to kill or let them loose on accident, which would result in failure.

I've always had a hate of labs because I'm always afraid of messing up. "Failure is part of it!" Yes, but failure in my lab experiences often led to failing grades. I haven't failed a lab course, but I have failed individual labs because of mistakes here and there. I often also feel stupid because I doubt myself constantly in a lab.

What's weird is that I'm generally not like this. I'm usually able to apply what I've learned easily. But for some reason, in labs it goes in one ear and out the other and I end asking basic questions. I'm pretty sure it's because I get so caught up on the mistakes I could make that become distracted.

How do I gain confidence in a lab? Sorry if this is inappropriate, but I'm scared of failing future labs in undergrad and medical school, and what if my fear of failing stays with me after medical school and I'm an ineffective doctor because I'm scared of making a mistake?
 
Latteandaprayer said:
I'm gonna take a Genetics lab this semester but reading the manual makes me scared. There are a lot of things to remember and we're dealing with flies and worms, and it's easy to kill or let them loose on accident, which would result in failure.

I've always had a hate of labs because I'm always afraid of messing up. "Failure is part of it!" Yes, but failure in my lab experiences often led to failing grades. I haven't failed a lab course, but I have failed individual labs because of mistakes here and there. I often also feel stupid because I doubt myself constantly in a lab.

What's weird is that I'm generally not like this. I'm usually able to apply what I've learned easily. But for some reason, in labs it goes in one ear and out the other and I end asking basic questions. I'm pretty sure it's because I get so caught up on the mistakes I could make that become distracted.

How do I gain confidence in a lab? Sorry if this is inappropriate, but I'm scared of failing future labs in undergrad and medical school, and what if my fear of failing stays with me after medical school and I'm an ineffective doctor because I'm scared of making a mistake?
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Your fear of failing might keep you out of med school and problem solved.

Suggest visiting your school's counseling center, or seeing a therapist. It sounds like you have some anxiety issues to work on.
 
You'll be fine. They don't have grand expectations. For some of the labs I did in college, occasionally the entire experiment just wouldn't work because the prep staff messed something up or something like that. It was never a huge deal, you still learn and write reports with dummy data.

Also, for the lab I worked in for research, I would say that for the first few months I was at best contributing nothing and at worst actively hindering other people because I was so incompetent. But if you're earnest and try to learn from your mistakes, eventually you will get better and you'll be able to contribute.
 
Talk to the school's counselor. Definitely sounds like anxiety issues that are specific to something with lab. The counselor might help you figure out what it is. Labs are just labs. If you **** up and kill the flies, it's no big deal. Unless you have a complete dbag for a TA, you'll either just do it again, use someone else's data, or explain what happened in your lab report, and that'll be the end of it.
 
bananafish94 said:
For some of the labs I did in college, occasionally the entire experiment just wouldn't work because the prep staff messed something up or something like that.
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In bio lab, we completely ****ed up one of our labs. I can't remember what it was, but it was horrendous. All we had to do was explain what happened and what our expectations were.
 
Sounds like an intense genetics lab if you're working on flies and worms.... The most we did in my schools graduate level genetics lab was yeast and Arabidopsis...

But I agree with mathew, everytime someone messed up and contaminated their plates in my lab the professor would just give them someone else's data to analyse and write up. Yours should do the same. These classes are designed to show you the scientific process applied, not to train zookeepers

I wouldn't worry, worrying will make you mess up and frustrate your lab partner
 
I had a class where a lab completely messed up. I actually had two stories. One my partner and I did it perfectly and it worked, the other pair (yes our lab had 4 in it) messed something up, could not figure out where but when we replicated it we made it work. Another lab weeks later, the stock enzyme had become ineffective and we didn't see this until we started running trials. Professor finally ran his own trials and found the stock solution was ineffective. So we skipped that set of data.

It will happen, you just have to be ready to roll with it.


Sent from my iPad using SDN mobile
 
I agree with @Goro 100%. You have to conquer this fear of failure or it will conquer you. Know why? Because it's a thousand times scarier to work on a living person, but doctors can't let anxiety cloud their judgment and impair their performance. Your school will have counseling services, and you should avail yourself of them ASAP. Anxiety and fear of failure can be overcome, but it's hard to do without help.
 
Gilakend said:
90% of the time in orgo lab I had no idea what was going on. It was like I was cooking out of a cook book but didn't know what I was going to eat.
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This was the norm with the students I taught in my organic chemistry labs.

Lab isn't really meant to be much more than following directions "initially".

Labs help you tie together information taught in lecture and you will fill in the blanks usually several weeks after you even did the lab.

So lab is a great experience, but usually you don't understand the concepts until well after you did the lab procedure.
 
Think about the concepts you're applying. Anybody can follow a cookbook recipe. But then lab is reduced to a sequence of meaningless steps, which makes it easy to mess up. Think about why you're doing the specific steps as you do them and then it will become more natural to you.

Messing up is a great part of science. As a grad student, the vast majority of my experiments didn't work. Grad school is about trying something (grounded in a sound hypothesis) and then figuring out what didn't work and why. Then you fix it and move on. That's how science is done. You should approach lab the same way. If you make a mistake, figure out why you made that mistake and fix it. Don't be afraid of "accidentally" releasing your flies or whatever. If you keep thinking about it, you're going to be very nervous and nervousness causes accidents. Approach it with confidence. Try to visualize what you're going to do the night before the lab so that it's in your head.
 
aldol16 said:
Think about the concepts you're applying. Anybody can follow a cookbook recipe. But then lab is reduced to a sequence of meaningless steps, which makes it easy to mess up. Think about why you're doing the specific steps as you do them and then it will become more natural to you.

Messing up is a great part of science. As a grad student, the vast majority of my experiments didn't work. Grad school is about trying something (grounded in a sound hypothesis) and then figuring out what didn't work and why. Then you fix it and move on. That's how science is done. You should approach lab the same way. If you make a mistake, figure out why you made that mistake and fix it. Don't be afraid of "accidentally" releasing your flies or whatever. If you keep thinking about it, you're going to be very nervous and nervousness causes accidents. Approach it with confidence. Try to visualize what you're going to do the night before the lab so that it's in your head.
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In my research notebook, reaction #110 or so was the first reaction I had that was a break through to a publication. I still had to optimize it though, so it wasn't perfected until reaction #150 or so.

Reaction # 1 - 109 were almost useless, other than getting me to # 110. The first 1-109 were just "what not to do" reactions, which of course, are important in their own right.
 
Only one lucky boy made it this lab.
And he cheated.

856e6648c9786df2d87bb0e11315585f_full.jpg


So don't worry too much. Most of the people don't know what they are doing anyway.
 
I detested undergrad lab.

All of them. Every. single. one.
 
aldol16 said:
Nanomole-scale high-throughput chemistry for the synthesis of complex molecules. Gonna replace all of us.
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Ya, I went to the regional ACS conference a while ago, and one of the presenters was talking about using a program that would take into account most known optimized reactions and start to find patterns of ideal reaction conditions (solvents, catalysts, temperatures, etc.). It would deplete the need for so many trial and error reactions.

The age of chemists being replaced with the miniaturized automation platform is one thing.

But worse, the miniaturized automation platform may not even have as many trial and error reactions to run through!
 
Robin-jay said:
Ya, I went to the regional ACS conference a while ago, and one of the presenters was talking about using a program that would take into account most known optimized reactions and start to find patterns of ideal reaction conditions (solvents, catalysts, temperatures, etc.). It would deplete the need for so many trial and error reactions.
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JH? Snap deconvolution, right? Innovative concept but there are too many combinatorial options for the program to handle - it can do well with only a few options but if there are many, the algorithm breaks down.
 
aldol16 said:
JH? Snap deconvolution, right? Innovative concept but there are too many combinatorial options for the program to handle - it can do well with only a few options but if there are many, the algorithm breaks down.
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Ya, sounds right. I haven't been up-to-date lately with the research, but it seems like it could be promising. How interesting would it be if one could actually find the algorithm to work correctly. Could you imagine to advancements that could be made?

I'm a dreamer, but I think if you could set up the program to take into account all known syntheses and reaction conditions correctly, there would be enough patterns to innovate remarkable discoveries.

One error I can think of off the top of my head are the reactions in literature where the findings are "slightly inaccurate" or not recorded perfectly, because then you would be feeding the program incorrect information which would be disastrous for making correct predictions.
 
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I guess you may want to reconsider medical school if performing in an undergraduate controlled laboratory environment gives you this much anxiety. How are you going to handle diagnosing someone's problem from scratch or dealing with a life or death situation?
 
Robin-jay said:
Ya, sounds right. I haven't been up-to-date lately with the research, but it seems like it could be promising. How interesting would it be if one could actually find the algorithm to work correctly. Could you imagine to advancements that could be made?
Click to expand...

Robin-jay said:
One error I can think of off the top of my head are the reactions in literature where the findings are "slightly inaccurate" or not recorded perfectly, because then you would be feeding the program incorrect information which would be disastrous for making correct predictions.
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I think the limiting problem now is computational power. We're making huge strides here (DE Shaw in protein dynamic simulations) but it's still not enough. If there were more computational power, we could eliminate the lab entirely! If we actually had these algorithms, my PhD would have been finished in 2 years. But then, ethics questions will arise - who's doing the research and analysis, the grad student or the computer?

I think the future is in simulation of molecular dynamics. We can only do computations on reaction intermediates now but what if we could model the actual molecules tumbling around in solution with explicit solvent accounted for? Then we can simulate a test tube on the computer and actually calculate and predict all the possible pathways that would result from all the different collisions a molecule would make. It would make mechanistic chemistry a lot easier. I think that's the future.
 
aldol16 said:
I think the limiting problem now is computational power. We're making huge strides here (DE Shaw in protein dynamic simulations) but it's still not enough. If there were more computational power, we could eliminate the lab entirely! If we actually had these algorithms, my PhD would have been finished in 2 years. But then, ethics questions will arise - who's doing the research and analysis, the grad student or the computer?
Click to expand...

I messed with chemistry computer programs before, ranging from predicted transitional states to bond angles. If we did have these algorithms, then I would say that the computer might be doing the research and analysis, but it sure won't be writing your dissertation! Endless committee member corrections and an absurd amount of writing goes into those.

aldol16 said:
I think the future is in simulation of molecular dynamics. We can only do computations on reaction intermediates now but what if we could model the actual molecules tumbling around in solution with explicit solvent accounted for? Then we can simulate a test tube on the computer and actually calculate and predict all the possible pathways that would result from all the different collisions a molecule would make. It would make mechanistic chemistry a lot easier. I think that's the future.
Click to expand...

I had a lot of organic chemistry experience, but I did have the option to do a lot more computational chemistry than I did. You make me wish I had spent more time doing that. It would be phenomenal to model molecules most probable pathways.

The complexity of that program would be off the charts though. Many of the reactions I did in grad. school had characteristics of both SN1 and SN2 reactions. There is extensive research in our laboratory where we tagged carbons, monitored reactions under certain conditions to solve this, and so on. It appears that our parent reaction simply has qualities of both, differing when the reactants and product ratio changes over time.
 
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I was nervous about my first time in a molecular lab class too; it's okay. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube made by lab companies that will walk you through the steps of running molecular experiments. You can also find other resources on the internet that explain what each reagent/machine is and why it is used. These resources helped me a lot in that lab, you just have to put in the time to study your experiments before the lab starts.
 
Latteandaprayer said:
I'm gonna take a Genetics lab this semester but reading the manual makes me scared. There are a lot of things to remember and we're dealing with flies and worms, and it's easy to kill or let them loose on accident, which would result in failure.

I've always had a hate of labs because I'm always afraid of messing up. "Failure is part of it!" Yes, but failure in my lab experiences often led to failing grades. I haven't failed a lab course, but I have failed individual labs because of mistakes here and there. I often also feel stupid because I doubt myself constantly in a lab.

What's weird is that I'm generally not like this. I'm usually able to apply what I've learned easily. But for some reason, in labs it goes in one ear and out the other and I end asking basic questions. I'm pretty sure it's because I get so caught up on the mistakes I could make that become distracted.

How do I gain confidence in a lab? Sorry if this is inappropriate, but I'm scared of failing future labs in undergrad and medical school, and what if my fear of failing stays with me after medical school and I'm an ineffective doctor because I'm scared of making a mistake?
Click to expand...

I was a non-traditional student and when I was first placed in a lab, I was a bit anxious as I really didn't know some of the very basic things other peers of mine found as common sense. I felt like I was sure to mess something up or ruin my lab and likely not do very well. It turns out that I did mess some things up, just as did many other students in the lab --------> it wasn't a big deal at all. You just start over or as others have mentioned above, you will be given someone else's data to analyze. Overall, I wouldn't stress about it too much. I can tell you for (almost) certain that losing some flies will not lead to failure (at least I couldn't imagine an undergraduate lab where this would be the case). If losing a few flies was grounds for failure, I would have been thrown out of my research-for-credit lab on a few occasions to say the least ---------> I wasn't.

Relax, bro.
 
Robin-jay said:
I messed with chemistry computer programs before, ranging from predicted transitional states to bond angles. If we did have these algorithms, then I would say that the computer might be doing the research and analysis, but it sure won't be writing your dissertation! Endless committee member corrections and an absurd amount of writing goes into those.
Click to expand...

Oh, I know. It took me a couple of months to hammer out a good thesis and I had a few good papers under my belt at the time. Not that the thesis even really matters - even though it's indexed in ProQuest, no one looks it up anyway. They're more interested in the published papers.

Robin-jay said:
I had a lot of organic chemistry experience, but I did have the option to do a lot more computational chemistry than I did. You make me wish I had spent more time doing that. It would be phenomenal to model molecules most probable pathways.

The complexity of that program would be off the charts though. Many of the reactions I did in grad. school had characteristics of both SN1 and SN2 reactions. There is extensive research in our laboratory where we tagged carbons, monitored reactions under certain conditions to solve this, and so on. It appears that our parent reaction simply has qualities of both, differing when the reactants and product ratio changes over time.
Click to expand...

In principle, it wouldn't be very complex. It would have a very simple instruction: minimize energy. You would have to constrain what can happen when molecules collide, but it shouldn't be difficult, again in principle, to limit the number of bonds each atom can form, angles that can be taken, Maxwell-Boltzmann speeds allowed, maximum kinetic barriers with and without tunneling, etc. We can already (almost) model protein folding dynamics starting with only primary structure, based on intermolecular interactions and the tumbling motion through space. We just need to take that and modify it so that those intermolecular interactions can result in actual chemical changes. Easier said than done, but in theory, energy minimization should be the guiding principle behind the program. It would require a massive amount of computational space but hopefully, in the future, that won't be a problem!
 
givemecoffee said:
In my genetics lab in undergrad, my lab partner and I forgot to add the dye before running a gel. We got no results and just told the TA "oh not sure what happened here." We still got an A after completing the post-lab questions etc. Later we realized why we didn't get any results lol :whistle:
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I accidentally dumped out our precipitate in gen chem lab one time. We scraped it back in, but ended up having horrendous percent yield. Whoops.
 
aldol16 said:
Oh, I know. It took me a couple of months to hammer out a good thesis and I had a few good papers under my belt at the time. Not that the thesis even really matters - even though it's indexed in ProQuest, no one looks it up anyway. They're more interested in the published papers.
Click to expand...

I know, all the effort and work incorporated into my thesis, and the only people to really benefit from it are the university (looks good to have a great thesis), myself, (the future undergrad./grad. students of that specific lab), and that's really about it.

However, because of the publications I was able to earn in fairly reputable journals, I'm still happy with the overall results of grad. school.

aldol16 said:
In principle, it wouldn't be very complex. It would have a very simple instruction: minimize energy. You would have to constrain what can happen when molecules collide, but it shouldn't be difficult, again in principle, to limit the number of bonds each atom can form, angles that can be taken, Maxwell-Boltzmann speeds allowed, maximum kinetic barriers with and without tunneling, etc. We can already (almost) model protein folding dynamics starting with only primary structure, based on intermolecular interactions and the tumbling motion through space. We just need to take that and modify it so that those intermolecular interactions can result in actual chemical changes. Easier said than done, but in theory, energy minimization should be the guiding principle behind the program. It would require a massive amount of computational space but hopefully, in the future, that won't be a problem!
Click to expand...

Yep, minimizing energy is the trick. I ran many simulations on molecules I was working with on various programs that would model transition states, etc. but I never had the opportunity to really set the constraints of the program. I hope computational chemists can figure out the optimal way to model these molecules and interactions. I have been to a dissertation of a computational chemist, and I was almost jealous on the amount of work that could be done in the comfort of their own home! However, the in-lab experience is phenomenal so I'd stick with my trial and errors for now.
 
I was like you when I read my organic chemistry lab 1 lab book. In the end, it wasn't bad. I sucked at taking quizzes and ended up passing with C-
 
Organic I lab went really well last sem, until our last lab. We had to put our product mixture (which we distilled the week before and boiled for an hour that day) into an ice bath. My partner and I were adjusting the ring clamp around the flask, and then the entire thing submerged in the water and we lost our mixture LMAOOO!!! But we were really good at staying calm and just took one of our friend's mixture after they finished with all the steps. Our prof didn't even find out. Labs are unpredictable and messy and awesome. You just gotta relax and have fun. The grade will work itself out.
 
I remember having to completely redo my Grignard lab. I had a difficult time with grinding my reagent into small enough pieces so that it would react with magnesium. At the time, I had no idea of this and was confused why no reaction had taken place. I went in on a makeup day to do it over again.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Talk to the school's counselor. Definitely sounds like anxiety issues that are specific to something with lab. The counselor might help you figure out what it is. Labs are just labs. If you **** up and kill the flies, it's no big deal. Unless you have a complete dbag for a TA, you'll either just do it again, use someone else's data, or explain what happened in your lab report, and that'll be the end of it.
Click to expand...

I took your advice and talked with a counselor that day, and it helped a little. Thanks! Then I talked with the professor and that helped, too.
 
Latteandaprayer said:
I took your advice and talked with a counselor that day, and it helped a little. Thanks! Then I talked with the professor and that helped, too.
Click to expand...

This is going to sound super new agey, but adult coloring books are great for relaxation and destressing. It is pretty normal to see a 10 mmHg jump in systolic bp when underway on a warship, especially on deployment. My bp after a couple weeks on deployment was 135/81. I started coloring for 30 mins every night before watch, and in a week it was down to 124/80, and a week after that it was 120/77. That was the only thing I did differently. It’s not for everyone, but it does work for some people.

Edited to fix dumb autocorrect (which ironically won’t fix a typo in the word autocorrect).
 
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Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
I accidentally dumped out our precipitate in gen chem lab one time. We scraped it back in, but ended up having horrendous percent yield. Whoops.
Click to expand...
In ochem lab we were doing elimination rxns or something like that with bromine. The teacher wanted us to try to get our crystals as white as possible, so my lab partner and I read up about it and decided to add cyclohexene to grab some of the extra bromine out of the mixture. It literally destroyed our crystals and everything got sucked through the vacuum filter lol. Still gave us an A for the lab somehow...
 
bioboy23 said:
In ochem lab we were doing elimination rxns or something like that with bromine. The teacher wanted us to try to get our crystals as white as possible, so my lab partner and I read up about it and decided to add cyclohexene to grab some of the extra bromine out of the mixture. It literally destroyed our crystals and everything got sucked through the vacuum filter lol. Still gave us an A for the lab somehow...
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Our labs are all very structured. We couldn’t just grab some cyclohexene if we wanted.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Our labs are all very structured. We couldn’t just grab some cyclohexene if we wanted.
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Oh man, our teacher gives zero F’s. It’s honestly terrifying. We have to think through things and make sure we aren’t making a bomb or hazardous fumes. The 1 year of orgo lab will probably take 3 years off my life.
 
bioboy23 said:
Oh man, our teacher gives zero F’s. It’s honestly terrifying. We have to think through things and make sure we aren’t making a bomb or hazardous fumes. The 1 year of orgo lab will probably take 3 years off my life.
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Our bio lab instructor didn't give an F. Our "lab reports" were like 5 questions we had to answer. We had one formal paper we had to write up based on a couple related labs, but we totally ****ed up one of the parts, and she just had us explain what went wrong in the paper lol. She would walk around and help everyone out or just tell them to say F it and use someone else's data lol.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Our bio lab instructor didn't give an F. Our "lab reports" were like 5 questions we had to answer. We had one formal paper we had to write up based on a couple related labs, but we totally ****ed up one of the parts, and she just had us explain what went wrong in the paper lol. She would walk around and help everyone out or just tell them to say F it and use someone else's data lol.
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Those are the best type of teachers as long as you learn something haha
 
PopeKnope98 said:
Organic I lab went really well last sem, until our last lab. We had to put our product mixture (which we distilled the week before and boiled for an hour that day) into an ice bath. My partner and I were adjusting the ring clamp around the flask, and then the entire thing submerged in the water and we lost our mixture LMAOOO!!! But we were really good at staying calm and just took one of our friend's mixture after they finished with all the steps. Our prof didn't even find out. Labs are unpredictable and messy and awesome. You just gotta relax and have fun. The grade will work itself out.
Click to expand...

This just reminded me of the time i went into lab to check the melting point of my product (we did this on our own time between labs to allow time for drying), opened my lab drawer to find it half flooded and my product completely dissolved. Apparently a steam pipe had leaked and all the steam condensed in the drawer causing the flooding. I pretty much went crying to the office of my saint of a professor who actually recrystallized my product for me so I could successfully complete the next few labs that relied on having that product.

Another bad lab story: We were doing one of those solute separation and identification labs, everything was going smoothly and all the tests were working out as expected, confirming that we'd successfully isolated each component... until we got to the last step. The final test, if we'd done everything properly, was supposed to turn the solution pink (or no color change if we'd messed up somewhere previously). We run the test and it turns a beautiful bright... blue. Never did figure out what happened there.

seriously though, it's nice sometimes to hear other people's lab horror stories and know that it all worked out in the end. undergrad labs can feel stressful at times but in the end we all screw up, it's totally expected and fine.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
This is going to sound super new agey, but adult coloring books are great for relaxation and destressing.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm way down in this rabbit hole. I read adult coloring book and automatically thought about my uncolored pages of Netter's or Kapit crying out to me. I keep telling myself there are other options outside of medicine, but now I don't know anymore.
 
Insert Member Name Here said:
Well, I'm way down in this rabbit hole. I read adult coloring book and automatically thought about my uncolored pages of Netter's or Kapit crying out to me. I keep telling myself there are other options outside of medicine, but now I don't know anymore.
Click to expand...

They have anatomy coloring books. I actually poked some fun at @bananafish94 once by posting a picture of a microbiology coloring book.

But I was talking about regular old coloring books. I have one that has dinosaurs, one with insults from Shakespeare, and another one that is just cool designs.
 
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