Search search and then some... (re)search !!

Sometimes, during those painfully long hours in the lab, trying to get some (correct) data to fit my hypothesis, (for the nth time) ...i think ...WHAT THE HELL HAVE I GOT MYSELF INTO ?????

For those who are not familiar with the whole PhD charade ..here's a quick trailer (of the 4 or 6 sometimes 27 years of 'research' some naive humans like me end up in). Believe it or not , there are tales told about this chap from somewhere in europe who hung in there for 27 yrs. The process essentially involves some nutcase (ahem *cough cough*) who thinks he/she is Einstein reincarnated, and a life of research and a cure for cancer is what they were put on this earth for. And then there are those who decide to 'continue studies' ...ya right, like you would have stayed back if even one of those 10,000 jobs you applied to, had hired you after your masters.

So after some initial coursework and exams (which have no relevance whatsoever to what you end up 'researching'), that apparently test your knowledge of the field, we dive right into formulating a hypothesis (aka a scientific statement to explain your crazy results). Now this is where I have a big problem ...I started out with one, did some experiments here and there ....some results fit , some did'nt ....so we (i.e me and my adviser..or Mr Moneybags) tweaked 'statement version 1.0' a bit to fit all the results...and thus statement version 1.1 was born.

Now ....I am working on version 5.0 !!!

I am beginning to think all that tweaking was a bad idea !.

So three years later with a desk overflowing of journal articles, countless hours of head scratching (no ...not the dandruffy scratch) and surfing on the net for the next international conference...there are somethings that you learn :

(1) your adviser is no Mr Moneybags. He will probably have to shut the lab, if that grant is rejected for the 4th year also.
(2) how to organise your lousy data to publish two papers and also earn a 'young investigator award' (thanku thanku).
(3) Printing journal articles is not the same as reading them.
(4) how to scourge for free food in the campus, at all those random poster sessions and guest lectures. If you get real good at it , you can schedule all your lunches for a whole month.
(5) By 10 in the night, the vending machine is sold out of Coke.
(6) Record everything ...even the glassware I washed ...helps to thicken up those folders and thereby create an impression of 'hard work'.
(7) Do not believe in miracles: rely on them to get you to finish that 30 page thesis proposal in one night.
(8) Murphy's Law of Statistics: when you are 100 % confident that your results are significant ...they could'nt be anymore statistically "trash".
(9) If you know what the hell you are doing ...then it is'nt research.
(10) YOU ARE NO EINSTEIN !!!

ok... got to get back to my surfing :)