Tag Page ResearchLife

My Research Is Dying. I Keep Trying

I've been running the same protocol for months. Different samples, same result: failure. 75% of my cultures died last week. The week before that, 60%. I keep adjusting variables, switching reagents, staying late to check incubators. Nothing works. My advisor says it's just part of the process. "Science is iterative," they remind me. But I'm watching years of work collapse in real time. Every morning I unlock the lab hoping something survived the night. Every evening I'm cleaning up dead experiments. The worst part? I still care. I still pipette with the same precision, still label tubes like this attempt will be different. Maybe that's the real experiment—how long someone can watch their work die before they stop trying. I'm not there yet. But I can see it from here. #Science #LabBurnout #ResearchLife