#the wasp thing is because i have a field site at a bridge that's basically got wasp nests all over the underside

[hylianengineer]

*asks about job*

Anon you are my favorite.

Okay, so, I'm a laboratory and field technician in a soil and water science lab.

I love my job so goddamn much. I get to work with fancy machines like the gas chromatograph and spectrometer! (The spectrometer is actually really boring but shhh.) I get to go outside and watch birds while I collect water samples! I am getting paid for this! I get to learn data processing and engineering and wilderness safety precautions and how to explain complex science to people whose careers are Not This.

Also, research labs are chaos and I delight in it. Okay maybe not ALL research labs, I'm informed the chemistry department does not look like this. BUT this is an environmental science lab. It is full is bizarre, deeply nerdy, deeply passionate people. Who do things like eat baked potatoes like apples, improvise experimental setups with mason jars and duct tape, and nickname every instrument either a human name or a Pixar reference. I love them so much I have no words.

Crazy and fun things I've done for this job:

Freezer jenga followed by freezer tetris (had to take all the things out of a the freezer, put them in coolers to keep them cold, defrost the freezer, and put them back in except organized this time. I was delighted by this for no logical reason, my boss thought I was nuts).

Okay you know in scifi movies where they have some weird mystery substance and they put it in a box with gloves attatched so they can work with it without actually touching it? I've done that! Not because of hazardous substances, we just needed to put stuff in jars without exposing it to oxygen. But still! It was cool!

Shopping trip to get food for like half a dozen people for three days (I had weird dreams about being overwhelmed with tortilla chips afterwards, this doesn't sound that crazy but I promise you it felt like it).

Taped plastic tubing to 200+ funels until the boxes we were storing them in overflowed and there was no longer floorspace to walk (AFTER cutting the plastic tubing into 200+ equally sized pieces and stuffing it with ion exchange resin, which is like evil microplastic sand. Between all those things, this took WEEKS. It got really boring).

Dissolved like 10kg of KCl (KCl my behated, its very harmless but hell to get off glassware) in water to make 80 LITERS OF KCL SOLUTION (that's over 20 pounds of solid KCl and over 20 gallons of solution! My coworker and I were sort of laughing hysterically over this entire process because come on! 80 liters! For reference most lab protocols need like, a liter or less of whatever solution.) Fun fact about solid KCl, it tends to stick together into a giant brick. We were chiseling at it with scoops, spoons, whatever was on hand (i really wanted to attack it with a screwdriver but it would introduce dirt into the chemicals so i couldn't) and eventually we got so frustrated we went outside and dropped the thing off a second floor balcony. After wrapping it in like 3 layers of plastic bags because we knew at least one bag was gonna break. This did not actually help much but it was very cathartic.

There was a project once where we had to take sealed mason jars and replace all the air in them with nitrogen gas. Repeatedly. For over a hundred jars. My PI (principle invesitgator, means the scientist in charge of a project and usually a lab) is good at building things, so of course he assembled this manifold thing so we could pump nitrogen through a dozen jars at once. Which was great, except it involved two dozen needles, half of them attatched to flexible plastic tubing so they'd kinda bounce around when you pulled them out of the jars. It looked like a very stabby centipede-slash-octopus monster. Impressively, we only stabbed ourselves a couple times each with this thing (and changed the needles of course, we are aware of the risks of transmitting blood diseases).

Actually one of the craziest things about this job in my opinion is how many fucking needles we work with. You see, we study atmospheric gases. And to do that, we need to transfer gases between sealed containers, which means needles and septa (the rubber things they put on vials so you can poke needles through them). So. Many. Needles. Did you know you can only use a needle four times before it gets too dull? It's extremely noticeable as you're using them - not as they get dull, but when you discard an old needle and get out a new one it is a huge difference. I don't know why I find this so fascinating, but working with needles is honestly so fun. I feel like a mad scientist or something. Also, for the first couple months I kept poking myself on accident so I was just walking around with these pinpricks and papercut looking wounds. It felt a bit like a badge of honor, somehow, like a rite of passage for working in the gas lab. Another thing about needles, if you get scratched with one horizontally instead of stabbed, they look like papercuts. It's weird. Also weird is how good you get after a while at not stabbing yourself.

I think I like working with needles because they're something that used to make me nervous. Not horribly, but I have more than typical anxiety and I get nervous about everything. And yet I am now totally chill about needles, because I work with them all the time. It's... freeing I guess. Maybe empowering, even. I am scared of so many things, but I am not scared of this. Ditto large quantities of acid, once you've had to work with dozens of liters of the stuff you stop being scared of it - this was for the same project as the KCl and yes it was equally ridiculous. Dilute acid, thankfully, but to make dilute acid you have to mix the really concentrated stuff with water. It does not come as dilute acid, that would be too easy. So we spent multiple days in a row diluting acid and soaking things in it, there were plastic boxes full of the stuff on every available counter space with handmade warning labels, it was A Thing™️.

Anyways, I'm a person who's scared of everything, except weird stuff like hydrochloric acid, needles, and wasps. I can blame all three of those things on this job, which I love dearly. I love to learn new things, pretend I'm in a scifi movie, be surrounded by crazy people (affectionate), and apparently overcome my numerous fears. You absolutely did not sign up for this big puddle of feelings, anon, but thank you for inspiring it nevertheless.

#something something personal growth and overcoming fears. maybe that's part of why i love this job. #the wasp thing is because i have a field site at a bridge that's basically got wasp nests all over the underside #the wasps like to watch me work #i am genuinely having personal realizations while answering this ask #thank you anon sorry this got out of control i hope my exploits amuse you #some of it i think you just had to be there #also if anyone recognizes these stories shh you didn't see anything #my coworkers had better not see this it would be so embarassing #hylian rambles #hylian does science #anon #asks #thanks anon! #needles tw #i promise proper safety protocols were being followed in all of these stories #the acid involved so. much. ppe.