Chrystallography (can you tell Christmas is on my mind?)

[catsittingstill]

I think it was Friday, or maybe Monday morning, that Chris (my boss) showed me how to mount a crystal in a loop and flash-freeze it then center it in the xray beam to collect data. I practiced it for myself for the first time Monday--with an old crystal that basically came apart after I picked it up and put it back in the protein drop a few times, but hey--and then did it unsupervised three times yesterday. And collected Xray data unsupervised three times yesterday. I feel kind of proud of myself for learning so fast, but kind of worried because none of the crystals gave any spots--but this crystal doesn't, sometimes, so maybe I didn't do anything wrong. Sigh :-S

My back hurts a lot these days. I'm hoping it will get used to all this driving and working. Labs are not usually ergonomically designed.


I have time off until Monday after Christmas. That will give some time for my back to get better, I hope.

Comments

[delennara.livejournal.com]

Maybe it would be a good idea to visit a physiotherapist, and go with him/her through your usual work processes, and let him show you some tricks, how to do it back-friendly. Might be a well worth investion...
*hugs* I hope you get used to this work soon.
I know that my back always hurt when I start to work anew, but it usually gets better after teh first 2 or 3 weeks. One thing is that you are exited and tense at first, and you muscles notice.
the other thing is that you probably stand for longer intervalls than you do at home, and it needs tim to strengthen those muscles, too.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Good point, about the physiotherapist. Both your points are good, actually. And at least I'm only working 30 hours a week, which means I get more time to rest than I otherwise would.