My time in research lab

My postdoc, S, had known for some time that Monday, May 2, 2011, would be my last day of research lab. She had pulled forlorn faces whenever mentions of Finals Week or Graduation came up among us assistants, and bemoaned something along the lines of "What am I going to do without you?" It seemed a little dramatic. But not uncalled for, since we had been working together through summers and springs, the passing of her father, the birth of her son. Research lab was my second home.  

S had scheduled weeks in advance to use an electron micrograph lab that day. The research we were doing was finally coming into fruition after two years--from idea to gene to in vivo studies to results. It was all very exciting. Electron micrography was new to both of us, and the technicians in Barker had to teach us how to use the equipment. We stood there, dressed in white lab coats, which we never wear, taking orders from people we didn't know, in a place that wasn't our lab, on techniques we were unfamiliar with.  Everything about that last day just felt wrong.

It was such an anticlimactic ending to what was a very rich two years of learning. On my first day, I fumbled with dilution calculations and squirted samples messily into the electrophoresis gel (oops). On the tenth day, a very pregnant S gave birth and took leave for eight weeks, so I was assigned to shadow the student of another graduate student at my lab. I'd never felt more like an indentured servant in my life in those eight weeks while I awaited her return (many days were even spent in the dank basement centrifuge room). When she did return, things were much, much better. Except for the days in which my duties were exclusively mouse husbandry. Mice always kind of creeped me out.  

I just found out from a friend that S has recently left the lab. I can't quite shake the feelings of sadness and irresolution. I wonder why she left when the research we were doing was so promising. I think about the labor measured by hundreds of boxes of pipet tips, cell tissue dishes, primers, reagents, and gels. Part of me wonders if any of it was worth it.