Sewing and lifestyle blog of a wannabe "full-time vixen"

For Science!

If you’ve ever wondered what I actually did at my old job in the lab…well here’s a bonus blog post to show and tell! So today I went to visit my old workplace, the Psychobiological Determinants of Health Lab at UBC (University of British Columbia). The lab is sadly closing down at the end of June and moving to Chicago. My aim today was to bring peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for my former co-workers in exchange for taking silly photos! Silly photos of what? Of me with my hair curled and all done up in vintage style. My former co-worker (and close friend I still hang out with) Adam helped me take photos. Thanks also to my wetlab manager Gaye for letting me take photos.

You will notice that the lab is a very unglamourous place, not at all like CSI or in other TV shows or movies. This is just a wee little lab tucked away at the top of the Kenny Psychology building. We actually take up multiple floors in an inefficient way – our offices and labs are spread out so we have to go up and down quite a bit around the building. Yes, those floor tiles are missing in the background. They’ve been missing ever since I used to work there! Still haven’t been replaced.

This is one of two biosafety cabinets that I used to work in. The lab draws blood samples from the participants in our research projects…so someone’s got to deal with them! The cabinet is designed to protect me AND the blood or other things we work with. Everything has to be kept sterile. We achieve this by autoclaving everything and/or wiping everything down with a 75% mixture of ethanol and water. The lab always smells like vodka in the morning.

Gotta keep my pens in place!

Like I said, it’s sad to hear the lab is closing and moving. I worked here for about three years — started during the summer right after I graduated from high school. I managed to win a paid internship to work in a research laboratory! I’ll miss the ol’ place, and I still miss working with pipettes and centrifuges, doing assays on human blood like extracting DNA, RNA, or running ELISAs (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay).

It’s not the most glamourous looking lab or backdrop for a photoshoot…but I’m so glad I have this memento with me forever now. Maybe one day I’ll work in a lab again.

P.S. The dress was sewn by me and the shoes are from Ruche!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Leave a reply

CommentLuv badge