One of the main differences between a successful and unsuccessful research student is that the former plans their work intricately.
It cannot be stressed too clearly: Planning = success.
You don’t want to get half way through a procedure before you realise you don’t know what you’re doing, or worse that don’t have the necessary equipment/permissions to finish it. This wastes your time and resources.
For all procedures, each step should be laid out in a document before starting the experiment, and it is helpful to have a virtual and printed copy.
Get Practical Tips- Don’t think of time spent planning as time you could spend doing additional replicates of the procedure. Planned work moves so much faster and more fluidly that you will most likely save time, and won’t just produce a heap of bad data.
- If you alter the protocol, don’t just scribble the alteration in your rough notes, but make sure the original protocol is adapted. Be sure you know which version of the protocol corresponds to which results. Otherwise, even if you don’t forget the changes entirely, you will forget whether they helped.
- If there is a protocol already written, read it through beforehand, checking you understand each step.
- Once you have a plan, don’t just follow it mindlessly. It is entirely possible you made a mistake, or something in the published protocol is not applicable to your work. Stay vigilant and make changes where necessary.
Get Wet Lab Tips
- At the start of each protocol there should be a list of things you need to do before you start such as: booking machines or rooms, turning things on, setting things up, or getting things out of the fridge or freezer so they are ready to use.
- Check you have all the reagents/equipment you need before you start, especially if they are communal, and check they have not expired.
- The best plans don’t just give qualitative information like names, but also the quantities like timings, volumes and container sizes if applicable.
- Sometimes kits come with a quick protocol. Make sure you read the full protocol first. The quick protocol is for people who already know what they are doing.
- Plan experiments as early as possible, so that if you need to order things or book things it will not cause large delays.
- Remember to factor your controls into your plans. Sometimes controls need extra equipment or reagents which you may not have on the day of the procedure if you don’t plan.
Read Personal Perspective
It is still irritating to think about all the time I wasted by forgetting to book machines or pre-warm reagents so they were ready when I needed them. My experiments would sit around waiting for people to finish, or for me to find new reagents as the ones I usually used were empty or expired. Whether these delays were responsible for bad data I will never know, but one of the main reasons planning leads to good data is that it helps you to keep the protocol as constant as possible between replicates.
