complicated simplicity

It’s the time to bitch about the bloody project again. Not sure to cry or laugh, the reaction didn’t work, again. We had high hopes for this reaction, and I spend the whole of the last week working it up and making all the precursors to reaction grade purity. I have never been so meticulous in working up the precursors, but a lot of the project was riding on the success of this.

Prof was cursing and swearing when I showed him the results. It was 2 weeks work down the drain, 2 weeks of 12 hour days. First time I saw him that worked up. I knew he was worried for me because he knew I had no results to publish, and he held this reaction back thinking it would work nicely. Guess it backfired. I seemed much less worried than I should be. The failure of this also set-back my whole research group because we took it for granted this set of reactions was fool-proof. I just proved it otherwise. Prof called an emergency group meeting later this afternoon to discuss the implications and how my group would have to rework many reactions and go back to the drawing board.

I proud that my work detailed a flaw in the research and all the publications riding on this, but I still have no publishable results 7 weeks in. I’m so sick of research.