My undergraduate thesis project was about detecting lungworm DNA in muskox poop. Lungworms are a type of parasitic worm that can reach fairly absurd lengths, so the project was pretty gross (in a fun way) all around. To test various methods, I needed some lungworms to use as controls, so my collaborators packed some in ice, and sent them to me from the other side of the country. Unfortunately, Canada Post was not ready to handle the task...the package arrived completely melted, thoroughly soggy, and containing some very decomposed worm bits. I maybe should have opted for the express shipping.
Updated: Apr 25, 2022
There are those days when you're doing your data collection and after staring at yet another bone for forever trying to discern if the weird thing you are looking at is in fact the weird thing you trying to study that the questions start coming.
Is your data is good or is going to be a mess? Is it actually going to tell you about what you are hoping to study? You did the research, the foundation is there? But this feels like a mess? What is this even for? Is any of this going to work?
And then that existential crisis starts to slowly rise and hit you like the THX intro whose sole purpose seems to be to deafen you before the movie actually starts.
Not all research samples "live" in a lab. Sometimes they need to be transported from where they are being stored to where you will be doing your data collection.
Sometimes older European buildings do not have elevators.
Sometimes labs are located on the 3rd floor of older European buildings with no elevators.
Sometimes you and your host/colleague have to carry 40+ boxes of archaeological remains that still need to be cleaned and have various amounts of heavy dirt in them up 3 flights of stairs to the lab in an older European building with no elevator.
And sometimes you just have to hope that your host isn't deeply regretting their decision to allow you to do research at their facilities.