More Help= More Work

I've been back from vacation for a whole week and have had like -10 minutes to read ya'll's blog posts, much less write one of my own.  The reason?  We have been flooded with summer students in the lab.

Not sure what the deal is, but in addition to our graduate student, our part-time paid student helper has gone full-time over the summer, and we have three volunteer student workers here to work in exchange for experience.  "Here to gain experience", loosely translated, means, "Never been in a lab before."

So not only do I have to teach them all about our projects and make sure they have something to do at all times, I have to teach them things like, "You CAN'T wear flip-flops in here because we spill nasty chemicals." "You CAN'T chew gum in here because the radiation safety Nazi's come around and give us demerits, even though noone in this lab has used nukes in 6 years."

It's all good in the long run, we have some very bright and willing people here (even though three of them are named "John".  We have John, New John and New-New John.  The latter is actually the oldest of the bunch, he just showed up last.  We have Johns.  Hey!  Get your mind out of the gutter!  We're not that kind of a lab. Granted, we would be if we could be.

Anyway, my blogging might be a bit sporadic this summer, because I can't seem to get that middle of the experiment time which I normally use to bug my writer friends.  I have to actually work.  WTF?