Everyone's a little dumb sometimes

I felt pretty bad the other day for wasting most of someone's day calibrating my equipment, when it would have only taken half an hour or so if I had been more prepared. There was a "magic" step in my process, between "put equipment in test apparatus" and "calibration curves!". Turns out it needed a lot more elaboration than that.

Today, some other students asked me to help them calibrate their equipment, which is similar to mine. They asked a lot of hard questions, but I was prepared, since I had botched that stuff up before, and I was glad that I wasn't the only person having the same problems. I also got to share my fantastic spreadsheets that check to see if the calibration data agrees with theory or the manufacturer's specs. It's pretty cool when they ask for my opinion on things, I feel....special?

What I really like about my research stuff is that people listen to and appreciate what I say and treat me like an equal. That means scathing criticisms along with the nice things. At first I was afraid that people would be dismissive or dumb things down for me because I'm still an undergrad, but that hasn't been the case at all. Seems like a huge change from my 'real world' jobs.