Blame

Today I learned something. I can't go into too much detail, however I submitted a rather large sample to a facility for DNA sequencing. Now, when I got the results I was a bit surprised to find that every single part of my sample had failed. How could this of happened when I was sure that I had done everything correctly. I spoke with a friend about the situation and they suspected that something went wrong on the facility's end. So, I went to go find more information out. Upon speaking with them I came to find that there was a miscommunication somewhere and they had run the samples using the wrong settings, but before I ran to submit another plate, I requested that they re-run two of the samples with the proper settings to verify that the samples would work. They did as I requested and when I received the results I was once again surprised to find that although the DNA sequencing had worked, there was nothing but junk in the resulting sequences. It had failed. Now here is where things get tricky. I went to go speak with the facility and found some inconsistencies with their numbers. Thus later I was going to simply try and get the cost of the experiment refunded since it seemed that they messed up. I went to go speak with my PI and was surprised yet again by their response. They pointed out that I had never actually checked to ensure that the process would work in the first place, and thus it was not only possible, but likely, that something had gone wrong on my end. They also pointed out that, while human, it was not right nor logical to place the blame on the facilities as it is unlikely they made a mistake since they do what they do for a living. Not only that, but had they done the correct protocol, I would've simply received junk back anyways. Clearly, there is something that went wrong on my end. My mistake cost about $200, and my PI wasn't super happy about it, however they pointed out that it is vitally important that I learn everything I can from this mistake. And so I've thought about it a bit, and in truth I'll probably think about this for some time and take as much as I can away from it, and I've learned the importance of common sense first and foremost. I'd like to think that I'm good about not being rash, but in this case the opposite was disturbingly true.
Be logical. That's what I've taken from this. Break things down. Understand how everything goes together and deduce where the problem may lie.
Think ahead. Plan ahead, and plan for what might happen in the future. More importantly, determine how I will prove things. I honestly should've have ran a small sample first to make sure the process worked and as a control for comparison.
Think on the grander scope.
Learn everything you can from a failure, don't let it happen again.
Failure can be acceptable, so long as you learn from it.

These are all things that began to flood my mind. It has clearly been too long since I've self-reflected and now I've suffered the consequences. From here on, I'll do my best to do better and not be so rash.

-Ken