So a couple days ago… I returned to work in the TC room. It was kind of strange to be back because I had not done any tissue culture work in… quite a while and I was kind of nervous.
I have a propensity to make silly mistakes (I have been told that it’s probably because I am always in a hurry), and I desperately wanted to do well in my return to tissue culture work.
So I made my media with no major hitches. I thawed my cells. I plated my cells, and I put them in the incubator.
It was quite satisfying and in my head I was like “Oh yes. I CAN do this. Boo-yah.”
And then came the e-mail.
Hi Lillian,
R found your plates in the incubator (#2) which has been disconnected.
She moved them to them to the top incubator.
I just about died.
It turns out that I did everything right EXCEPT put the cells in a functioning incubator.
Lesson Learned: Make sure the incubator is actually ON…
