Building a lab

The lab spaces I was given when I started here reminded me of countless horror movies, where the protagonist wakes up chained to the u-bent of a toilet in a damp derelict engine room. He would strain his legs to push himself upright, only to have his feet slip under him on the greasy linoleum floor. He eyes his new surrounding with the dawning realization that he is about to die there, and maybe in 10 years or so, his bare ankle may eventually be able to slip out of the shackle. (This is how I imagine David Sedaris would write “Saw” the movie).

Over the course of several month and many helpful staff members, we managed to empty the rooms and put in some equipment that weren’t used in the war effort. There was a certain sense of second-hand nostalgia. Going through the dusted pages in a forgotten binder, seeing the specimens whose labels have faded long ago, I imagined how the actual researcher who worked on these imagined they would end up. At the end of the day, the answer was invariably indiscriminate and wholesale dumping. With some empty space available, I begin to fill them with the equipment I needed for the projects I was working on right then. This wasn’t so much a long term plan as I needed things to work on to keep my sane.

This mode of putting in the equipment and immediately using them went on for about a month or two. Then I started planning the lab furniture. In my naiveté, with the abstraction of a digital floorplan and the ease of clicking buttons to select the pieces I want, I never thought about how physically massive everything was when combined. The lab furniture that I ordered totaled around 10000 lbs (a number that had no physical meaning to me). The deliverer came with a semi-truck, that was the first indication that I went way over my head. With a bit of luck, I managed to track down the owner of a car that was inconveniently parked right in front of the loading dock (with every permission to do so). She graciously moved her SUV and the driver did about 20 back and forth to park the rear end of the semi flush with the dock. The front of the semi was undocked and parked nearby.

By this point, I was not looking forward to seeing what was inside the container… With an air of formality, I cut the plastic tag that locked the container and saw a near-endless rows of what looked like coffins (those were the cabinets facing down). There was no delivery or installation contract but the driver was nice enough to help me and my students move all the packed pieces onto the loading dock. As one does when facing such things, we moved them one at a time, and soon enough the entire docking lock was full. Covered in dirt and grease, and a couple of cuts on my arms, I went and taught a lecture on truss optimization.

Me and my very very helpful research assistants spent part of every day of this week moving things from the loading dock into the lab spaces. With the help of two pallet jacks, and a lot of muscle power, we spent the first day physically moving as much as we can into the rooms. These lab benches were monstrously heavy. The second day, we moved the rest in, and righted the vertical cabinets. The third day we unpacked everything and righted all the tables. Moved most into their correct position. The last day, we set everything right. I then spent the next week putting up the shelves and electric outlets. The lab was coming together, and I started to do experiments to get some data for the proposals I was writing.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired those days. Not the time I pulled an all-nighter then another one, not the time I hiked up a Swiss mountain for 10 hours straight, not when I interviewed for a position until 2am in the morning. Because of shear coincidence and stupidity, we were also trying to buy our first house at the same time. (MacOS’s photo app conveniently reminded me that I went on a house viewing the week after the above.) I was so tired that I broke down and cried out of spontaneity. That was a first in my recent memory. This story could serve as a metaphor, for better or worse. Things may seem insurmountable but with some help, we can get them done. The mental stress accumulated bit by bit.