Hi Kelli,
Oh dear! I've had lots of bad days when things
haven't gone right at all. Any time something like that happens, it
feels like it is the most horrible day of your life, until the next
time when something even worse happens! A couple of incidents stand
out in my mind as being my "worst day ever!"
Once, I had a
bad experience giving a talk at a large conference. I had been working
so hard to get ready during the week before the conference, that I
didn't get enough sleep and ended up getting an extremely bad cold.
When I got to the conference, I was so worn out that I could barely
walk from the hotel to the conference center. My talk was scheduled
near the beginning of the conference, but it was the very last talk of
that day, just before dinner time. I spent most of that day sleeping
in my hotel room just so my voice would be strong enough to give my
talk. I managed to get through my talk without losing my voice
completely, but then things went horribly wrong. When the session
chair asked if there were any questions about my talk, an older
scientist who I did not know shouted out that he did not agree with my
results at all - using some rather impolite language that I will not
repeat here! I tried to respond in a courteous, professional manner,
but a huge argument
got started between this scientist, one of his supporters, and a couple
of other members of the audience who were defending me. The session
chair looked like he couldn't believe that this was happening during
his session. I was pretty shocked too, but I was a bit feverish and
feeling extremely woozy from the cough syrup I had taken earlier, so
all I could do was stand there with my mouth hanging open in surprise.
After what seemed like the longest 5 minutes of my life, the session
chair regained his composure and managed to take back control of the
situation, so that everyone could leave for dinner (and I could go back
to bed).
Ugh. I've had other very bad days besides that
one, like the day my students almost electrocuted me during a lab
(ouch!), the time I accidentally broke an important piece of equipment
(fortunately, we were able to fix it), or the time when the airline
lost my crate of scientific instruments (we found them the next day).
I'd rather not go into all the details of those incidents here! The
funny thing is, no matter how bad your problems seem, there is almost
always another scientist who can tell you about the time when something
even worse happened to them. I think that sometimes we learn more from
our mistakes and the bad days than we do from the times when everything
goes according to plan. The hard times are what keeps life interesting.
In spite of all of these things that have gone wrong, I really do love my job! ;-)
Kris