Ask me about the realities of STEM degrees and post-college job outlooks and anything else that comes to mind.
I am a Chemical Lab Tech, AMA
Sebastian Carter
Michael Jones
Normie scum fuck you
Luis Foster
>lab tech
You should have gotten a graduate degree
Zachary Garcia
Do you experiment on people?
Oliver Jones
No because Masters in Chem are seen as "not good enough for PhD" and PhD takes another 6-8 years of my life and the stipends are in the low 30ks. Fuck that, I'm making more here and it's 9-5 M-F. Being a professor would be lit though.
No, people do experiments and I give them the chemicals
Brayden Collins
Your choice. Don’t forget: you’re here forever
Brandon Gutierrez
Also setting up and doing experiments takes weeks. You spend 10 or so weeks setting up small scale reactions and then you spend another 10 weeks scaling it up and doing it so you can do it again for the next 6 years. It'd tedious and it's brain numbing.
Robert Reed
Why are you gay?
Kayden Miller
How much do you want to an hero as a result of your job?
Owen Murphy
How hard would it be for me to get some lithium aluminum hydride?
Josiah Morgan
Can you make a plastic free dildo with your skills?
Caleb Campbell
>You spend 10 or so weeks setting up small scale reactions and then you spend another 10 weeks scaling it up and doing it so you can do it again for the next 6 years.
Wow you really have no idea what grad school is.
Ethan Perry
How badly have you ever fucked up in the lab? Also, I was originally a biology major but switched to business admin. because I was presented with the opportunity to take over a sole proprietorship; how badly did I fuck up?
Jose Turner
Also, have you ever thought about synthesizing and distributing LSD?
Jeremiah Hernandez
are benchtop nmrs like picospin worth a shit? i kind of want to waste a lot of money on one.
Kevin Watson
You did not fuck up. Science is a scam
>t. chemistry phd (with most of my work in biochemistry)
Christian Russell
Am not
I don't, it's pretty comfty
I have a container in a cabinet here, and I have the power to purchase it as long as the department chairs approve it.
No
Yes, I literally did research with grad students in undergrad for a year. It sucked and was soul crushing, so I quit and worked at the stockroom instead, it's much better and less stress plus I see and play with various more chemicals and free to try any experiments at my whim.
I've had my share of fuckups. I've spilled waste solvents on my feet and done nothing but wait for them to evaporate. I've broken containers and had to clean it up before anyone had seen it. I think most recently, I accidentally spilled petri dishes with ecoli. I had to get some bleach and disinfect the entire bench.
It's not as easy as it seems. Starting materials are the real killers.
We're about to purchase one from bruker pretty soon, I've seen one demo'd at a conferenc once and it seems good for lower lever undegraduate organic courses, I wouldn't use them for research though. They're much cheaper and easier to maintain compared to a real nmr.
I agree it's a scam. All my profs keep saying to go to grad school, but it's not like it used to be. They all went in the 80s and 70s. It's shit now. But how else to get better pay and more respect? Sigh
Michael Robinson
Yeah, getting access to the precursors was the biggest deterrent for me, too (aside from also needing at least a degree in organic chemistry). I have no idea how reliable using LSA as a precursor is in the synthesis, but it seems too time-consuming to be worth it.
Christopher Moore
Well to be honest, there are people in the slums making meth with basic materials, I'm sure you don't really need the degree to do it, but you do need to know the techniques. I know LSD is light sensitive so you'd need to have darkened glassware and do some reactions in argon or nitrogen. So yeah, I'm sure that most of the supply that exists is being made in universities by ballsy grad students.
Brody Myers
>I don't, it's pretty comfty
glad to hear you are comfy. science can be pretty soul-crushing at times, especially with bad management, which relates to . Sounds like your adviser was a dick, or maybe the project just didnt lend itself well to creativity. Also, having worked in four different labs myself, undergrads typically get more of the mundane grunt work / screening.
>I accidentally spilled petri dishes with ecoli.
kek i splashed e coli in my eyes in grad school and rinsed it out in the sink before anyone could notice. activating the eye washes is a huge deal and is embarassing. thankfully laboratory e coli is attenuated, so its not actually infectious.
>But how else to get better pay and more respect?
still figuring this out myself. generally the further you get away from doing the actual science, the more you are paid. not only in R&D but also if you were to pivot into something like sales or consulting. if youre highly specialized with certain analytical equipment, becoming a salaried NMR/mass spec/HPLC tech somewhere seems comfy
Tyler Wright
meth is to lsd as a bowl of cereal is to souffle. the meth synthesis from p2p is two (easy) steps, whereas the lsd synthesis is much more involved, needing specialized reagents and equipment.
DMT is similar to LSD in that the dose is so small, but its a lot easier to make. There's a one-step synthesis from tryptamine which you can make from tryptophan, which you can buy in bulk as a supplement
Henry Martinez
user, could you weigh me out 10g of putrescine? Nevermind if the hood isn't free, do it on the bench.