That was useful. I tried to compare it to my own attempts to learn a new technique in microscopy and saw I had not formalized exceptions (though I still would be at a loss as to how do it, even having gained some experience). It went Luke this:
Goals: study mycorrhiza, 1) in roots, 2) in the surrounding soil.
2) quickly was shown to be unfeasible (too many stages in sample preparations that require access to equipment like a centrifuge, which is for me ridiculously inconvenient / nobody here available to check the end result / people who do it in earnest use DNA analysis for species identification, which is another skill I don’t possess and requires primers that cost a lot /...), so I concentrated on 1). In part, I did it in the hope that after I have a couple publications on the topic, I can find collaborators to whom I’d be able to outsource 2) - an analogue of your Google translate:)
Then, I chose the ways of preparing roots to practice (since there are about 10 stains commonly used and they don’t give the same results). Those were my ‘archetypes’, as I saw them initially. However, when I saw my first slides under the microscope, I understood that I did not even cut the roots evenly enough (and so some of them just didn’t have the cortex where the fungi should have been) and did not place the roots in clear parallels on the slide (they overlapped, etc.) The cutting is done the same way before any kind of staining, andthe placing—the same way after it.
So I sucked it up (incidentally, 10% w/v NaOH seems much worse on your nose than KOH when you make it outside a hood) and chugged out several dozen well-packed never-mind-staining slides. This part was easiest to self-correct. Then I came back to my ‘archetypes’ - Ink after Vierheilig et al., Trypan blue and acid Fuchsin, and now creep towards good staining quality.
There are ‘external forces I cannot control’ that limit my ability to make preparations, and I do have a journal of mistakes, but other than that, I do not keep track of things. Your model is much more rigorous, and (to me) seems to assume quick feedback (or an iron discipline, or both:) I don’t think I could serenely wait for hours before I knew what to correct if I used such approach.
That was useful. I tried to compare it to my own attempts to learn a new technique in microscopy and saw I had not formalized exceptions (though I still would be at a loss as to how do it, even having gained some experience). It went Luke this:
Goals: study mycorrhiza, 1) in roots, 2) in the surrounding soil. 2) quickly was shown to be unfeasible (too many stages in sample preparations that require access to equipment like a centrifuge, which is for me ridiculously inconvenient / nobody here available to check the end result / people who do it in earnest use DNA analysis for species identification, which is another skill I don’t possess and requires primers that cost a lot /...), so I concentrated on 1). In part, I did it in the hope that after I have a couple publications on the topic, I can find collaborators to whom I’d be able to outsource 2) - an analogue of your Google translate:)
Then, I chose the ways of preparing roots to practice (since there are about 10 stains commonly used and they don’t give the same results). Those were my ‘archetypes’, as I saw them initially. However, when I saw my first slides under the microscope, I understood that I did not even cut the roots evenly enough (and so some of them just didn’t have the cortex where the fungi should have been) and did not place the roots in clear parallels on the slide (they overlapped, etc.) The cutting is done the same way before any kind of staining, andthe placing—the same way after it.
So I sucked it up (incidentally, 10% w/v NaOH seems much worse on your nose than KOH when you make it outside a hood) and chugged out several dozen well-packed never-mind-staining slides. This part was easiest to self-correct. Then I came back to my ‘archetypes’ - Ink after Vierheilig et al., Trypan blue and acid Fuchsin, and now creep towards good staining quality.
There are ‘external forces I cannot control’ that limit my ability to make preparations, and I do have a journal of mistakes, but other than that, I do not keep track of things. Your model is much more rigorous, and (to me) seems to assume quick feedback (or an iron discipline, or both:) I don’t think I could serenely wait for hours before I knew what to correct if I used such approach.