NeuroDojo

Manual labor

For this I spent six years in grad school?

I was planning on getting out of the office early, when one of my colleagues walked into my office and asked if I wanted to help clear out lab space. I said, "No." It was the honest answer -- I really didn't want to move stuff. But I'm a pushover, and did it anyway.

There are several unfinished lab spaces in our building, and they're about to start construction for our two newest faculty members, Mike Persans and Chris Little. Unfortunately, as with so many empty spaces, they became magnets for unwanted junk. In the case of Chris's lab space, this was a bunch of stuffed animals and a number of huge, heavy glass cabinets on very skinny metal legs.

Whole lots of no fun to move. It took six people to handle one cabinet.

The cabinets were so tall, we couldn't get them out of the room without tipping them over. We broke one of the legs when we tipped a cabinet over, because the leg was just too flimsy to take any pressure. And we had a couple of scary moments where the cabinets started to tilt, but we caught them before they went over.

We got halfway through, and should finish clearing the spaces out tomorrow.