Run and Tumble

Part of the reason I’m taking a class is to find out how I like the reality of microbiology. It is easy to think of microscopy as pretty simple, especially if you’re only used to dissecting scopes or the 200x deals from middle school science class: Place slide, coarse focus on low magnification, switch to high magnification, fine focus, adjust the iris a bit, et voila.

That’s theory.

Reality is more like:
Place slide. Scan. Scan. Scan. There’s somethi…no wait, that’s just the the last student’s fingerprint. Ok, scan some more. Found something. Move to 40x, since this is the scope is community property it’s only parcentered-ish, move the stage a bit, ok switch to 100x. Ugh, someone put the high and dry through the oil. No amount of lens paper is gonna help. Deep breath, move on to the oil immersion step. Get ready to look through the ocular, you’ve read about this, you’ve seen micrographs of this, BEHOLD THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ANIMACULES, but wait… it’s kinda wavery, nobody said it’d be wavery. And stuff’s out of the fov. Damn. Ok, just back up a bit. But now the slide’s covered in oil and you’ve gotta start from basically the beginning. Repeat.

Microscopy is a learned skill, and I’ll get better at it with practice. Friends much more experienced than myself agree, so I don’t think it’s just a comfortable lie. They also agree that oil immersion is definitely a pita. I’m going to be practicing during the first open lab.

Edit: After cooling off a bit, I realize a bunch of my problem was just sheer nervousness and excitement at being about to see real live dead bugs. I made myself feel, through no fault of the prof or the class, really rushed, so I made mistakes and didn’t stop to ask for help. I’ve also heard that other students felt they did poorly.

Also, in my frustration, I neglected to mention that I did get some 1000x magnifications working, and when that happened, things were awesome.