Today, I will ruminate on an issue even your favorite D-List Monktress struggles with… taking your experiments personally. As in, all bad results are a personal affront to your abilities as a researcher, and ever goof is proof that you should just cut your losses and become a magician’s assistant.

Unfortunately, failure is an integral part of the scientific process. Even more unfortunately, I do not handle long-term failure well AT ALL. It had gotten to the point I would intentionally schedule experiments in the dead of night when there were no witnesses to my infantile rages. The final result was I was sleep-deprived, I was stressed, and my fists looked like a bare-knuckle boxer’s from my punching walls, tables, and various other hard surfaces.

 
Figure 1: I wish I could Mangekyo Sharingan my results sometimes

Line break karate chop!

Clearly something had to change, because your D-List Monktress does not have an adamantium endoskeleton and walls are really fucking hard. So I ran around trying to find something that would help detach me from the outcome of my work. And I finally figured out two things (neither of which are yoga or deep breathing): exercise, and telling myself it wasn’t my fault.

Exercise became a reward system for me, and was a constructive way to deal with frustration. It became some sort of physiological side experiment in contrast to my thesis project, hey my srs business experiment didn’t work but I totally picked up heavier shit than I did the day before! The euphoria of your body being able to do things it wasn’t able to before can help buoy you through shit data. And exercise apparently makes you less likely to die and stuff, so it’s a win-win situation.

In addition to exercise was my cheesy mantra that it wasn’t my fault. All I could do was prepare everything to the best of my ability, and whatever happened, happened. This of course sounds fantastic in theory but usually goes to shit when you are in the weeds trying to get through an epicfail experiment. There are still times when I literally need to get up, walk away for a moment and repeat my mantra, before coming back to the task at hand.

I am certainly not perfect, but I no longer swear for several minutes at a time when something goes awry, nor do I punch hard surfaces*.  Hopefully my tale shall make my fellow data ragers feel not so alone, and maybe get some tips on how to get over that shit. Any of my minions and muffins have stories and/or advice to share?