Whoops, I Forgot! Now What?

Imagine if you will: you and your team of researchers prepare for your sampling trip. You check your list once, you check it twice, and you're positive that you are ready to go! But once you get to your sampling location, you realize that you forgot ONE pair of tweezers! What are you to do? Do you pack up everything, drive back to base, retrieve the tweezers, and then return a while later? What a lot of time wasted for one tiny pair of tweezers. In some cases, your study might take you hours away from the base, making a return trip functionally impossible. Do you completely give up and lose the day? You could be spending thousands of dollars in grant money on your study, and wasting an entire sampling day could be costly. 

This scenario isn't hypothetical: during my last sampling trip, I remembered to pack everything...except for the tweezers. While it seems like a small inconvenience, it became a large nuisance when it came time to remove the saturated filters from their small, snug apparatus (pictured below). Luckily my colleague, Barbara Albrecht, has been in situations like this before and had several ideas. First, we tried to use small twigs as a makeshift pair of tweezers, but the only sticks sturdy enough to move the filters were too rough and damaged the filters. Then Barbara found a Capri-Sun straw in the sand. After thoroughly rinsing the straw, we were able to use the straw to gently transfer the filter from its apparatus to our centrifuge tube. We kept the straw, which now permanently lives in our supply carrier as the "backup tweezers."

Pictured: Straw found on Bruce Beach with
 filter apparatus and syringe.
By Barbara Albrecht | February 22, 2021

This is not an isolated case; almost every researcher I've talked to has at least one story about a time they had to improvise or jerry-rig tools because they broke or someone left them behind.  In cases such as these, a researcher must be adaptable and willing to look for solutions. In the end, what feels like a disaster at the time usually into a tiny note on a research paper or report and a funny story to tell at parties. Every study will have setbacks, and a skilled researcher must try to overcome them rather than be overwhelmed by them. This is especially true in fieldwork, where often one is not in close proximity to extra supplies. Although I made a mistake this week, the experience reinforced two key lessons:

1. Adaptability and improvisation are essential skills for scientific research

2. Take inspiration from Old Saint Nick: make a list, then check it TWICE.





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