It was the first time to take a look at the labs in America. Dr. Jason, my Chinese student’s mentor, showed me around and gave me a few regulations for the labs in America.
Wow, those were so strict and complicated compared to the labs in China, such things as ‘you should wear the correct type of rubber gloves before using an exact reagent’, for I had only known one type before! Additionally, ‘Everybody must put waste liquid except water into his or her own trash bottle and all of the bottles including public ones used to collect waste solid should be correctly labelled’, ‘The flammable reagents must be separated from others and gathered and stored in the special spaces’ and ‘No organic solvents are allowed to be poured into the drains even if they are in tiny amounts’, these phrases really shocked me for I had never seen or heard of them before. We do not have private trash bottles, and just put them into different bottles based on the properties of the reagents like acid, base, halogen-bearing and nonhalogen-bearing. And we do not separate reagents when we put them in storage. What’s more, we usually throw the small amount of less poisonous waste solvents (such as acetone in an amount of 3ml) into the drains for we think it’s not a big deal!
It was amazing when I caught my first glimpse at the labs here after finding that many bottles as small as your fingers and syringes were thrown away once they had been used. We usually clean these things for reuse in the labs in China! Finally, I came to understand that it was America! Yeah, American people do not lack money, what is more precious for them is time and efficiency!
At last, it almost became a truth to me that people in America were so cautious that the regulations related to health were so strict and popular among students here. But I soon gave it up. What changed my mind was that I had never seen anyone except me wearing the lab coat even till now when I am seated in front of my laptop and keeping my lost previous diary from the concealed memories. In China, people working in the labs except for some physical ones where you can seldom catch organic reagents in sight always put the lab coat on as long as we decide to step into the lab even in the situations that we only stay for half an hour, for no one will be delighted when some poisonous or colorful spots appeared on our clothes. Maybe people here wash their clothes everyday but that really hard and time-pressured for people in China.
Later on, Dr. Jason taught me how to use a few devices which I had never seen before. It seemed not so difficult to grasp the instructions. What fun it was to study and do it myself! I was very excited and eager to start my life in Kopelman’s lab after a whole day of watching and learning!
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