Crusades for saving Grant Money?

[Julia Frugoli]

All of this hits home for me-I come from an 'always on the edge of 
running out of grant money" lab and am collaborating in a "well funded" 
lab.  I have to admit, coming from one background into the other that 
some kits are worth their weight in gold.  Some are simply a waste of 
gold.  

My husband is an untenured, low-budget faculty member at another 
institution, and I rinse those Falcon tubes, save those pipet tip boxes, 
cart home the expired film, etc to keep him in business.  I console 
myself with the fact that the skills I learned in the low-buget lab 
(making my own reagents, recycling materials) are probably more 
important in today's job market than we'd like to believe (after all-how 
are you going to bridge the time between the end of start up funds and 
that first grant?  With today's funding situation, that time may be 
getting longer.)

I see a lot of waste, but it seems to be concentrated around one or two 
lab members who are basically lazy.  These people come to a well funded 
lab because they couldn't survive anywhere else.  There are other lab 
members who are incredibly productive because of the resources at their 
disposal.  I think it's an overgeneralization to paint all big money 
labs as a waste of resources, but I agree that the temptation to "pay to 
have it done" gets greater as the lab largesse increases.

This is true of households as well-I know families of 5 that could live 
off what some couples pay for monthly entertainment (spoken as a poor 
graduate student :) )
Julia Frugoli
Dartmouth College

visiting grad student at
Texas A&M University
Department of Biological Sciences
College Station, TX 77843
409-845-0663
FAX 409-847-8805

"Evil is best defined as militant ignorance."
																										Dr. M. Scott Peck