Training a new undergrad

oye!
I'm at the lab and I'm taking a break from some excell spread sheets. I trained an undergrad to help crunch some of the numbers so it would go faster, and tonight I was going through and double checking everything to make sure it was ok. The first part was, but about halfway through he started trying this shortcut of copying the whole page and then autosorting and taking the mean of selected items. Unfortunetly that meant the formula not only included a whole column of means but oodles of numbers inbetween the means. I showed him each thing step by step and he did it for about 10 animals but then modified it by a "shortcut" I guess, or he forgot what he was doing...so I had to go into every animals file and redo all the grand means again! aye aye aye! What a pain, but at least now I'm somewhat up to date. I left a note for him telling not to do anymore grand means till he talked to me! I don't want to this all over again with the other animal files that are left!

I know when you start in a lab there is a lot to learn, but jeepers if you are begininng wouldn't you try to do everything correctly? I sent him to one of our supply stores, and before he left I showed him an example of what to get, yet he still came back w/ two wrong items. I mean how hard is that? Here is a 3D object, please go get two more identical to it! I guess I will be double checking all of his work that I assign him. Isn't the point of having other people in the lab to help cut down on time? Our only super competent undergrad is graduating in the spring, I don't know what we will do with out her! I thought this guy could maybe take over for some of her responsibilities but now I'm not so sure.....

I TA'd my other two sections today and this week is an intro to neuroanatomy. I brought in real sheep brains, some sliced others whole, so they could start to identify the gross antamical structures they are learning about, but only a few students really seemed interested. It doesn't get that much more exciting in this class, I mean hands on brain is about the best, so since they were less then enthused about today, I'm not sure they will enjoy the rest of the semester. I know I'm biased because I study the brain, but how can you think it is boring! It is your brian that allows you do do everything, think, breath, dream, move, remember, yet most of the time you take it for granted. How can you not be interested at least a little that wow, I have a hippocampus and it does X and it looks like X and it is here and wow a sheep, and a rat has one too?! neato! ok a simplification but sometimes I wish the undergrad population would be less zombie like here! (ok they are not all like that but I hope I can find the energy to motivate a few to be more engaged in the material!

and it is only monday... may the rest of the week go quickly!