u/MysteriousPenny

I posted here about a month ago about struggling badly in wet lab and wanting to quit. Since then, my PI has spent a lot of time shadowing me to troubleshoot why my cells keep dying, and he says my technique looks fine. We cannot find what's going wrong. I even wrote up a very specific step by step of what I do when I split and plate and the PI read through it and found nothing concerning or missing.

The issue is that my cells die very inconsistently post-split/plate. They do not attach, but there's no contamination. Media is warmed, trypsin is timed, vented flasks, so I don't see how it could be a temperature, trypsin, or ventilation issue. Sometimes they’re perfectly fine, other times they die the next day. It’s become especially frequent recently.

Part of why I’m stressed is the lab environment. The person who originally trained me has openly disliked me since I started. During training she would yell at me, told me to lie to the PI about getting hands-on practice, and made comments calling me ugly/boring in front of other lab members. Later, my PI put me on her project, which she clearly did not want me on. She used to regularly threaten that if I made mistakes or slowed things down she’d ask the PI to remove me.

What’s making me spiral a bit is that my issues became dramatically worse after joining this project. I had mistakes before, but not constant post-split death like this. Also, every time I work with someone else present the cells survive. The one time someone stayed late and watched me without anyone else knowing, they died the next day despite him saying my technique looked completely normal. The girl who trained me has also texted me out of the blue before asking whether or not someone worked with me on days I split. I'm honestly not doing anything different when I work alongside someone versus when I work alone.

I also spoke to a former lab member who said the lab used to be extremely toxic and that there were past issues with people interfering with others’ experiments.

I know this sounds paranoid, and I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but I genuinely feel like I’m going crazy trying to figure out whether this is a technical issue I’m somehow missing or if the environment is making me overthink everything. What would you do in this situation?

I have suspicion someone is sabotaging some work of mine to get me fired. I'd like to set up a hidden camera, but the problem is it's a shared lab workspace. I need recommendations for a hidden camera disguised as something really innocuous. Pens, wall chargers, and things like that are good - anything people aren't likely to touch to take. Stuff like a water bottle or decor won't work.

I'd ideally like it to be something that will save the footage on the camera itself, but where I could also look at a live view since I need to see a very specific area clearly. Sound isn't necessary.

Planning on applying during the 2027 cycle. If I were to get in, I would have taken 4 gap years by the time I matriculate (3 at the time of application).

I've always struggled with getting consistent nonclinical volunteer hours.

I'm going to try and grind out a lot of hours from here until December. How many should I aim for total? I have about 150 split across three different activities. But I know with each gap year, the expected number of hours increases. I would ideally like to get enough to be competitive, not just avoid getting screened out.