With 2012 officially here we're all making resolutions. I've pledged to eat breakfest out less (bagel and cream cheese is so good!) and to blog at least once a month (sorry I've been scarce!) I think now is also a great time to make some New Year's Resolutions for the lab too. Here's what I have planned, if you have some more in mind leave them in the comments!

Safety First! With the recent news out of UCLA bringing up the tradgedy a few years ago, safety is on my mind again. We had an accident a few months back in our lab too- luckily nothing nearly as bad- so it can happen to anyone. I'm taking this time to reaffrim my policy of safety goggles and gloves any time I'm in any lab or clean room. In addition, any time I'm in a wet lab I'll wear my lab coat. It doesn't matter how quick I'll be in and out, or how trivial something is, you never know when something can go wrong, and unforunately you never know what someone else in the lab is doing, or how safe they are. I also want to be more proactive and ask everyone else around me to wear the same PPE so hopefully they get in the habit too. Finally, whenever I'm doing science outreach I want to make sure I'm setting a good example to the kids, no matter how not dangerous the demonstration might be.

READ! One of my resolutions is to read more. I have a seperate Google Reader set up that pulls the new papers from all the journals I'm remotely interested in. I'm pretty good about going through and "starring" the ones I might be interested in, but I'm terrible about going back and reading them. In fact, I usually only REALLY read a paper unless I'm doing a literature search, trying a new experiment, getting ready for journal club, or someone sends me one. My resolution is to set aside time for reading 5 papers a week. Not only do I know it will help my knowledge of the field(s) but it will hopefully give me more fodder for blogging!

WRITE! The other thing (OK, one of the things) I've been slacking on is my lab notebook. I'm usually really good about writing details about my experiments and results when I get something to work, but I need to do better about documenting when things don't work. It seems like a waste of time and energy, but I've realized recently knowing exactly what I've tried before- even if it didn't work- can be very helpful. My resolution is to set aside the last 30 minutes or so of each day to write what I've done in the lab- almost like a lab diary.

Those are my big three resolutions for the lab for 2012, what are your's?

(Preview image by Ventrilock)