After 10 years working in labs, I have amassed a vast amount of useless knowledge. Most of it was vital to know at the time I learned it, but became irrelevant at a distressingly fast rate. Consider, for instance, the pride that I currently take in my manual skill at using a 96-prong replicator to produce perfectly formed yeast colonies on a nitrocellulose membrane. This process requires a certain lightness of touch and a steady hand, as well as knowledge of how to best achieve consistent mixing of the source yeast culture. I need these skills to do the experiments I said I would do in my fellowship applications. However, the job could be performed much better by a robot, and typically is performed by robots in every lab that can access one. In about six months time, our lab will have access to such a robot, but that is way too late for me. So, here I am, with highly technical, but already redundant skills.
Even worse, since it has become clear that there is, in fact, no tenure track faculty position waiting for me, it seems likely that even that part of my lab-lore that is still worth knowing will be useless to me within the next few years. Boo.
Useless knowledge: If you make the tape labels on these tubes too small, they have a tendency to peel off in the shaker.
