Learning culture shock!

That's right. Culture shock. I realized that I was experiencing a great deal of it this week (and feel all the better to have identified it).

My background learning culture: clinical procedures (including invasive ones and ones involving expensive equipment) are learned as follows: see one (if you're lucky: this is occasionally replaced by telephone instructions by a sleep-deprived senior), do one, teach one.

The other grad students in my lab's learning culture: clinical/experimental procedures (especially ones that are invasive or use expensive equipment): observe several times, repeat several times having others check your every move, get someone to re-explain/re-affirm all of it as frequently as possible.

I see a difference. Do you see a difference?

Now that I have started my trials, I have been receiving e-mails from lab mates remnding me how procedures are done or inviting me to come in to their trials to observe procedures and re-confirm with what I am doing. Coming from my background, I was rather insulted: had I been doing things wrong? did they have a problem with me? was this some passive aggressive attack upon my abilities? I even sent a rather snitty reply to one of these invites before my revelation occurred:

In the normal world, see one, do one, teach one is not necessarily how things are done. Many people have a more thorough approach which could very well be very beneficial to one's learning and one's skill-building. I was not in fact being singled out for any malicious purpose. Hmmm... Maybe I just need to chill...