Why a spider is the perfect lab- and officemate

Every academic lab that grows a certain size seems to collect the same few groups of people, but our lab contains a very unique personality you will not quickly encounter anywhere else.

In most academic labs, you will find all kinds of unique personalities, that can nevertheless be neatly categorized in a limited number of groups. People tend to drop in and out of these groups during their careers:

• Young, hopeful PhD students that want to change the world
• Senior PhD students contemplating their life choices
• Postdocs that contemplate the same choices but with more intensity
• Postdocs openly saying academia sucks but are still around for unclear reasons
• Happy technicians
• Sad technicians
• Clueless BSc/MSc students talking slightly too much
• That person that starts their days at 2 PM. No-one knows when they go home exactly.
• That person that disappears for suspiciously long stretches of time. A secret nap room is suspected, but never confirmed.

All of these (and more) are also present among my colleagues at the Walther lab ¹⁾.

However, there is one colleague that seems to be unique to our lab: Miss Indigo. Miss Indigo takes things slow. She spends her day napping, eating, drinking and napping again. Sometimes she does some knitting, and she likes to take walks when the office is quit at night or in the morning.

Indigo checking what all that noise is about

She uses the desk just behind me, and if she wasn't such a cutie, I would hardly notice she's there. I love watching here eat lunch, or take a drink.

Every 4-6 months, she suddenly becomes very gloomy: she refuses to eat, and does not want to leave her house for a few weeks! But after this grumpiness, she emerges from her house with a shiny new suit, in almost unrecognizable form: it was all worth it.

An old discarded suit

But Indigo is more than a pretty face. She is a great listener. She is maybe not the most experienced member of our team, but sometimes this is exactly what you need - sometimes it helps to be forced to explain the basics before moving on to more complicated things. Yes - she is a bit quit, but the power of listening cannot be overstated. Also, don't underestimate her experience - she has spent more time in the lab then many: it is her home after all.

Are you jealous? You should be. If you want to look at Indigo some more, you can follow her on her Instagram here. Or you can buy your own lab-mate. But be aware: a significant portion of your life will need to be spent hanging around bins catching flies to feed your new best friend.

Indigo and me, enjoying office life to the fullest