1st year PhD student making stupid mistakes
I'm a first year PhD student 3 months into my new lab, half of that was a rotation in the lab. I feel like such a monumental dumbass.
I keep making stupid mistakes that I've never made before. Last week I *almost* broke an expensive piece of equipment and ruined an experiment, and yesterday I added the wrong buffer to my stock solution. My PI is a very friendly/easygoing person who likes to train students herself - but doesn't really have the time to do so. Instructions tend to be unclear, she runs off to complete other obligations between steps in protocols, and yet she is adamant that she should be the one training incoming lab members.
I feel like the biggest reason for my mistakes is my own stress/being in an unfamiliar environment/wanting to impress her. But also feeling rushed is definitely making things harder, since she always has somewhere to be. When I start trying to speed through a protocol - I start making mistakes. She is very patient, but I can tell that she gets antsy when time is running low.
I feel like my PI's expectations keep changing. Sometimes she wants me to just jump in and do things, other times she wants more preparation. Sometimes she's fine with me asking endless clarification questions, sometimes she seems annoyed with my checking in/asking for reassurance on steps of a protocol, I have a hard time not taking this personally. I always feel so guilty when she has tons of meetings, but still has to find time to show me something and she ends up staying late.
I know that a lot of these things are things I need to work on, but I'm not sure how to navigate everything, and how to stop feeling like such an idiot. Even though I know I am doing many of these things for the first or second time, I feel like the mistakes I'm making are mostly a result of me being nervous/rushing. Does anyone have any tips on how to chill out and slow down?