Is it common?

[catlover]

Ah,I have my training over a month LC/MSMS.
I guess I am really familiar with the software but still have no sense of how to optimize it.
I doubt if I am soooo stupid since many of my classmate said it should be easy to finish the
project.
I would like to know if any of you also feel that way at th beginng and how you get through it.
Anyways, here is very great forum, everyone is so nice. I feel happy to come here~

[MaryCarson]

You aren't stupid, and you aren't alone. One can spend a career learning how to get the best performance out of an instrument. However, hopefully you have a mentor back in your lab that you can work with daily for a while so you can soon routinely get a "good enough" performance out of your instrument.

[James_Ball]

Definitely not stupid! I find that the best way to learn is to simply start changing setting and see what they do with my samples and my equipment. It is how I learned to actually tune our GC/MS many years ago and is why every time an autotune fails to meet criteria people always come and ask me to fix it

If you have the time, just make adjustments and make notes of what happens, best way to figure out how it all works together.

[catlover]

Thank you for response.
I also think practicing is the best and the quickest way for learn how to optimize an instrument.
Maybe LC/MSMS is not sensitive to the samples my adviser given to me (PAHs), and after trying other chemicals,
I feel ease to play with instruments
I will try my best because now I have a lovely and the best forum!!!

[James_Ball]

Thank you for response.
I also think practicing is the best and the quickest way for learn how to optimize an instrument.
Maybe LC/MSMS is not sensitive to the samples my adviser given to me (PAHs), and after trying other chemicals,
I feel ease to play with instruments
I will try my best because now I have a lovely and the best forum!!!

Oh, PAHs are terrible on LC/MS unless you have a PhotoSpray source. You need the UV to ionize PAHs effectively, they respond poorly when using ESI or APCI alone.