Most worthwhile research is about the mundane. One of the first research projects I did required painstakingly adjusting and modifying conditions to the point that I could actually start collecting data. That process took weeks, but the day it worked was insanely satisfying. In the process I became a master at making small incremental changes, recording them, and learning exactly what didn't work. Years later, as a computational scientist, the process was much the same, except that there were no pipettes and beakers involved.

Any worthwhile work I have ever done has mostly been about grunt work. Along the way there have been cool things (after all Leno made fun of our research [1] once) and insanely fun times. I may not be in research now, but every day I apply the lessons learned from patiently repeating and iterating.

1. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=723226...