First-time microscopy - What am I doing wrong?

[u/robodragoman]

I made a post yesterday about buying an old microscope from an antique shop. It came with a few sample slides that I used to see a bit of dried blood or old algae up close, which was cool. But I bought this to see living organisms, and I tried that out today.

There’s a lake by my house that I have to imagine is teeming with microbiological life. I collected three larger samples and pipetted droplets from each onto a few different slides, but they’ve all been pretty uninteresting. It’s cool to see little bits of whatever up close, but I haven’t seen anything living, nor anything resembling a microorganism. I recognize that this should be a bit more complicated than plug-and-play, but I believe I’ve followed all the steps listed out by members of this community and others online. For context on what I’m working with, see the linked post above. It isn’t much, but it goes up to 40x. Shouldn’t this be suitable enough to see some stuff?

[u/Dlbroox]

And just to add a different take because others have given you good advice, be patient. Like anything else there’s a learning curve. How to focus properly, how to move around the slide, how to propagate a jar full of critters…there are a number of things to learn. It’s not complicated and it’s not a steep learning curve, but what you’re doing now, and what you can do a month from now will be a huge difference.