Simply Not Simple

Thank goodness I know how to stand up for myself!

Research is a very male dominated world.  Most professor/researcher type people are men by a vast majority.  As a matter of fact I think there are only two research assistants where I work that are female (and one of them is me!)  I'm not sure what it is about this profession that makes it so "masculine".  Only one professor/researcher in my department is a female.  Suffice it to say that it's a darn good thing that I learned early in life to always stand up for myself and never back down.  It's how I survive in this environment.  Yesterday there was an issue about my not attending one of my classes.  I was told it was an online class when I enrolled,  it wasn't until two weeks ago that I even knew the class actually met one day a week.  Since then I was home sick on both days.  I have been trying to get the course documents, bugging the secretaries nearly daily.  I finally sent another email to the instructor Monday and was broadsided when I got to work yesterday.

My boss asked me why I wasn't going to class   I forwarded him the email from the instructor about where the documents were kept, etc, etc and told him that I had specifically talked to that instructor when I enrolled and he told me we weren't meeting online. He never told me it was not even an online class.  Surely he should have picked that up? My boss then told me to go talk to the graduate advisor or whatever his title is because he is the one who was talking to my boss about it earlier that morning.  Let's just say the "advisor" is not my favorite person and he often will come after me for things someone else has done, mistaking me for various other grad students.  I told him the situation, and he said oh that's fine just go explain it to the instructor.  I then went to the secretary and she gave me the book.  She even told me the instructor thought he had left copies with her, and since he hadn't that's why I got griped out.  They thought I was ignoring the class. The instructor also teaches at the community college I teach at and last year he decided not to teach a class and let everyone know just 2 days before the class started.  Who took over that class when they had never taught it before and only had 2 days to write a syllabus and look over the materials they would be teaching?  Yep, that's right... ME!  So it was quite hypocritical for him to complain about me, although he doesn't know I'm the one who took over the class for him. But really, shouldn't you live up to your own standards?  Everything is fine and straightened out now, but it really does get tiring being griped at.  Oh well, at least no harm was done. 

And for today, here is a picture of dust that was taken by a scanning electron microscope and then colorized.  Kind of scary, isn't it?

An experiment gone awry, and the reason my job is scary

I've mentioned my hatred for all things chemical before.  (Oooh that SO works on many levels, think about it!)  One of the reasons for this hatred is organic chemistry.  I had to take 4 semesters of chemistry as part of the med school minimum requirements.  I actually decided to not persue the medical school path because I hated chemistry THAT much.  My love for all things medical won out over my loathing of organic chemistry, so my last semester of school was spent not understanding organic chem II.  During one particularly memorable experiment I managed to burn myself with acid.  I have no clue what we were trying to do that day. but I remember we were pouring acid into a flask.  The instructor told us that as we were mixing to the chemicals the flask would heat up because of the reactions between the two compounds.  Okay, I understood that.  Well as I'm pouring I was thinking "damn, he didn't say it would be burning hot" , but in my infinite wisdom I continued to pour.  Eventually I realized that maybe it was burning a little too much.  I looked down and saw that the liquid was pouring down the outside of the flask, and in doing so was running down my palm and thumb.  The acid was literally burning my flesh.  It wasn't too bad and I'm not permenently a Phantom of the Opera want-to-be, but it HURT and was scary.  They offered to let me go home, but that meant I had to come back and finish another day.  I stayed and the lab assistant pretty much did the rest.  Earlier in the semester I had started a fire from chemicals too.  At least I'm consistant, right?!

Anyway, a new aspect of my job has me doing some chemistry every day.  I've tried to tell them it wasn't in anyone's best interest to set me loose around chemicals, but I'm the only one that can do it.  I've already mentioned the chloroform incident.  That is one of the least dangerous chemicals we work with.  One of them will burn your lungs, skin, GI tract and basically anything else that gets in the way.  Needless to say I get a little anxious when I have to work with it.  One of the other chemicals will absorb into your skin and travel to the brain and cause neurological symptoms such as  hallucinations or temporary blindness.  Fun, isn't it?  I've never done hallucinatory drugs and have absolutely no desire to inadvertently partake of the effects.  Wish me luck, hopefully I never have a chemical incident again!  I think with my history I should get hazzard pay!

Chloroform and research

The other day a fellow grad student and I were working on preparing samples to run through a machine that can analyze the compounds.  One of the compounds we use to prepare samples is chloroform-hexane.  Have you seen King Kong?  The bottles they throw at his head to sedate him are chloroform.  It was used as an anaesthetic during WW I and II.  On this particular run we were preparing two samples at once which meant twice as much chloroform-hexane.  We didn't really think anything about it.  UNTIL we started finding everything funny.  We sat there and giggled like 10 year olds. I feel quite sorry for the man who had to listen to us.   I vaguely remember a conversation about Rumplestiltskin.  No idea why we would be talking about that, but hey we were high (low?).  Then we messed up a step and added twice as much of the chloroform hexane which in turn exposed us to twice as much chloroform again.  I left soon after to take my oldest boy to the orthodontist.  I kept telling the kids I was King Kong.  I had to go home and take a nap.  Thank goodness it wasn't one of my teaching nights.  So: take home message: chloroform and research don't mix.  Don't do drugs!!!  And definitely don't mistake yourself for King Kong, that's just weird.

Why I love the internet, especially the blog world

See, at one point in time I was creative.  I played clarinet and piano, taught myself how to play my brother's trumpet, sang, acting in numerous plays, and even had a poem published once.  As a matter of fact, I emailed one of my aunts the other day and told her of my job as a researcher and my other job as a biology instructor.  She emailed me back and said she couldn't believe I was a scientist, she had only ever seen the "artsy" side of me.

My life plan included either becoming a doctor or a broadway actress.  See, I'm nothing if not diverse.  I thought the Dr plan sounded more logical so I set off down that road.  I received a bachelor of science in biology and set about trying to get into med school.  My endeavors so far have not amounted to admittance to a medical school.  The only reason for this is my pathetic 3.1 GPA.  I say pathetic, but in my opinion giving birth to and raising 5 children throughout this process and still having a pathetic 3.1 GPA is pretty darned good.

Anyway, I digress, as I almost always do.  My brain has a little ADD habit. I can't concentrate on anything very long.  Now I work in a research lab and am up to my knees in DNA from my job and my graduate studies.  As I'm sitting here trying to design primers that will amplify DNA sequences (I would be more than happy to explain this process to anyone interested), I realize that my life has literally come down to 4 letters.  A,T,C and G.  See, these are the nucleotides that are responsible for every single part of every single cell on every living being on earth.  Earth!  The fact that everything we know, feel, sense, or care about can be attributed to a measly four letters is astonishing to me.  I feel everything alive is such a blessing and truly miraculous.  I love knowing some of the "inner secrets to our being".

I do, I love it.  And yet my life right now is spent studying these four letters, seeing how these combinations can start, stop, modify every part of every day.  It's beautiful, miraculous and NOT AT ALL creative.  I've been missing that part of me.  Sometimes I yearn for stagelights and costumes, sheet music and orchestras.  This blog helps me reconnect with that side of who I am.  And honestly, since starting this blog I'm realizing that ALL of me needs to be expressed.  I will be a better scientist by being a more well rounded individual.  And for this, I thank the blogging world.  Even if no one were to read, I'm still expressing myself using twenty six letters. 26!, not 4!!!

(BTW if people are reading this, please tell me how I can entice more people to come to my blog to celebrate life with me. And yes, pictures will be forthcoming soon!  I do realize posts without pics are pretty dry.)