Stuffed with Sufganiyot

Dr. Free-Ride caught me red-handed with a sufganiyot, so here goes....

1. Latkes or Sufganiyot?
Definitely latkes. Despite the post title, I really don't like sufganiyot (jelly-filled doughnuts, for you non-Hebes)... in fact, I don't like any doughnuts. I eat one sufganiyot per Hanukkah season to appease my mother. But latkes... everyone loves a good latke (but only with sour cream)!

2. Multi-colored candles or blue-and-white?
We used both. There is a tin of the cheapy multi-colored candles, and a box of fancy blue-and-white hand-dipped swirled candles, and it just depends which is closer to grab (if there are guests over, we always use the fancy candles).

3. Do you place the Hanukiah by the window or away from the window?
We have an electric one in the window. As far as the real ones, they are lit on the dining room table.

4. Favorite Holiday Dish?
Latkes! I don't eat meat, so the brisket is kind of out... although I also am a sucker for a good quiche or potato kugle.

5. Favorite Holiday Memory?
When I was little, my best friend (not Jewish) always used to come over for a night during Hanukkah. One year when her father was dropping her off for the annual sleepover, he noticed a 3-D paper dreidle hanging from our dining room chandelier, and asked why we were decorating with a plumbob. So now, ever year when my mother hangs the Hanukkah decorations, we all sit around and laugh about the plumbob. (In fact, this year aforementioned friend and her whole family came over for one night of Hanukkah, and her father even brought his plumbob with him to see if we could play dreidle with it!)

6. One Hanukiah or more than one?
We each have our own -- my mother has one with a line of Maccabees (the candles sit on their helmets), my father has one that my uncle the opera singer brought back when he was singing in Tel Aviv, and I have one which my grandmother bought for me (sadly, nobody likes my Hanukkah menorah - it's pretty ugly).

7. Do you remember your favorite gift?
I remember one year my grandmother flew up for Hanukkah and brought me a Game Boy and I was really, really excited.

8. Favorite Holiday Dessert?
I don't think we have a traditional holiday dessert - just cookies and rugelach. I guess my favorite would be the walnut rugelach.

9. Favorite Holiday Song?
I don't really associate any songs with Hanukkah. Although this year, my PI played for me a few songs by a Puerto Rican Jewish rap group from Brooklyn that does hip hop and rap versions of traditional Jewish songs in Yiddish, and it was definitely good for a few laughs.

I tag... anyone else who reads this and happens to celebrate Hanukkah. Not sure if there are any -- so maybe I should change that to anyone who has had a latke this past week!

Year in Review

1.) Where did you ring in 2006?
At my boyfriend’s best friend’s wife’s parents’ house. Follow that? We’ll be spending New Years with the same couple this year (and several other friends), but this time at their new house, instead of Erica’s mother’s house.

2.) What was your status by Valentine’s Day?
In a relationship.

3.) Were you in school (anytime this year)?
Yes. I was in school the entire year, and I will be in school the entire year for more years than I care to admit.

4.) How did you earn your keep?
By very unsuccessfully attempting to cure cancer, on the Department of Defense’s dollar. That’s right – your taxes pay my stipend. Thanks, guys!

5.) Did you ever have to go to the hospital?
Yes. I spent all summer in the hospital, actually. When you work in a hospital, you go to the hospital on a daily basis.

6.) Have you encountered the police this year?
Not that I recall.

7.) Where did you go on vacation?
Aruba in January, Jersey shore in July. Nothing particularly exciting as graduate school has sucked up all my time.

8.) What did you purchase that was over $500?
A fantastic Yamaha electric piano with money I received for my birthday.

9.) Did you know anybody who got married?
I went to my second cousin’s wedding in January and my boyfriend’s friend’s sister’s wedding in July. One of my best friends from high school also got married in September but the wedding was in Oregon and I couldn’t make it out there because of lab. :o(

10.) Did you know anybody who passed away?
Yes, but nobody with whom I was close enough to go to the funeral.

11.) Have you ran into anybody you graduated high school with?
Yes, but always planned with high school friends. I don’t think there were any random runnings-into.

12.) Did you move anywhere?
No.

13.) What sporting events did you go to?
More than I can remember – a couple of basketball games for my undergrad alma matter, a handful of Washington Nationals games this summer, at least one or two AHL games, and I was sitting in amazing JOE GIBBS BOX SEATS for the Redskins-Jaguars overtime game this year and it was awesome.

14.) What concerts did you go to?
I went to see Ben Folds with my boyfriend a month or two ago. I’m not sure that I went to any other concerns this year…

15) Are you registered to vote?
Of course. I was a political science major undergrad.

16.) If so, did you do your patriotic duty on Nov. 7?
YES!! I HELPED TO KICK RICK SANTORUM OUT OF CONGRESS!!!

17.) Where do you live now?
Washington, DC.

18.) Describe your birthday:
I was actually at my parents’ house for my birthday, so I played a round of golf in the morning, drove to Pottsville and took a tour of the Yuengling brewery (for those of you in deprived areas which do not have Yuengling, it is the best beer ever. Seriously.), and then went out to dinner at a new Irish restaurant in downtown Harrisburg.

19.) What’s the one thing you thought you would never do but did in 2006?
Watched the sun rise from the lab, because I was insane enough to be in lab pre-dawn. This happened multiple times, actually. Also, I had the opportunity to scrub in on monkey surgery which was not something I expected out of my life.

20.) What is one thing you regretted this year?
Spending too much time in the lab and not enough time with friends? Nothing really. Perhaps not studying for comprehensive exams sooner, and then spending the time I should be studying procrastinating with things like this.

21.) What’s something you learned about yourself?
I learned that I might actually be competent as a scientist and worthy of a Ph.D. And that I am surprisingly talented at oral gavaging laboratory mice.

22.) Any new additions to your family?
No. I am the only unmarried individual and only person under 50 in my immediate family. Therefore, there will be no new additions until I tack on a spouse or a child.

23.) What was your best month?
July, because I was at the NIH all month and I loved what I did.

24.) What pop culture event will you remember 2006 by?
THE STEELERS WON THE SUPERBOWL!!

25.) How would you rate this year with a scale from 1 (crappy) to 10 (amazing)?
I’d give it an 8. I have no complaints.

Because I was bored in lab...

While I was waiting to wash the secondary antibody off my Western I was catching up on a few blogs, and came across the "Brutally Honest Personality Test" as taken by Dr. FreeRide on Adventures in Ethics and Science.
My results?

Borefest - ISTJ
40% Extraversion, 33% Intuition, 73% Thinking, 73% Judging

One word. Boring. Sums you up to a tee. You're responsible, trustworthy, serious and down to earth. Boring. Boring. Boring.

You play by the rules. You follow tradition. You encourage structure.

You insist that EVERYBODY do EVERYTHING by the book. Seriously, is there even an ounce of imagination in that little brain of yours? I mean, what's the point of imagination, right? It has no practical value...

As far as you're concerned, abstract theories can go screw themselves. You just want the facts, all the facts and nothing but the facts.

Oh. And you're a perfectionist. About everything. You know that the previous sentence was gramattically incorrect and that "gramattically" was spelt wrong. Your financial records are correct to 25 decimal places and your bedroom is in pristine condition. In fact, you even don't sleep on your bed anymore for fear that you might crease the sheets.

Thankfully, you don't have anyone else to share the bed with, because you're uncomfortable expressing affection and emotion to others. Too bad.

When I first started reading, I was insulted and in denial. Then, I reached the paragraph on being a perfectionist... and suddenly wanted to curl up in a ball under my desk (except that it's way too dirty since nobody ever mops the lab floor and it is probably covered with lots of chemicals). I am (a) an extreme grammar nazi [I WILL JUDGE YOU WHEN YOU USE IMPROPER GRAMAR], (b) I am widely known for being the most financially ultra-organized person around and have to have every financial interaction tracked to the cent in Microsoft Money, and (c) I ALWAYS make my bed in the morning, hospital corners and all. Always. Even if I'm running late, the bed is made. I have not once, since I started college, left my bed unmade. And as for my room -- it is always in pristine condition. I have an unhealthy obsession with organization, neatness, and vacuumed carpets. I think I'm severely allergic to messiness and clutter.
I guess you have it -- I am a borefest. But then again, what can you expect from someone who is going for a Ph.D. in oncology? I don't think we're the most exciting people out there.
(I promise to really start posting again sometime soon. It's just that when you're in the lab 10-12 hours per day, seven days per week, there really isn't anything of any interest going on, unless you want to hear all about how all my experiments refuse to work, and my experiment results bore me at the moment since I can't extract any useful data, so how could I subject anyone else to them? See? I really AM a borefest. How depressing.)

Always Know Your PI's Schedule

I suck at life. No, really – I do. I’m not trying to get sympathy or anything here, it’s just a fact – I cannot manage to get the hang of this whole life thing. I am, once again, sick with some deviant of the “third floor plague” which I had back in September – fever, stuffy nose, aches and pains, inability to breathe, drowning in mucus, and a general overall feeling of malaise. And this morning, I arrived in the lab at 5:30am. I know I usually come in early, but 5:30 is a bit ridiculous, no? I haven’t decided yet if this is because I am the most dedicated graduate student in the entire medical center or because I am just truly insane.

The reason for my pre-crack-of-dawn arrival was to run a third protein gel. I had three to run yesterday, but two of the gel boxes were already in use, and it is only possible to run two gels per box, so I was only able to run two of my three gels. I’ve been working on one protein immunoprecipitation project and one protein purification, both of which will be important supplemental data to an R-01 grant for my PI which must be submitted by December 1^st, so we’re on a tight timeline. My PI stops by the lab at least three times per day to see how I am progressing and has been getting pretty excited about my results, so yesterday he made it clear that he wanted me to run all the gels ASAP. Since I could only run two overnight, I figured I’d get into the lab at 5:30, pour another gel, run the gel from 6 – 10, fix the gel for half an hour, add stain and then upon returning from class at noon, have two fully stained gels to show him and have the third gel transferring to a membrane for Western blotting. Basically, I figured that the only way to get everything done in a timely fashion was to come in at 5:30, and I am more than willing to do this when necessary. Seems like everything was planned out well, right?

The morning got off to a rough start when I discovered that the two gels I had running mysteriously stopped working during the night. The third gel box and its associated power supply are a little shady (we very rarely have more than 4 gels running at a time, so the last box is hardly ever used) and it just up and quit during the night. I resuscitated the power supply, but I’m not sure what kind of affect it will have on the gel itself and the proteins. Then, I spent ten minutes wandering around trying to find my automatic pipetter and squirt bottle of ethanol, both of which disappeared off my bench at some point after I left for the evening (I have, by far, the most organized, cleanest, neatest bench in the lab, so whenever someone needs extra bench space or to borrow a quick supply, they head straight to my area – I don’t mind, as long as people REUTRN THINGS so that I am not wandering around the lab at 5:40am with a storm cloud brewing over my head). I finally locate everything, pour my gel, and while it is hardening, stop by the chalk talk board to read the updates – and realize that BOTH THE LAB PI’S ARE OUT OF TOWN FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK. Apparently everyone BUT me received that memo, as it is now almost 9:00 and the majority of the lab has yet to show up – the head honchos are gone, which means it’s a prime opportunity for sleeping in.

See? I really do suck at life. I get here at 5:30am to run a gel for him – and he’s not even here to see the finished results. Things like this happen to me all the time. And of course one day next week something will come up and I won’t be able to finish something and there will be that look of disappointment or suggestion that maybe I should just work a little harder. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I am going to go take a handful of Tylenol Cold and Sinus caplets (it’s 9am and I’ve already exceeded my entire maximum dose for the day), blow my nose 294 more times, and climb up on my desk and take a nap until the rest of the lab members decide to make an appearance.

D.C. Autumn

In lieu of actually writing anything, I thought I’d post a few pictures instead. My parents came down to D.C. yesterday, so we spent the day enjoying the wonderful weather and walking around the new National Garden for the afternoon. It was nice to actually get outside for a bit and do something non-cancer oriented, and we were even able to intercept my boyfriend on his way back from the hospital and convince him to come along for the afternoon to actually breathe some fresh air (he is a hostage of internal medicine and only ever sees the inside of the hospital or the inside of his apartment – no time for anything else). Of course, since we took the afternoon off, we’ll both be spending the day working like maniacs trying to catch up and hopefully having time to take a break to watch some football (Eagles for him, Steelers for me). My goal for the day is to stop in the lab to do a bit of cell culture, finish up a paper due tomorrow for ethics class on animal research, try to understand this paper I’m presenting in journal club on Wednesday and start to put together a powerpoint presentation, and catch up on reading a few articles… and I think I also promised my boyfriend to work on a patient write-up for him if he would take the afternoon off to spend time with my parents yesterday. It will be a stressful day, but it was definitely worth taking the time off yesterday. And allow me to stress the point -- if you ever want to come to visit D.C., do try and come in the fall -- it is so much nicer than the swamplike summers.

If I were an Enzyme...

It’s a beautiful day out today, it’s Friday afternoon, it looks like I’ll only have minimal bench work to do this weekend… things are really looking up for a change. Maybe my fantastic mood is some strange inverse Friday the 13^th luck… but whatever it is, I’ll take it! I think it’s more a combination of this week flying past and the sudden change in the weather. I’m not sure why, but the weeks when I’m in the lab the most really fly by, and considering my Monday-Thursday hours spent in lab total comes to 46, this week has been zooming. It definitely feels more like a Wednesday than a Friday. And as for the weather… Happy Autumn, everyone! After starting out in the 80s this week, it has finally dropped into the 50s, and I couldn’t be more pleased. I love fall weather. Today was officially the day for the First Sweater of the Year (I decided to give the honors to a cashmere/angora mix navy blue, light blue, and green argyle v-neck sweater from J. Crew) and when I left my apartment this morning, I could see the condensation of my breath in the air. Walking across the Key Bridge, the Washington monument stood out in the distance and the Potomac River glistened under the bridge. Really, I could not ask for more perfect weather, and hopefully I’ll be able to do something outdoors and touristy this weekend (my parents will be down to visit for the day) like the zoo or checking out the newly opened National Gardens.

Also thought I would pass along the lab humor for the day… I woke up this morning and found an email from my best friend containing the image below (Thanks, Mark!).
My research deals with helicases (although more specifically I work with RNA helicases) and I’ve been doing a lot of helicase reading lately in preparation for a journal club which I am presenting next week. I showed this to a friend in the lab who also got a kick out of it, and we printed out a copy and hung it between our desks. I guess there is no requirement that Ph.D. students have to be mature, just hard working (and as I type this, there are jokes cracking in the background my friend’s attempts to grow spermatocytes in culture… suggestions along the lines of ‘play them some Marvin Gaye’ and ‘just be gentle and caressing’ – further proof that scientists may be intelligent, but just don’t mature – at least in this lab).

On that note, I am going to finish up working on this presentation for journal club, work a bit on an ethics paper, maybe take a look at a take-home cancer genetics exam – and try to leave the lab a bit on the early side this afternoon so I can enjoy the evening and this fabulous mood!

Laboratory Insanity

I am sick. This statement is valid in multiple ways. First off, I have been quite ill physically for the past two weeks. We’ve all been passing around a severe cold, which has affectionately been named the “third floor plague.” I seem to have acquired a much worse form than anyone else, and have been stuck with congested sinuses, unbearable headaches, post-nasal drip, overall body aches, and a fever for fourteen days now. Enough is enough already! Fourteen days is ridiculous and just when I thought I was starting to feel better, I’ve found myself actually feeling even worse.

It’s recently been confirmed, however, that I am just as unhealthy from a mental standpoint. I began to suspect as much last week when I continued to drag myself into the lab everyday, despite my 103 fever and near total inability to breathe. I justified my trips in by convincing myself that I needed to take care of my cells (I did), and there were some experiments which really just needed to be completed (truthfully not really a big rush). Today, however, the declining state of my sanity is no longer just suspected – it is official.

Yesterday was one of those days in the lab where nothing works properly. After an 11 hour day in the lab, I finally went to finish my luciferase assay. I was told the new luminometer recently purchased by the lab was up and working (and had already been tested) so I decided to use that, instead of the crappy old one in shared resources which never seems to work properly. In the process of setting up and testing the luminometer, however, someone clearly forgot the minor eensie weensie step of ensuring that the plate was aligned. I was watching the results for each well and realizing that the results looked way off, and upon inspection of the actual plate, realized that the luminometer was squiring the luciferase reagent all over the plate, instead of actually into the wells. As such, I had to remake an entire plate and recalculate the volume for each well to ensure standardized protein concentrations, and try my luck at the shared resource luminometer. My results from that one came back just as strange (although at least this time, the reagent made it into the wells). That said, I decided to call it a day and boil down the rest of my lysate to use for a Western the next day.

This morning, at 4am, I woke up in a panic. I recalled putting the samples onto the heat block to boil them, but did I ever take them back off and move them to the freezer? My own laboratory incompetence never ceases to amaze me. I knew realistically that if the samples were still on the heat block, it wouldn’t matter whether or not I rushed to the lab – they were denatured and useless. I sat in bed, attempting to convince myself to just get a few more hours of sleep and check at a more reasonable hour. And, at 4:05am, when I was pulling on pants and brushing my teeth and preparing for a forty minute walk in the dark in pouring rain, I realized that every last ounce of sanity I ever possessed was completely destroyed by graduate school.

That’s right. I stepped into the lab this morning at 4:45am. And now, at 7:30pm, I am still in the lab waiting for a few things to finish. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised by my relative insanity – after all, at one point in my life, I actually thought that going to graduate school for a Ph.D. seemed like a good idea.

Julie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

When it comes to pet peeves in the lab, I have very few. Just let me do my research in peace, and I will be perfectly content (provided at least one or two of my experiments work every month or so). Today, of course, as if I wasn’t already in a miserably foul mood because of the AWFUL Steelers game last night, I am encountering ALL of my pet peeves this afternoon.

1) Don’t steal things off my bench, and then claim that you weren’t aware that it was mine. It’s fine if you need to borrow my timer because you can’t locate yours, but don’t pull the “I didn’t know it was yours” card when it is labeled, in giant Sharpie letters, with “JULIE.” I am the only Julie in this lab… actually, the only Julie in the research oncology department, so I’m pretty sure that’s good enough proof that it is, indeed, mine.
2) Don’t steal my food. I have one of the crappiest desks in the lab, since it’s actually located in the middle of the lab and not in the hallway like most. As such, I’m forbidden from eating at my desk, keeping a glass of water on my desk, or even keeping a wrapped granola bar in my desk drawer. Therefore, I have to keep my food out in the hallway – where someone else keeps eating it. If you’re hungry, pack your own damn lunch and stop eating mine.
3) Pretty please use TEMED, formaldehyde, acetic acid, and other assorted chemicals in the fume hood. This would be why we have a fume hood. In the previous lab we didn’t, so I didn’t complain since people didn’t want to walk to a different floor just to pull out 200ul of TEMED, but now that we have our own fume hood in our own lab, USE IT. Otherwise, when you drop things and they spill all over, I (and the others in the lab) will get very nauseous from the smells, and I will vomit.
4) AUTOCLAVE YOUR TRASH IN AN AUTOCLAVE BIN. Really people, is this such a difficult concept for anyone outside my own lab to grasp? You have an autoclave trash bag full of pointy pipettes and liquid waste from your tissue culture experiments. If you stick it in a bin (and there are multiple autoclave bins SITTING NEXT TO THE AUTOCLAVE), then when I have to pull it out to put in my own glassware, trash from my lab, etc, the liquids will fall out of the holes caused by the pointy pipettes and pool in the bin. Otherwise, when I pull out the three bags you happened to just toss straight into the autoclave, all your nasty bacteria cultures and cell culture media will spill out all over me, and I will be very, very unhappy. If I knew who you were, or which lab you worked in, I would so give your name to Environmental Health and Safety so you could sit through that boring safety class again and maybe acxtually learn how to autoclave.

Honestly, are these demands that ridiculous? Am I being totally self-centered here in that I would like to make it through one day without having my timer stolen, half of my lunch consumed by someone else, getting physically sick from spilled chemicals, and having an autoclave bag dribble liquid lab waste all down my pants? Is this really too much for which to ask?

So long, summer...

One full week back in the thesis lab…. and only five or so more years to go. :-\ Last week I finished up the two animal studies at the NIH by sacrificing all the remaining animals and harvesting organs, learned how to replace the one final part of the HPLC system that was clogged (I now feel like I could build one from scratch after breaking and thus replacing each and every part), said my goodbyes... and returned back 'home' to my lab. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the majority of my personal lab equipment (pipettes, conical tube racks, forceps, scissors, timer, all the solutions I use, etc) were not looted and stolen in my absence as I thought they would be since they often seem to walk off even when I am in the lab 80 hours/week. The only things missing were my membrane marking pens (easy to replace) and, strangely enough, my lab coat. I’m left with the option of a lab coat two sizes too big or one that fits from the waist up but is quite a squeeze around the hips, since it is cut straight down for a curve-free man. Right after I joined the lab, the PI decided to stop getting everyone their own name embroidered lab coats and just stick with generic coats with the name of the lab, so I have no way of knowing who walked off with mine. I suppose, for the meantime, slightly too small is better than much too large. Unfortunately, since my return I have also rediscovered my easily annoyed attitude and generally grumpy moods, from which I managed to escape this summer. I hope (although am doubtful) that this is just a coincidence, or else it is going to be an exceptionally difficult fiveish remaining years.

Some exciting research has happened in the lab during my time at NIH, and I’m excited to see how I can fit back in. It’s time for me to start thinking about putting together a thesis project and establishing a thesis committee (scary!!) but I have a general idea of what I want to do, and it will allow me to tie in some of my interest in drug discovery and pharmacology. The lab is mostly a biochemistry-based lab so this will be stepping outside of the normal research techniques, but my PI also seems to be excited at expanding into some pharmacology and is more than willing to help me pursue my own interests. A new PI just joined the university this year that runs a medicinal chemistry lab, so I think I will be working with him frequently which will be a great opportunity. Of course, I can’t really start pursuing my own project until after I pass the comp exams (in June) so in the meantime I will be working on little pieces of the projects of others in my lab so that I can be a middle author on several papers… including an animal study I should be running next month (good thing I was so well trained at the NIH!).

Thanks to those who commented on my new template. I think I am going to leave the general layout as it is but continue to play around with the content in the sidebar, like the recently added “Currently Reading” section (which technically should probably just include the latest issues of Oncogene and Cancer Research). Among my goals for the semester, such as not working more than 3 11+ hour days per week, is to actually do some non-science related reading (along with blogging a bit more frequently!).

Changes!

Check out the newly made template -- it's not final yet, but after an afternoon of cursing at blogger tags, it is at least in functional, working order. I'm not really thrilled with it (at least the header) and want to tweak some things, so feel free to criticize/comment/offer suggestions for what I can do to make this better. The only thing I'm not particularly up to doing is re-drawing the illustration of me, because really, I shouldn't spend all day in the lab tomorrow playing in Photoshop for blogging purposes (after all, I do need to save some time during the day to review my fantasy football draft and decide who to start... and, um, dose the mice and set up some HPLC runs). Other than that, nothing is set in stone.
So... suggest away!

The Importance of Proper Euthanasia Techniques

I know, I know – I said I had all these interesting tales to tell, and then fell off the radar again. I promise, this will pick back up shortly. I’ve been busy trying to make some changes to the layout and also toyed around with the idea of getting rid of this altogether and just getting my own domain name and starting up my own webpage. I think that will require too much time, though, and not something that I need to be working on when classes are starting right around the corner.

I have tried playing around with a new layout but haven’t been happy with anything yet. I think I finally have an idea that might work but now I’m having difficulties with some of the blogger tags. Once I get this situated and in order, maybe I’ll have the motivation to actually use this a bit more!

In the meantime, I can’t believe that summer is wrapping up. I love love love what I have been doing at NIH/NCI and really have no desire whatsoever to return to my thesis lab. I’m supposed to be going back within the next 2 weeks, and I feel like my thesis mentor will have to drag me out of the NIH, kicking and screaming and holding on to the HPLC machine for dear life. It’s not that I hate my thesis lab or anything; just that this summer has opened my eyes to research that can actually be interesting (truthfully, all the cloning and Western blotting I have done over the past year in my thesis lab bores me to tears).

I’ve had some amazing opportunities here that I will never get at my university, namely, the opportunity to scrub in on primate transplant surgery. It was completely unexpected and not at all affiliated with my lab group (in fact, not even with the National Cancer Institute), but after I finished up my mouse skills training class, the veterinarian asked if I had an interest in scrubbing in to macaque monkey transplant surgery. Needless to say, it was fascinating.

I do have one entertaining story to share, because you should at least get a laugh out of my near-death situation. During the week, the person who has been training me (in both the pharmacokinetic laboratory aspect and the animal studies) was out sick, leaving me to dose the mice on my own. Everything was going smoothly until I reach the last cage of mice, which was labeled as having 5 animals (because of how we have divided things up, there are different numbers in each cage). I had oral gavaged four of the mice, and couldn't find the fifth in the cage. My first thought was that while I was busy treating, one made a run for it and climbed out of the cage and was free to roam around the room, which induced a mini panic-attack, because how do I explain that I lost a mouse? Eventually I discovered that the fifth mouse had died overnight, and his fellow cagemates had buried him in the corner under all the bedding. Not the end of the world – that’s why you include extra animals in a study, right? So I pulled out the deceased mouse, stuck him in one of the euthanasia bags, and walked down the hall to put him in the carcass freezer in the procedure room. Imagine my incredible surprise (and resulting near heart attack) when I opened the freezer room, and two rats jumped out at me. That’s right. Two LIVE RATS jumped out of the CARCASS FREEZER. There was one other person in the procedure room, a big manly-looking man, who caught this out of the corner of his eye and started screaming like a girl. It’s not that I mind rodents – I handle them every day – but the last thing you expect to find in a freezer full of animal carcasses is a pair of live rats that chewed their way out of their euthanasia bags. We then had the distinct pleasure of chasing these rats around the procedure room for 20 minutes to catch them, and properly euthanize them. The moral of this story is that when euthanizing rats with CO2, please please be sure to cervical dislocate afterwards to make sure the animals are really dead, because you never know what poor little PhD student is going to be startled half to death because you tried to cut some corners. I think that I may have developed a lifelong fear of freezers as a result.

I'm Still Alive!

Phew, it's sure has been a while, hasn't it? My lack of posting hasn't been a result of a lack of science-y things of worth, in fact, it's been quite the opposite. I've had so much going on that there just aren't enough hours in the day. Lots of things to say, but instead of spelling it all out in a novel, I'll try to break things up and do a few postings over the next several days. Basically, over the past month and a half, I've had the opportunity to help train two high school students, worked insane hours attempting to wrap-up a part of a project before leaving for the summer, spent a few days at home and at the Jersey shore, started my pharmacology training at NIH (love love love it so far!), used my touch of death to break lots of expensive equipment at NIH, gave my first big research powerpoint presentation to the Department of Oncology back at school, and started my first animal experiment (which I said I would never do). Plus, I'm finding a little more time for myself and actually getting to see some of my friends, and it's amazing how much happier (and more productive!) I am not working 12 hours/day, 7 days/week. I guess I really did just need a little break.
My hours at NIH are a little crazy (as in, I am out of bed before the sun rises in the middle of July in the northern hemisphere) and I haven't quite adjusted to getting to bed at 10pm to get 7 hours of sleep, but I don't have much work to bring home and I never have to come in on weekends, so of course I think the schedule is fantastic. I do a few things for my thesis lab at home/on the weekends, but my PI seems to be a bit "out of sight, out of mind" and since he doesn't physically see me in the lab everyday, he forgets that I could be coming in on the weekends, so he hasn't been giving me any big projects. I don't think there's much that I really could be doing anyways, since most things require several days of bench work, and I can't let things sit for 5 days before working on them again.
At the moment, I am contemplating strangling myself with the faulty leaking HPLC peek tubing, but provided that I don't, tune in the next few days for some stories about my life chained to the bench.

Missing: My Life. Reward if Found!

Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t actually been locked in the -80 freezer, swallowed by the giant centrifuge, or actually died over the past month and a half (it just feels like it). It’s just that I’ve been forced to take a brief hiatus from my life… I expect that we will be reunited in roughly 5-ish years. It’s not that I am unwilling to work hard (I certainly am) or long hours (I clearly do)… just that the experience thus far has proven to be a bit more intense than I was originally anticipating. Two months ago, I couldn’t wait for the end of classes – I repeatedly heard myself tell everyone around me how much better things would be when I was done with class, how I was sure I would be putting in very long days during the week and mornings on the weekends, but I would be sure to have time to actually see them on weekend evenings. And my statement was partially correct – I am indeed much, much happier now that I no longer repeatedly bash my head into the cell or developmental biology books, attempting to learn multiple signaling pathways and HOX gene development. The one detail which slipped my mind, however, was that actually being in class and having exams were the one key factor that (somewhat) limited my hours in lab. Now that classes are over – no more excuses for why I am not in lab ALL THE TIME.

I’m not at all unhappy, surprisingly. Sometimes I worry that I will look back and regret the countless invitations to do things with friends which I have had to turn down, all the Friday nights I was trapped in lab until after 9pm, the realization that literally all I do is do benchwork in the lab, read papers at home in the evenings, and manage a few hours of sleep. But I like my lab, and even though 90% of my projects are failing miserably at the moment, I am content with the research and excited for new projects which will be waiting for me upon my return from my pharmacology training at NIH. I really like the people in the lab – we all get along very well and it’s generally a young lab so most people are only a few years older than me. While we are all diligent enough to make sure our experiments are completed in a timely fashion, it’s also the kind of lab where individuals will conjugate around the sink while washing western blots and chat and we all do seem to get along together very well. I will admit to being a tad disgruntled by the fact that I am the only graduate student my year stuck working these dreadful hours – the other students seem to stroll in at 10am and leave by 4pm, Monday-Friday only. I’m usually here between 7:30 and 8:00am on weekdays, never get out before 6:30 (there are times I am stuck here until well after 9), and weekends are just an extension of my weekdays – I’ve never put in less than 8 full hours on any given Saturday or Sunday. I don’t mean to complain, but it just gets frustrating hearing other graduate students discuss their relaxing weekends at home, when I’m putting in 9 hours in the lab on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday. But… it’s only another five or so years of this, right? And maybe at some point during the next five years things will start to work, at least enough that I can maybe take one day off per week, or at least only work half-days on the weekends, which would be fine.

Considering it has been a month and a half, I feel like there should be something of interest going on in my life but really – there isn’t. In that month and a half I have taken off exactly three days from the lab, over Memorial Day weekend, to go visit my grandfather in the hospital. The lab finally moved down the hallway into our new space, which is at least three times the size of our old lab, and it is amazing how we seemed to have already filled the space to capacity. I finally have my OWN BENCH and my OWN DESK and I feel like a real graduate student with a home in the lab (and quite the home it is, considering I spent significantly more time here than I do in my own apartment – perhaps I should consider asking if I can move in permanently to save on the cost of rent). In two weeks, I’m heading off to the National Cancer Center for some molecular pharmacology training so I’m sure there will be a few new, fun stories to share… but don’t worry, I’m still expected to come into my thesis lab on the weekend to keep on working, so there is still a good chance that I will have some humorous encounter with the dangerous laboratory equipment here – provided I can even find it now that it has been moved into the new lab.

Warning: Mad Scientist Crossing

When I decided to attend graduate school, I didn’t realize I would be putting my life in such danger. I mean, I knew about all the associated mental health problems, because everyone who is struggling through a Ph.D. goes through periods of hopelessness and depression, right? And besides, there has to be some mental defect initially in anyone who thinks that pursuing a Ph.D. in the sciences is a good plan. There’s all the bench-work associated dangers that I knew I would encounter… working with radiation, subjecting myself to enough ethidium bromide that has likely worked its way through my gloves into my skin where it has intercalated into my DNA and as such I am probably in the process of sprouting an additional finger on my left hand, dealing with all the chemicals that are labeled “USE ONLY IN CHEMICAL HOOD” on a regular old lab bench since our current lab doesn’t have a fume hood… those sort of dangers. Little did I know that I would be attacked by laboratory equipment or watch my life flash before my eyes as I was nearly flattened by a crazed man with an animal transport cart.
After our weekly evening lab meeting, we (a fellow PhD friend, who is doing a rotation through my thesis lab and I) were heading out of the building, escaping back into freedom, about to walk through the swinging double doors that lead from the research building into the pre-clinical science building. Luckily for us, she must have extraordinary hearing abilities to notice the rapid squeek of a wheel, because suddenly she paused and switched from walking along my left side to my right. A split second later, a ridiculously loud ‘BANG’ noise causes us both to literally jump in the air, as a man (who, fittingly, looked exactly like a mad scientist – the wild grey hair sticking up in every direction, crazy too-many-hours-sniffing-chemicals look in his eye) pushing an empty animal transport cart comes flying full-speed through the door. Had my friend not moved and dragged me with her, we most certainly would have been flatted into the wall… or at least been left with very bloody broken noses. The traditional, sane way of walking down that hallway is to walk up to the swinging doors, push one open by hand, and pull the cart through. Maybe this guy figured that since it was after 6pm the hallway would be empty… except that plenty of people are still in the building until late. Maybe he was thinking that he would just put two poor first year Ph.D. students out of their misery the week before finals. Maybe he just wasn’t thinking at all. Regardless, I now realize that getting a Ph.D. is more than just hard work and dedication, it’s about just trying to make it past attacking laboratory equipment and crazy fellow researchers in one piece!

Still Treading Water

Whew! It’s sure been a while, hasn’t it? Here I am addressing how I can’t remember to put on my pants in the morning and how I’m being flooded out of my apartment… and then I don’t update for three weeks. That’s just not nice of me, and I apologize. It’s not that I haven’t had the intent to blog during that time… just that usually by the time I got back from the lab, spent a few hours screaming on the phone to someone about the continual state of disrepair of my apartment, and wasted time sitting around scowling at the thought of having to spend yet another night uncomfortably squashed attempting to sleep on the couch, I just ran out of time. But, I am happy to report, that Sunday night was the first night I was able to sleep in my own bed, which was in my own room, for which I shell out a mere $900/month as my half of the rent despite the fact that my room was uninhabitable for thirteen days. It was a rough two weeks of fighting with the apartment complex, calling other apartments in the area begging to see if they had open apartments so we could just call it quits here and move, and I will confess to one mini-breakdown after I was promised work would be completed (and nothing had been done) in which I called the voicemail of the apartment, left a very long and winded message, and then just sat down in the middle of the still wet and mildewy carpet and just cried. I am glad to report, however, that after thirteen consecutive nights on a couch, I returned home for a few days for Passover, and came back on Sunday to a newly plastered, newly painted ceiling over my newly steam-cleaned only slightly smelling like mildew carpeting. Of course, I also returned to find water dripping out of one of the kitchen cabinets, which, coincidentally, was a result of a broken pipe three apartments above me. I just can’t get a break, can I? Next time around, I’m moving into the penthouse suite – the upstairs plumbing has not been kind to me.

So now, after my brief but necessary Passover seder break, we’ve reached the home stretch. Two papers (epidemiology, pharmacology), one take home slide identification final (pathology), and two in-class finals (cell biology, epidemiology) to compete by May 3^rd… and then first year is officially over! Sadly, first I have to finish everything and ensure a B average in all my classes which I am ashamed to admit is worrying me a tad, as I can’t remember anything that I study for cell biology (as far as the neurological problems are concerned, I’ve become very buddy-buddy with the neurologist and his staff as I have had about 4 liters of blood drawn on multiple occasions for testing, but so far nothing has been identified… and I’ve been quadruple checking to ensure that I am properly dressed before leaving each morning). I’m really looking forward to the end of classes though, because it means I’ll get to be in the lab full time and get to really move forward with my project. In other exciting (at least for me) news, last week in my first attempt, I successfully cloned the full-length gene on which I am working (see? I really am learning new things from graduate school!), tomorrow I get to learn insect cell culture from the post-doc who will be leaving for maternity leave so that I can help take over the RHA production while she is gone, and once finals are over I get to try my hand at PCR cloning. Then, once July rolls around, I’m being shipped out to the National Cancer Institute for a two-month rotation to learn molecular pharmacology laboratory techniques so I can tie in some pharmacology work with my thesis project. And just think – being in the lab full-time this summer means even more opportunities for me to screw up experiments and break expensive laboratory equipment, which means more disastrously humorous events about which to blog! But until then, I have two long weeks of writing, studying (and attempting to retain the knowledge that I attempt to learn with a mind like a sieve), laboratory-ing, not drowning in the multiple floods that continue to spring up in the apartment, and hopefully remembering to wear my pants.

April Showers

I tried to think of some witty introduction, but I really can’t think of way to put a humorous twist on this. My life has turned into an episode of Law & Order, but just the beginning portion.. you know, where they introduce what is going to happen by showing a few unimportant people chatting who then stumble upon a dead body and the woman screams, and the police come, and you never see or think about those people again. My roommate and I are like those people, except that we are in the midst of our own disaster as a result.

Our little episode of Law & Order starts out as such: the scene is set inside an apartment, a clock glows 3:00am in the corner, and a fire alarm goes off. The apartment occupant jumps out of bed, throws on clothes, and dashes outside, only to discover that nobody else from the entire apartment complex comes. Perplexed, she walks back into the apartment to find out why the alarm went off mysteriously in only her apartment, turns on a light, and finds a cascade of water gushing out of the light fixtures and electric outlets. Panicking over the mixture of water and electricity, she calls the fire department and the emergency apartment maintenance man. The maintenance man heads to the apartment directly upstairs, the source of the suspected flooding, and knocks on the door. When there is no answer, he opens the door, and finds himself shin-deep in water. Sloshing through the water, he opens the door to the bathroom… and finds the occupant of the apartment, drowned in the bathtub.

If this were a real episode of ­Law & Order, this is where we would cut to the catchy theme song and the views of New York City. Then, Ed Green and Lennie Briscoe show up to inspect the scene, and we never give another thought to the girls in the flooding apartment below. Except that this isn’t an episode of Law & Order… it’s the current story of my life.

No, I didn’t know the person living above our apartment who was apparently incredibly drunk and no, this most certainly isn't an April Fool's joke although my father thought it was when I called him with the news. All I know is that my planned day of finishing up a paper for my cancer prevention course has suddenly become a bit more stressful than originally anticipated. The carpet people have already come and ripped up the edges of the carpet and inserted massive dryers underneath, but right now the carpet is the least of my concern. The water was pouring out of the light fixtures in the kitchen and the bathroom, which is where the main carpet damage was done. The living room seems pretty unharmed, as is my roommate's room. My room, however, is a slightly different story. Well over half the ceiling of the room and part of the ceiling of my walk-in closet is completely water damaged, and the water is spreading across rapidly, so I am sure by now the entire ceiling is ruined. Instead of standard apartment painted white, it’s turning almost a rust color, and literally dripping big rust-colored water droplets onto the beige carpeting. Because it is dripping water, it’s starting to sag. I’ve moved out a bookshelf, my electronics, and a dresser, but my bed, desk, and a second dresser are still being held hostage in the room, unable to be moved out due to the positioning of the giant carpet-drying fans. I’ll be camping out at my boyfriend’s apartment for the night, but regardless of whether or not the ceiling collapses in my room, it will have to be completely ripped out and replaced, which will take quite a lot of work, and thus I will be homeless for quite some time and am not quite sure where I will be able to stay during the week. I’ll go back tomorrow evening to survey the damage, and if the ceiling has not yet collapsed, try to move anything else out of my room and into our living room, which is now cluttered with my belongings. I’m pretty nervous about the return however, and the potential damage to everything I own, which of course is not covered by the apartment.

So, um, if you happen to know anyone with a spare couch/room in the D.C. area who is willing to take in a quiet, neat, friendly, and unexpectedly homeless graduate student for a few weeks, or um, would like to make any furniture donations if mine is crushed under a collapsed ceiling and bathtub because I can’t afford to buy more off of my meager stipend, err, um, let me know. Oh, and if you’d like to write my pharmacology and/or epidemiology papers that would be swell, because right now I’m finding myself just a bit unable to focus on things other than my pending homelessness, forcing me to succumb to every graduate student’s worst nightmare – literally moving into the lab.

Indecent Exposure

When I was in high school, I started to get forgetful and began misplacing things. I never really thought anything of it, just that I had too many things going on in my life and wasn’t able to keep track of everything. It came into focus, however, when I became sick with an unidentifiable illness. I had been feeling under the weather for a week or so, with increasing joint pain and a slowly climbing fever. When I woke up and the thermometer read 104, my mother decided it was time to keep me home from school and drag me to the doctor. I was poked and prodded, and he decided that I was depressed, the join pain was a result of the depression, and the depression was caused because I didn’t want to leave for college. My mother rolled her eyes, pointed out that she was a psychologist, she would likely have picked up on something indicating that I was depressed, and that I couldn’t wait to leave the house and go to college (I pretty much started counting down my sophomore year of high school). Two days later, my fever was up to 105.5, and back I went to the doctor, where, once again, he insisted that I was making myself ill as a result of depression. My mother was discussing my symptoms with a coworker, who commented that it sounded similar to when she had Lyme disease. Doing some quick research online and realizing that I did spend all my summers working at a camp in the hills of Pennsylvania teaching girls how to ride horses, sleeping in tents in the tick-infested woods, I was once again dragged to the doctor where my mother insisted that I be tested for Lyme disease. The doctor assured my mother that it was not the case, but finally due to my mother’s persistence, drew blood. Sure enough, when the ELISA and Western blot testing results came back with an incredibly high titer, I was finally diagnosed with late persistent Lyme disease, meaning I had the disease likely for two or three years, and it had never been diagnosed. Suddenly the memory loss and confusion made sense, as the infection spread to my spinal cord and resulted in a slew of nervous system problems.

Even after several rounds of treatment and eventually managing the disease, the associated arthritis and neural problems persist. I’ve learned to deal with them; however, I was always warned if I noticed things worsening in either area to get myself to a doctor right away. There have always been moments ever since then, such as the time I was changing the water in my fishbowl my freshman year of college, and when all was said and done, put the fish and the fishbowl in the refrigerator and the Brita pitcher on the shelf (lucky for the fish, my next-door neighbor wandered in and inquired about the sudden absence of the fish before he had the chance to freeze to death). Usually, however, it’s been isolated incidences and I haven’t worried. Now, however, I’m not so sure.

I’ve had many more problems this year with concentration – I can spend 2 hours reading a chapter from my cell book, and then have no recollection of about which pathway I was just reading. I accounted it to a general lack of interest. I’ve noticed a drastic decrease in my spelling abilities of regular everyday words (I typed out ‘green tea’ as ‘grean tee’ the other day), but I figured that as phrases such as ‘aminoimidazole carboxamide ribonucleotide transformylase’ (and their associated spellings) become part of everyday language, you just have to push out something else. I’ve been putting things in the wrong places again, like putting the cumin in the refrigerator and the lime juice in the cabinet. But hey, I’m overworked and stressed out, so that’s expected, right?

This morning started out exactly like every other morning. My alarm went off, I crawled out of bed, opened the curtains, and neatly made my bed and fluffed my pillows. I ate a yogurt while checking my email and browsing ESPN.com. Sick of my unruly frizzy hair, I took the time this morning to flat iron it. I put on a cashmere Faire Isle belted cardigan over an ivory silk camisole, and my ballet flats covered with platinum-colored sequences which always result in so many complements. I put on a pearl necklace and my pearl earrings, packed up my lunch, and tossed my laptop into my tote bag. As I was heading out of my room, I slipped on my favorite spring jacket, a three-quarter length ivory colored jacket with tiny pastel flowers embroidered across the fabric. I was feeling pretty well put together for the day and was halfway through the living room when I paused, because I felt like I was missing something. I thought for a moment, and dashed back into my room to grab my medical center ID badge. I went to clip it onto my pocket just like always, when I was surprised to discover that there was no pocket on which to clip the ID badge… there was no pocket, because I wasn’t wearing any pants. Yes, that’s right. My pants were still lying across the chair where I had set them out when I decided what to wear. I put on my sweater, my shoes, my jewelry, straightened my hair… and forgot to put on pants.

I’ve known for a while that I needed to call up a neurologist because I just wasn’t all there mentally anymore, but I kept coming up with excuses. That’s it – no more excuses, it’s time to call. It’s not just forgetting where I left my Palm Pilot anymore. When it’s forgetting something as socially required as, say, pants, it’s time to acknowledge that there’s a real problem. After all, as Mark Twain once said, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

We're Moving!!

We’re a movin’ on up,
To the east side (of the research building)
To a deluxe apartment (more lab space) in the sky.

At the lab meeting yesterday, we received the official word that WE’RE MOVING! We’ve been granted the space occupied by the former director of the cancer center… the one who left and moved on to supposedly greener pastures at another research university. I cannot begin to express how thrilled I am at the potential for more space, seeing as how with our current lab situation, I have neither my own lab bench nor a desk (or a computer, for that matter, since a desk is a prerequisite for that). Our lab is growing quickly (in addition to me as the newest thesis student, a new post-doc just came three weeks ago) and we’re spread out throughout the building, in three different rooms on two different floors, and it does get to be a pain to run up and down the stairs twenty times a day when you need something (or someone) from the lab on a different floor. While I’ve been able to get by with sharing bench space with the new post-doc and mooching off of others when they are not at the bench and I’ve adjusted to sitting hunched over typing away on my personal laptop on an unoccupied chair… frankly, it doesn’t exactly make me the most productive. But the opportunity to get my own desk, where I can actually keep things so I don’t have to haul them back and forth from the lab all the time, where I can spread out my work… it will make me feel like I really have a home in the lab! And maybe, just maybe, if I have my own horizontal surface area, I’ll work up the courage to ask if the lab can supply me with a computer, because I’m not the hugest fan of dragging my laptop back and forth with me everyday (although I am very glad to have gone with the 12” version for this very reason). Mostly, it would just be nice to have a computer on the actual network. We have wireless set up in the lab so I can access the internet, but I can’t print anything from my own computer, and since I have a PC and most of the computers are Macs, the programs aren’t always compatible (i.e. I use pDRAW and they use MacVector, and if I want to print out a plasmid map, I have to wait until I go home at the end of the day, print it out, and hope I remember to bring it in the next day. And if I actually need it for something during the day, well, then I’m screwed, because pDRAW isn’t on the one other PC in the lab and I don’t know the master password to install it). So basically – I’m just relieved to finally have someplace to call my own. Maybe I’ll even get my own set of pipettes – oh, the little things that bring joy to nerdy graduate students.

That aside, I can’t believe it’s approaching the end of March already. Seriously, where did the time go? I feel like I never get half of my to-do list completed in a day, and yet I spend all my time in lab or studying… so I don’t know where the wasted time winds up. Thankfully after an exam on Friday there will be a bit of breathing time until the first week of May, when I have two exams, a take-home exam, and two papers all due within four days. And after exams, then I am shipped off to the National Cancer Institute to complete a rotation which will train me in molecular pharmacology work, so I can bring the knowledge back into my lab and hopefully use it for my thesis project. But in the meantime, I’m slowly sneaking out of lab for the week to study for Friday’s exam (and I must question who would possibly be cruel enough to schedule an exam during March Madness? This is like the most religious holiday for sports fanatics like me – how am I supposed to care about ephrins and Wnt signaling and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transformations when there is basketball to watch and brackets to follow? Sheesh!).

Happy Spring, everyone – nothing like bringing in the new season with a day of snow (and to think, it reached 81 degrees two weeks ago, and today the high won’t be above 35).

Room for Improvement

There are plenty of times when I feel out of place at school. Our classes and the research building are part of the medical school complex, so most of the time, it seems like I have more encounters with medical students than with biomedical graduate students. When I walk through the hallways in my lab coat, it’s knee length and branded in the corner with the name of my lab (probably so that if I’ve escaped and am hanging out in the hallway, all the PIs know to which lab I belong and are able to drag me back to make sure I get back to work). Meanwhile, the halls are full of medical students, decked in short coats labeled with their own names, stethoscopes around their necks, dog-eared pocket guides to pharmacology shoved into their pockets. The residents from the cancer center walk by occasionally, and the scrub-clad surgical residents can sometimes be found passed out on the couches, enjoying the few moments before their pagers call them back to work. Among the 3^rd and 4^th year medical students, there is the steady buzz about who got to assist in what procedure on whom. Yes, as a research scientist, it is quite easy to feel insignificant, overlooked, and out of place in a clinical setting. Today, however, I stuck out even more than usual. I was like the proverbial sore thumb… or, more specifically, the clean forehead.

As the good little Jewish girl that I am, I had forgotten what today was. I didn’t realize until lunch, when I noticed a person with a blob of schmootz on their forehead. I was wondering if they were aware of the dirt and contemplating if I should say something when it dawned on me that what appeared to be a thumbprint was actually a cross, drawn on in a rush, and that it was, indeed, Ash Wednesday. Considering that I now attend a Jesuit university, by mid-afternoon, 70% of those surrounding me had crosses on their foreheads. The priest who roams the halls of the medical school even jokingly offered to draw a Star of David on my forehead if I was feeling left out, although he was afraid his artistic skills were not up to the task.

Along with Ash Wednesday comes the start of Lent, which meant that I overheard the conversations of all the students discussing the objects which they would be giving up for the next forty days. Responses ranged from chocolate to watching American Idol, to my personal favorite – a girl who said that she would be giving up sleeping with guys whose last names she had not yet learned (now that’s staying in line with those Catholic values!). I thought about my friends and what they had sacrificed from the past, and how, for forty days, I would hear them bitch and moan about how much they missed chocolate or Diet Coke or mint chocolate chip ice cream, and then Easter came (I think Lent is over at Easter but my Catholicism knowledge is not up to par) and an entire chocolate bunny would be consumed in two minutes. I may not be Catholic, but I feel like the point of sacrificing something should be to improve yourself as a person and to change a negative aspect into a positive, and I’m not exactly sure how giving up vodka or Oreos for five and a half weeks really does that.

Lately, I’ve been feeling somewhat down about my experiences thus far in graduate school. Not that I hate my lab work or my classmates (quite the contrary on both instances), but more down because I feel like I’m not getting the most out of my educational experiences. I’m not doing as well in my classes as I would like to be doing, and while I’m learning new techniques in the lab, I often feel like I’m not retaining and understanding everything as well as I could be. My PI has done nothing but praise me throughout my time in his lab, complementing me most recently on my time management skills and the ease with which I can handle a tough course load and many hours in the lab. Whenever I meet with my PI to discuss progress with my project, he likes to show me data that others in the lab are generating and quiz me on it – asking me to interpret what I am seeing and how I would troubleshoot the problems, without having a great deal of knowledge of the project. Last week, after responding with the ‘correct’ answer, a grin spread across my PI’s face and he congratulated me on really thinking like a scientist. But… I don’t feel like a scientist! I know I’m still years away from my PhD, but when I think about the vast difference in knowledge between myself and a sixth year student, I can’t imagine learning that much information in that time period. I really feel like I’m not getting as much as I should be out of my experiences thus far.

While hearing everyone else today discuss Lent, I started thinking about what I could do to improve myself. I decided that the area which needed the most improvement right now was my training to one day become an actual scientist – I needed a way to expand my knowledge and feel more confident about what I am learning. And so I decided, in a completely non-religious but perhaps inspired by Lent fashion, that I would make my own personal sacrifice in order to further myself as an oncology graduate student. A bad habit which I have developed over the past few months is the abuse of the snooze button on my alarm clock. Lately, I have started setting my alarm for a half hour before I actually have to get out of bed, so I can just lie in bed, under the covers, and muster up the courage to face the day. It’s a terrible use of time, and I’ve been very displeased with myself for continuing this. Therefore, I am making the pledge to myself, the scientist in training, to redirect this time in a way that will further my education and training… to my absolute least favorite part of science thus far – the journal article. I hate reading articles because to understand a single article, I find myself doing five literature searchers for other articles to attempt to figure out a method used in the paper or a pathway being discussed, often getting frustrated with everything I do not understand. However, I also realize that the best way to increase my knowledge in my particular area which I am currently researching in the lab is through papers, and have an entire binder in the lab of papers which I need to read. Therefore, I have decided that to improve myself, I am going to be getting up when my alarm goes off the first time, and dedicating at least a half hour every morning before I leave for campus to tackling part of paper. Sure, maybe it will take me a few days to make it through an article, but if I take the time to actually understand everything, I am confident that it will pay off in the end.

I may not be Catholic, but I think Lent has helped me realize exactly what I need to do to get myself back on track. Sometimes I feel a little awkward at a Jesuit school, but today I was glad to be here. There is always room for improvement, and I have found my way to make myself a better person and hopefully a better researcher.

Laboratory Blunders

It’s refreshing to know that, regardless of how much experience or training we undergo, we remain human and still make stupid mistakes. I’m not just talking about fighting with laboratory equipment which hinders experiments or doing too many things at once to the point where you forget what is going on, but the type of mistake that is so rudimentary that you can’t help but slap your forehead and roll your eyes. At points in my scientific training career, I will admit to being the poster-girl for stupid laboratory mistakes…you know, things like forgetting to, err, add DNA to your transformation, and then standing around confused as to why the agarose gel does not look as expected (me? do something like that? never!). This time, however, the error fell in the hands of my PI and Assistant PI and, like I said, it’s nice to know that even my superiors are still error-prone at times (particularly since I am sure that in my next way-too-many years, I will make similar easily-avoidable mistakes, and I know that my PI can just sit back and smirk but know that he has been in similar situations).

To make a long story short, the assay detects hydrolysis by looking at the amount of free phosphate. My PI had the idea that the protein may be more reactive if dialyzed into a different buffer solution, and discussed this with the Assistant PI, who is apparently the protein-master of the lab. Ultimately, they decided to do the overnight dialysis into PBS… otherwise known as phosphate buffered saline. That’s right, phosphate. This didn’t dawn on my PI until the colorimetric detection agent was added, and instead of a barely-detectible-by-human-eye color change, the solution in the well-plate turned instantly dark green. After a few moments of looking confused, suddenly it hit – in his case, with a response of “Oh, DUH! What were we thinking?!” Yes, the laboratory lesson of the week was, in the event of attempting to detect hydrolysis of ATP by measuring the release of phosphate, it just might not be a good idea to use a phosphate buffer! Luckily, this problem was easy to fix within 24 hours by dialyzing other fractions in a non-phosphate containing buffer, but it still provided a bit of humor throughout the lab for the rest of the week.

In other news, it has been a weekend of studying, as the biomedical graduate students are facing our first exam of the semester tomorrow. I’ve been remaining so hopeful for a snow day tomorrow which would push the exam back to Wednesday, giving me two whole extra days to study and therefore somewhat of a chance to pass. We did get about 8” of snow and knowing how inept D.C. is at dealing with snow, I thought for sure we would at least get one day off, although things seem to be clearing up well, particularly for a city which goes into panic-mode with just a few flurries. The majority of school districts in the area have already closed for tomorrow, or at least declared a two hour delay, so I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for two hours… that’s all I need! Just a two hour delay – I’m willing to go into lab and class for the rest of the day… is it really too much to ask for just two hours off? Or even a declaration of “any exams cruelly scheduled for 7:30am despite the fact that the course meets at 9, in order to allow enough time for completion of the exam, are hereby postponed until Wednesday.” In the meantime, it’s back to studying the nine bazillion different types of collagen… and checking the snow cancellations every fifteen minutes.

SUPERBOWL XL CHAMPIONS!

Pittsburgh Steelers -- Super Bowl XL Champions! And my beloved Hines Ward as MVP! Seriously, I don't think I've stopped smiling once today. What an amazing post-season journey it has been, considering that after the Week 13 loss at Cincinnati, I didn't even think they would make the playoffs. And then to beat Cincinnati in the wild-card game, Indianapolis in the divisional round, Denver to actually win the AFC Championship game, and then despite an absolutely horribly played first half... to win the Super Bowl. HERE WE GO, STEELERS, HERE WE GO!

The Value of Time

When it comes to my first laboratory experiences, I'll admit that I was pretty spoiled. My first research experience outside of undergraduate course-related bench work was at The Institute for Genomic Research, one of J. Craig Ventner's well-funded research institutions. During my ten months as a research intern, I was taught that time was considered to be more valuable than cost, in the sense that if one method was pricier but took less time, it was a worthwhile investment. While there was a limit to the amount of funding available, when it came to everyday things in the lab, it was no problem. Instead of running agarose gels which can take some time depending on the size of fragments, we used a BioAnalyzer chip. When preparing samples, I was taught to always prepare more than actually necessary -- after all, if one of your Eppendorf tubes somehow is knocked over, you'll have a spare, instead of having to go back and repeat everything the next day. In addition to funding, we were spoiled in terms of general lab maintenance. If glassware was used, it was just placed in a plastic bin, and the next day it was back on the shelf, sparking clean and autoclaved. In fact, it wasn't until I started my current laboratory rotation that I even actually saw an autoclave with my own eyes (don't worry, I am completely despoiled now, and am a pro at autoclaving my own glassware and all the trash from the lab). My time at TIGR was, to date, the best laboratory experience I have ever had, not just because of the funding, but also because I truly enjoyed what I was doing, and the Howard Hughes fellow under whom I was working took the time to actually explain things to me and let me do some thinking on my own. My senior year as an undergrad, I did research at the National Cancer Institute. While not funded to the extent of TIGR, the lab still did not find itself pinching pennies at every corner. Once again, the general attitude seemed to be that time was considered to be more costly than supplies -- after all, if you can get more experiments done and generate more data, then there is a better chance of securing a grant.
Then I entered graduate school. My first rotation was in the best-funded research laboratory of the entire university, so the experiences were similar to my previous ones. The expensive equipment was available for my use, even though it would be much cheaper to do the same experiments by hand. My second rotation (the lab in which I will be staying for my thesis), however, is slightly different. It's not that the lab has no money, but just that it is much more cost-conscious than any other in which I have worked. Over the past two weeks, I have been busy attempting to make sense of a GST-CBP plasmid sent from another lab, which is the positive-control in an RHA pulldown experiment that I am doing. However, the lab did not send a map (and actually apparently couldn't 'find' the plasmid either, so they just sent crude cell lysate) and so, after a few literature searches, was able to identify the vector used for the plasmid and the amino acid sequence of the fragment of CBP. After generating what I thought was a correct plasmid map, I went to work doing a few restriction enzyme digests. Using my training from previous labs, I made a larger reaction mixture than necessary. Although a mini-gel will only hold 10ul, I used 40ul for my total volume reaction, just out of habit since this was what I was originally taught. The fourth-year student in the lab, who has truly been a savior in terms of helping me with questions and not laughing or calling me stupid when I do things incorrectly, pointed out that if I was only going to run 10ul on a gel, and the only purpose was to check the size of the fragments and I wouldn't need the digested pieces for anything else, it was wasting both the DNA and the expensive restriction enzymes to make more than necessary. Following his advice, I started using a 10ul total reaction volume. Naturally, I pour my a gel for the thousandth time, let it solidify, load it up, turn on the power source, set it to 90V, watch for the bubbles, and walk away. Twenty minutes later I return, and the gel is floating up off the bottom of the gel box, and all my DNA has somehow spilled off. Since, for the first time in my life, I only made the exact amount necessary, I was stuck repeating the digestion. Thankfully the whole process only took about another three hours, but somewhere, the biomedical research gods are looking down on me and laughing.

Also, for those of you who need a little help getting energized before the big game, might I suggest (complete with sound, so don't forget to turn on the speakers!):
The Original Version
The Playoff Version

Student Health Stereotypes

This may be sharing a bit too much personal information, but honestly, today was just too ridiculous to not discuss. In a bit of background leading up to the story (and the part where I may share more personal information than you wish to know), I no longer produce enough progesterone, so without taking progesterone, I don't menstruate. Frankly, as long as it's not causing any other problems, I can't say that I mind at all. However, in order to ensure that there are no other problems as a result, at the end of December I decided to put my university-provided health insurance to use and head down to Student Health. After drawing about a liter of blood for testing (not kidding) and running a bazillion tests, I was referred to radiology for two types of ultrasound to rule out adrenal or ovarian tumors.

This afternoon, I went back to Student Health for a follow-up appointment and to discuss the results of my ultrasound. This is where the story begins.

My Afternoon at Student Health, or Why Every Stereotype You Hear About Student Health is True. A real-life experience in Two Acts.

Location: Examining Room.
Enter: Nurse.

• Nurse: "What brings you here today?"
• Julie: "I was told to make a follow-up appointment to discuss the results of an ultrasound."
• Nurse: "And what were the results?"
• Julie: "I don't know, that's why I'm here."
• Nurse: "But what did the ultrasound say?"
• Julie: "I don't know. The radiologists didn't tell me anything at the time of the testing."
• Nurse: "So then why are you here?"
• Julie: "To find out what the results said."
• Nurse: "So are you in any pain?"
• Julie: "No."
• Nurse: "Then what is the nature of your visit?"
• Julie: "A follow-up appointment. I was told to schedule an appointment."
• Nurse: "For what purpose?"
• Julie: "To go over the results of my ultrasound."
• Nurse: "And what did the ultrasound indicate?"
• Julie contemplates banging head against wall until she has a severe headache, thereby allowing her to state that she is, indeed, in pain, which will appease the nurse.
  

Exit: Nurse
Enter: Doctor (but not the one with whom the appointment was made)

• Dr.: after flipping through chart briefly, "So, the problem appears to be that you do not ovulate, is this correct?"
• Julie: "Yes."
• Dr.: "Are you pregnant?"
• Julie: "Is it possible for me to even get pregnant considering I don't ovulate?"
• Dr.: "I understand that you are a biomedical PhD student. Therefore, you clearly are not in comprehension of basic human physiology. When you are pregnant, you do not ovulate."
• Julie: thinks to self, 'no really? When did 'PhD' become synonymous to 'moron'?'
• Dr.: "Are you pregnant?"
• Julie: "No, I am not."
• Dr.: "Are you sure?"
• Julie: "Yes, I am positive. Last month when I was here, I had a pregnancy test and it came back negative."
• Dr.: "Could you have become pregnant in the past month?"
• Julie: "No. Especially since I don't ovulate, which I do believe is a requirement for pregnancy."
• Dr.: "Why are you here again?"
• Julie: "To find out the results of my ultrasound. And considering it was a renal, ovarian, and uterine ultrasound, I feel like the radiologist may have noticed if I was pregnant."
• Dr.: ponders this for a moment, then replies with "Before we discuss this any further, you need to take a pregnancy test. You will find urine sample containers in the restroom."

Like I said, today just proved that every stereotype about every university student health center is, indeed, true. Oh, and in case you were wondering - the pregnancy test came back negative. Quite the relief - clearly, I was reeeeeeally worried about that.

HERE WE GO!

Here We Go,
Here We Go,
Here We Go Steelers,
Here We Go,
Pittsburgh’s Going to the Super Bowl
Here We Go!

Cheer the Steelers,
Black and the Gold.
It’s time for Pittsburgh’s Heart and Soul.
With Cowher Power,
We’ll get the job done.
This is the year we’ll get that one for the thumb!

Here We Go,
Here We Go,
Here We Go Steelers,
Here We Go,
Pittsburgh’s Going to the Super Bowl
Here We Go!

Roethlisberger,
Is ready to Win
With Ward, Randle El, and Cedric Wilson,
We’ll go to Bettis, Duce, and Parker for a touch down,
And if you get in their way, they’re gonna knock you around.

Here We Go,
Here We Go,
Here We Go Steelers,
Here We Go,
Pittsburgh’s Going to the Super Bowl
Here We Go!

Now the offense is ready to score,
And there’s one thing we know for sure,
If we don’t get it in the endzone,
We’ll get 3 points off of Jeff Reed's toe.

Here We Go,
Here We Go,
Here We Go Steelers,
Here We Go,
Pittsburgh’s Going to the Super Bowl
Here We Go.

We got Farrier, Porter, Haggans,
Polamalu, Hope, and Townsend.
The other team won’t get any ground
'Cause the defense is gonna bring the Steel Curtain down.

Here We Go,
Here We Go,
Here We Go Steelers,
Here We Go,
PITTSBURGH’S GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Breaking News!

I’ve been meaning to write up an update since I returned a week and a half ago about my winter break escape from the lab and my start to the new semester. I had things to say about my trip to see the BodyWorlds exhibit at the Franklin Institute and how I am completely unable to escape thinking about cancer-related issues, as my week in Aruba was tainted as I spent the days laying on the beach, wondering if the UV light was causing thymine dimers, and which repair mechanism (replication fork regression or translesion DNA repair) would be used to fix the DNA errors. However, none of this seems relevant anymore, as I have some Very Big News regarding my career as a graduate student.

Decision making is not something at which I excel. While I can be rather decisive when it comes to certain things (i.e., what movie to see, what to wear, what to pack for lunch), the big meaningful decisions leave me agonizing and sleepless. I’m not the most efficient decision maker either – writing out a list of pros and cons has never really worked for me, and talking to others just leaves me more confused than attempting to tackle the problem on my own. Thus, I have resorted to the highly immature method of pondering and thinking things through until I am completely stressed, and when I can no longer handle thinking about the decision any longer, just picking what is most convenient at that point in time. I’m quite sure that this method will fail me at some point in my life, but to date, I’m doing just fine. I struggled and struggled with the decision of where to attend undergraduate, and after going back to look at one school a second time, was so sick of the decision that I just put down my deposit right then and there (if I had looked at the other school that day, I would have wound up going there instead). The decision worked well for me – I have no doubt that my educational experience would not have prepared me nearly as well if I made the other decision, as I was able to have a well-rounded education majoring in biology and political science, and was able to have fabulous internships which do not exist outside of Washington, DC, including a year of interning on the Hill in the House of Representatives, six months doing research at The Institute for Genomic Research, and a year as a research intern at the National Cancer Institute. I once again struggled with the decision of where to attend graduate school, and ultimately, when I could no longer handle the thought and all other methods failed (polling my friends, attempting a pro/con list, ultimately the coin toss) just went with a school. Now that I am here, I am quite sure that I made the wiser decision when it came to an oncology program, as the cancer resources here are far superior.

Once again, I find myself making a big decision because, after spending weeks going back and forth, it just seemed to be the right choice at the right time. Yesterday, while talking with the PI of my current rotation about the future direction of my project, I made the big commitment decision because at that precise moment, it just seemed like the right thing, and I was sick of losing sleep going back and forth, confused over what to do. Despite having only completed two of my required three rotations (I have not yet been able to find a PI with funding and space to allow me to enter their lab for a third rotation, which was part of the reason why this decision was made), I became the first of the first-year PhD students to choose my thesis lab. That’s right – I committed myself to a laboratory and to an advisor, and now know in exactly which lab I will be spending 90% of my waking hours for the next 6ish years.