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.