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!).