Scooped Online
As I put the finishing touches on a project, I incessantly peruse the literature online, less out of interest in new discoveries, but more out of desperation to not find that I’ve been scooped. Please don’t tell me I’m alone in this behavior/activity. Especially nowadays with all the online advanced releases, one cannot help but check them as they arise, rather than discipline themselves to only check weekly for the weekly journals, bi-weekly for the bi-weekly journals, etc. Embracing technology; chained by technology–inseparable sides of the coin. Less coinage please.
An “unsentimental education”
I’ve been thinking about graduate school and mental health recently. Depending on circumstances, working toward a Ph.D. can bring about pressures on the mind strong enough to disturb it. Situations that end in the most extreme outcomes, like suicide, of course can probably never be fully attributed to an experiment gone wrong, an adviser gone wrong, an institution, or impending dismal career prospects. These cases are highly personal; many other people in otherwise identical circumstances would not react the same way. So look out for your chums, and your non-chums/co-workers too.
I was considering writing a piece about mental health among grad students at MIT, although I have now dropped the idea–too close to home I think. But while I was still investing interest in this story, a teacher refered me to an article, by Stephan S. Hall, that appeared in The New York Times Magazine in November, 1998, titled “Lethal Chemistry at Harvard”. It is an excellently written, but nonetheless very sad story about a graduate student in the chemistry department at Harvard who took his life in 1998. In the story, Hall wrote a paragraph describing the archetypal journey of a graduate student in the sciences. I found it so realistic that I think it’s worth reprinting:
Graduate study in the sciences, however, is a very unsentimental education. It requires the intellectual evolution from undergrad who can ace tests of textbook knowledge to original thinker who can initiate and execute research about which the textbooks have yet to be written. What is less often acknowledged is that this intense education involves an equally arduous psychological transition, almost a second rebellious adolescence. The passage from callow, eager-to-please first-year student in awe of an often-famous faculty adviser to confident, independent-minded researcher willing to challenge, and sometimes defy, a mentor is a requisite part of the journey.
I haven’t gotten to the defy your mentor stage yet, but boy I can’t wait. I’ve seen others do it and it looks pretty cool.
Me Blog You Long Time
I went to a Catholic high school–a pretty liberal one in Oakland, CA. Every semester we had to take a religion class. (Incidentally, it was also here that my love of biology was precipitated by a wonderful biology teacher. A women at the time, she is now a man–how’s that for a lesson in biology!)
Some of the classes required reading the bible and religious textbooks and such, classes like “Hebrew Scriptures.” Other classes emphasized more general societal and moral themes, classes like “Marriage and Family.” And then there was one class called “Christian Sexuality” that was for all intensive purposes, a sex education class taught by a priest.
My teacher for this course was quite a character. In one class, he brought in the most recent copies of Playboy and Playgirl. The class was split up by sex, and us boys had to look at the Playgirl, and the girls the Playboy. This went on for ~10 excruciating minutes, and then we had a discussion.
The funniest part of this was the story the Father told us about how he bought these magazines. It goes something like this: He, a priest dressed in full regalia, walks into a liquor store, nonchalantly picks up the pair of magazines from the shelf, and walks over to the counter. He lays down the magazines to pay. The Playboy is face up, and the clerk does a double-take upon noticing his customer’s dress. They both somewhat bewilderedly nod in acknowledgment as the clerk scans the Playboy. Upon seeing the Playgirl beneath, the clerk expresses the facial equivalent of throwing one’s arms into the air exclaiming “I give up!”
Anyhow, later in the semester this Father did give us a gem of a piece of advice (especially for a room full of 14-year-olds): Never make an important decision when you are: (1) drunk, (2) horny, (3) depressed.
Here’s a laboratory never list. Based upon your predicted outcome of a new experiment, never: (1) order reagents you will only need if the outcome is met; (2) start round two of the experiment before all results from round one are in; (3) present your preferred outcome, in the form of fake data, in a lab meeting (a guaranteed jinx); (4) plan a vacation.
Confidently predicting experimental outcomes I think must be like novice bull riding. You’ll get bucked around a lot; you can’t predict when you’ll lose control; and don’t make any big plans for right after because after bucking you off, the bull might come back and step on you.
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