Here’s a list of prominent suppliers. We consume a lot of their product in RNA Journal Club, as you’ve probably noticed, especially from the triangle of cartels I call the “Big Three.” You’re warned that the quality can be highly variable:

The Big Three

Cell
Nature
Science

The rest

Molecular Cell
Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (NSMB)
Nucleic Acids Research (NAR)
RNA
RNA Biology
Silence

Yeeawh, hit that #$%@.

Keep your presentations short and sweet. Limited free passes for unnecessary images can only be given for humor, that is IF you’ve got the funny credentials. Otherwise leave these to the experts.

What, the reader may ask, did we do in the 6 years between starting C. elegans genetics and publishing the first article on it? Since the animal has a short life cycle of 3.5 days, it should not have taken all that much time just to complement and map the mutations. Many visitors who came to the MRC Lab in Cambridge thought that we spent far too much time eating, drinking, and talking. Observing us only during normal working hours, you could see their point. If one arrived at the lab at the reasonable hour of 10 am, there was just time to open one’s mail before adjourning to the canteen for morning coffee, usually prolonged by a very interesting discussion on some aspect of science. This did not leave much time before lunch, which naturally was also accompanied by discussion that was terminated only by rushing off to attend an afternoon seminar on the Bohr effect in hemoglobin or the like. That brought one to afternoon tea and after that there was hardly enough time to start anything in the lab before adjourning to the pub for liquid and intellectual refreshment. It was only after dinner that the real work started and the lab then filled up with the owls. Even these bouts of work had to be interrupted, of course, for midnight coffee and more discussions.

Sydney Brenner, from  In the Beginning Was the Worm . . .

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.

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.