scientist

After a 2-month spell of awkward hesitation, overthinking and worry, I finally decided which lab I wanted to permanently join as a Ph.D. candidate. Mercifully, things worked out - resolving at least a week's worth of unpleasant daydreams regarding my "inevitable" rejection - and I started work right away.

I hadn't anticipated what a difference it would make to be a Real Member of a lab, as opposed to a UROP student, intern or rotation student. Although my duties as a student researcher are not unfamiliar - and actually the project I'm working on is a direct continuation of my rotation project - the internal experience has proven to be entirely new. After a few days in my new lab, I noticed my attitude shifting. Somehow the time went faster. Instead of reading papers out of a sense of duty, I was looking them up for fun. I asked for extra background reading. Most of all, I found myself feeling irresistibly curious about my experiments.

It's not that I wasn't curious before. I was, in a removed way. But, as I've endlessly proclaimed in the context of early education, a lack of independence and ownership over one's work and learning dampens curiosity extraordinarily effectively. It's hard to be excited about doing exacting, repetitive work for a project that was created by somebody else, directed by somebody else, and that will be finished and celebrated by somebody else after you leave. In those situations, your ideas are of modest (if any) importance. You feel totally replaceable - and your curiosity begins to tend toward the hour, the contents of your lunch box, and your evening plans. I felt that way as a child so often, and yet somehow, I failed to recognize the same dullness of mind that had overtaken my scientific thinking as I pushed through my rotations.

So, I must say - it was wonderful to realize that my ideas are once again relevant and important. I feel twice as awake, and for the first time in years, I found myself wishing, on a lazy Sunday morning, that Monday would come sooner so I could hurry up and get some results! I might actually discover something! Imagine that! I might learn something that nobody on earth has ever learned before. Maybe it will open a door. Maybe, somehow, it will help people. That's what science should be about.

A few days ago, an essay edited by my new PI was returned to me, covered with correction. I realized later that I had expected to feel rather defeated by the sheer volume of comments - in fact, I'd almost been preparing myself for a brief period of embarrassed mourning. But as I through the paper, I started to smile. Every logical hole, sloppy reference and choppy description had been pointed out, and I suddenly realized that I was tired of getting away with those kinds of mistakes. I know better - every single error in my papers was one I'd thought about as I wrote it, and lazily decided to ignore on the grounds that nobody has ever called me on them before, so why bother? Well, I can't do that any more. Now I get to be a real scientist.

This is where things get seriously, though. Being a real scientist. Sometimes it's hard to know what that means. In some labs and institutions, being a scientist means being part of what is essentially a business whose product or brand is new information about a very specialized topic. And a couple hundreds of years ago, being a scientist meant you were a Thinker - and probably also an inventor, entrepreneur, philosopher, ethicist, radical or handyman! (And, possibly enemy of the state. Thank goodness for modern times.) This stark change is particularly evident in biology, which requires increasingly enormous amounts of money, specialized equipment, detailed background knowledge, and complicated techniques to do cutting-edge work. Although there's certainly nothing wrong with the "science as business" model, it doesn't appeal to me. What I LOVE about science is its way of calmly and rationally dismantling our frivolous hierarchies, irrational beliefs and false boundaries - along with our ignorance and suffering. Science is the great equalizer. We're all made of nothing but atoms - molecules, cells, tissues, organs. Our bodies constantly rebuild themselves, day in and day out. We aren't at all who we were yesterday - and we'll be different again tomorrow. The way we build our lives around certain power structures, our prejudices, our desires - it's a front and nothing more; a practical way to deal with the world so 6 billion organisms can have any hope of surviving together. I think it would be impossible for me to do good science while wrapped up in the illusion that I had to rise to the top. Because there isn't one. For me, what makes science go are the sparks of collaboration that set your mind wheeling off to new ideas, combined with a constant, sobering reminder, repeated ad nauseum, that new knowledge can be both helpful and dangerous.

As luck would have it, I have a feeling - though I'm wary of jumping to any conclusions this early on - that I have landed in the right place at the right time and, critically, with the right people, to figure out a way through this maze. I've got my fingers crossed.

fluffy little summer post

So, we've consumed two entire watermelons in the last week. They weren't HUGE watermelons, but they weren't all that small, either. Today, we got stuck barefoot in a rainstorm... on purpose. Last weekend, we took a big bowl of cherries (no, really) and went walking to Harvard to buy a sunhat (I kid you not) and ended up finding a truck giving away free Ben and Jerry's ice cream (this is almost unbelievable). We sailed. We ate cucumber sandwiches. During our morning runs, we stop to smell the roses, which are pouring out over almost every fence in Cambridgeport. We fixed up our bikes (winter commuting is really harsh on the poor things) and pedalled around all freshly de-rusted in the late afternoon sun. The fan makes a racket in the window and papers flutter on the desk. The ice cube trays are refilled every day. The comforter is kicked off of the bed, so we can sleep like little children, all sticky-cheeked and warm and heavy, our legs hanging off the bed and our arms splayed out.

Summer.

dreaming in science

I'm trying to come up with a Great Idea for my thesis. This is about as difficult as hunting endangered tigers. Great Ideas, it would seem, are not only rather nocturnal, but also elusive, and fond of inhospitable climates. I languish in the humid evenings, coming up with one terrible idea after another... and then fall asleep, and wake up tangled at 3 in the morning with a fragment of a brilliant plan which fades away in to only the most frustrating memory after a few seconds. Ideas also show up while I'm biking, or running, or in some complicated arm balance at yoga class - in short, at any time at which it is absolutely impossible to write them down. Lately I've even started to dream these ideas, but of course in my dreams they are confused, nebulous and utterly nonsensical, despite appearing with an air of certainty.

C'mon muses, would it kill you to visit me when I've got a pen in hand?

a bad day snuck in

Despite a Herculean effort, I have not yet managed to force my capricious stomach in to obeying my every whim. This is really no surprise. What was I expecting, a bloody miracle?

But I'd be a damn liar if I didn't admit that it still throws me for a serious loop now and then. Yesterday was, unfortunately, one such example. By the end of the day I was gritting my teeth to get through every successive minute at work, with progressively less grace. Same old story, same old pain, and unfortunately, same old crushing doubts.

Though I'm not much of a fan of pain and nausea, it's the doubts that get me these days. Would somebody else give in as easily? Do I give up when others might only complain of discomfort? Am I subconsciously giving myself an excuse to fail? Who am I letting down by giving in? Will they even believe me? Will they ever trust me?

There are very, very few things that make me mad. This is one of them.

*****************************************************

Another cup of tea, another deep breath, and I begin again.

I try. I try so hard.

Harriet: the latest and greatest

winter retreat (unedited)

awake hours before dawn
and deep in to the night

the low sun passes over the snow
and every day the wind rearranges the drifts

covering my footprints in the field
while I sit on my cushion, wrapped in blankets and breathe

owls hooting outside my window
which I have opened, despite the cold

just to get a little more crisp air--
when you have time to smell it for hours

you realize just how starving you are
for every breath

I got lost in the snow, once
dazzled by the beauty of a hemlock tree

it was so, so quiet
and so in the quiet I tried an experiment --

what if you only had one more day to live?
it turns out,

that in the face of an imagined death
(less wrenching than the real thing, but still, I made an effort)

I love the blazing sweetness of sunlight
and the warmth of a lovely thought

and every breath turns out to be so overwhelmingly...
...wanted

it made me realize that when I convince myself that
our lives are too complex,

our existence too manufactured and removed from nature,
our purposes impossible to believe in,

it is just that I have momentarily forgotten
that everything in this world was made

to help people be juuuust that much more comfortable
so that they might be juuuust that much more joyful

oh, and we do get it wrong
but it's just so quaint and lovable

that we try at all --
it cures me

Valentine

Blustery day on Nahant - clouds rolling in, air salty, birds wheeling overhead

A few days later, a different beach (Crane's), unseasonable warm and windless, walking through deep, soft dunes and admiring craggy trees and the utter blue of the ocean

home-made bagels and hummus

Step 1. Make, rise and cut dough. It looks just like regular bread dough, but it's a little denser, and it contains a bit of honey.

Step 2. Shape dough in to a bagel shape.

Step 3. Put bagels in boiling, sugared water.

Step 4. Flip bagels.

Step 5. Drain bagels on towel.

Step 6. Put toppings on bagels!

Step 7. Bake bagels! First one side, then the other.

Step 8. Make delicious hummus.

Step 9. Make delicious sandwich. (Too bad we couldn't grow the veggies, too!)