It never turns out well.

I went in to SLU yesterday to check on my students plates, and, if everything looked as well as I expected, to take the first timepoint.

Stop right there and review that last sentence. Do you see what my mistake was? You might say it was "going in to SLU yesterday". You might say "doing the timepoints for the students". I wouldn't necessarily disagree. But the real mistake was that I expected everything to look good.

Things did not look good. They looked quite bad. One after the other I found contamination, plates that weren't labeled, plates that didn't appear to have anything in them… so after I ended up throwing out ¾ of the plates, I began to wonder: are they all really not getting it? Or… is it me? I mean, I knew some of them were having difficulty, but I though some were OK.  But the evidence was to the contrary. As I see it, there are three possibilities:

1. I am a bad teacher.
2. My students are not coming to class prepared.
3. The experiment is flawed.

Let's work through each possibility:

1. I am a bad teacher. According to my TA I'm going over and above what has been done in previous semesters. I give my students detailed protocols; I describe visually the protocol; and I demonstrate for them how to do it. I am covering all different learning styles. Plus, I've gotten positive reviews from other classes I've taught and student I've mentored. That still doesn't necessarily rule out this possibility, but it does seem to indicate that the shortages aren't on my end.

2. My students are not coming to class prepared. Well, that is true. I am racking my brain to come up with a way to combat this particular problem, and would welcome any suggestions. However, even so, once they get to class they have everything they need to complete the experiment, so while this fact is annoying it shouldn't necessarily result in such a catastrophe of having to discard 75% of the work.

3. The experiment is flawed. I know it isn't inherently flawed because it has been done before, successfully. However, I haven't done it recently, and I haven't done it at SLU, so perhaps this possibility should be explored further. I decided to take some cells from my TA and set up the experiment myself- just to make sure that it could be done. My TA kept protesting that she would do it, but you know the saying… if you want it done right, do it yourself.

I would have preferred to start from scratch, but I didn't have time to make media. So I took her media and filtered it, and went to get all the dishes and supplies I needed. It was actually a useful learning experience for me, since I had never personally used the TC facilities at SLU, having imported all my cells from MRU where I do my research, and handing them directly to the TA who has been maintaining them since. So I'm gathering all the supplies, and that is when I noticed that the 12 well plates that the class had used for the growth curves were collagen coated. F*** f*** f*** f*** f***. I don't know for sure, having never actually directly compared, but I have a feeling that this is perhaps some of the reason the cells are not growing well and do not look right. I am extremely angry about this for several reasons.

>It will, no matter what, screw up the results. Hopefully not badly enough that my class won't still learn something.
>My TA didn't notice, when I asked her to find 12 well TC plates, that the box was labeled, in big letters, "COLLAGEN". Or, perhaps, she didn't realize it was important.
>I didn't notice it during class, when everyone was plating their cells.
>I'm not sure if I should be mad at myself- for not specifically checking to make sure these were the correct plates. But really, who would think that there would be collagen coated plates, and not plain old TC plates, in the supply closet? SLU has not much money, and I would never expect them to have the more expensive plates just laying around up for grabs.

At the end of the day, it is nobody's fault but my own. I have relied too heavily on my TA, and on protocols supplied to me by past-professors of the course. It is good that I am in there, getting my hands dirty, so to speak. I am turning over a new leaf. It took a Sunday visit to the lab for me to realize just how bad things were, but the semester is still young.

I took five years off after graduating college. Well, that is a misleading statement; it wasn't like I was doing anything fun or wild or irresponsible. I worked for half that time as a research assistant, trying to decide if I liked it enough to pursue a PhD or MD; and the other half I spent working in the family business.

Interestingly enough, it wasn't my time in science that convinced me that I wanted to be a scientist; it was my time away from it. I actually missed it. And so even though I had gotten out, I had made my escape… I found myself begging graduate schools to "please take me back!" At first, when they did, I felt smug: I was older and wiser then my classmates and therefore more confident (arrogant?). But as the years have passed I have begun to wonder… what if I hadn't come back? And, did I ever really leave? Did I ever really allow myself the possibility of pursuing a different path?

The honest answer is… no. Ever since I was five and I declared to my uncle that I was going to find a cure for cancer, I have been working towards that goal. It sounds cliché, but it is the truth. My path was always laid out in front of me, and even when I supposedly "took time" to "find myself", all I really did was find a detour that led me straight back to where I'd started… just a few years behind.

Now I find myself faced with a new fork in the road. I am looking for tenure track faculty positions, yes, but I am looking at places that are not research institutions. I am looking at places where my primary responsibility is not to do research, but to teach. GASP! To many of my classmates and colleagues- and, even more accurately (ironically enough), to many of my own teachers- this might seem like I am settling. That I am not realizing my full potential. That I am giving up. But, given the chance to find my own path before and not taking it, I realize now that there are still so many forks in the road, and I have to go in the direction that will lead to my own sense of fulfillment.

So I continue to move forward. I like what I am doing, I do. But… I still wonder. What if I had started college as an "undecided"? Where would I be today? And I realize that as much as I want to train good scientists, the one thing I really hope to teach all my students is… to explore all the possibilities.

One of the classes I am teaching is a master's level lecture/lab class all rolled into one five hour session per week. It is quite a challenge to fit the lab into that time frame, not because 5 hours isn't enough time, but because the class only meets once per week. When planning the syllabus, I thought five hours would be plenty of time, and I arranged it so that the class would be finished in time for me to get my daughter off the school bus. Well, I was being naïve. The first class went over by half an hour; the second class went over by an hour, and the third class went over by 3 hours. Three hours! Not because I took too long; in fact, on week 3 I only gave a very brief lecture in which I went into extreme detail about the day's exercises. I wrote out a summary, explained it verbally, and demonstrated what was to be done. And yet it still took 8 hours. For some perspective, if I had to do that particular technique, it would have taken me 20 minutes.

At 2:30- which is when the class is supposed to end- one of the student came up to me to clarify the details of the protocol. This was five hours into the class, when I expected everyone to be done. He hadn't even started. I have no idea what he was doing for that whole five hours; he looked busy; but busy doing what?

As frustrating and tiring as that was, the real worry for me is that this week 3 exercise was just setting up our cell cultures for week 4. Just plating the cells. Nothing else. My students will have to plate their cells every week, and do the experiment as well. How am I possibly going to get it done? I am more than a little bit concerned.

The other problem I have is with the laboratory notebook. They are using lab notebooks that have duplicate pages, and hand in the pages from that day at the end of lab each day. My problem is that the pages are too neat. I know, as I am working with them, that they don't always get the calculations right the first time. Yet I don't see this in their notebook. Often I see them taking notes on scraps of paper, and then copying into their lab notebooks at the end of the day (which kept me 20 minutes late, week 2). I have told them that under no circumstance are they to do this; that I want them to write everything directly into the lab notebook, that it has to be legible but not pretty. They will each hand in formal reports as they finish each experiment; the lab notebook, as we all know, is a record of their progress, but not a formal presentation of the data. And yet they are fixated on the neatness factor. They protest "But I don't have the results yet!" Last week I crumpled up and threw away one girls' notes. This week I fear that I am going to have to be even more dramatic; I am going to forbid any other notebooks or papers in class, and I am going to have to tell them I will deduct points each time I see them writing on scrap papers. They are always asking "How many points is this worth?" of "Is this on the quiz" (Which is an irritating question because as I have told them over and over… there are no quizzes. To me it is more important they get the technique and understand how to interpret the data.), so this tactic should make an impression.

Sigh.

I allow my students to email me their assignments.  Many of them choose this option, not because they are environmentally conscious paper conserving earth helpers, but  because they are apparently incapable of reading the syllabus or listening when I warn them in advance of assignment due dates.  My policy is that if I receive the document before the end of the day, then I will not mark it late.  This makes me feel generous, and it makes them not fail the class.  It is a win-win situation.

But sometimes it is actually quite tedious to have to grade digital documents; and I really hate to have to print them all myself.  One day I was browsing at Staples and I saw the    Wacom bamboo fun digital pen tablet, and my imagination immediately ran away with me.  Oh the possibilities!  I could write comments as if I was using a pen a paper!  I could slash those digital documents apart with the same gusto that I use my red ball point pen! And then, I could use it to draw and edit photos... what fun!!!

I am not one to buy things spur of the moment, not these kinds of technological things; so I went home and did some research and found out that it was a pretty nifty device- not the most high tech version, but probably sufficient for someone like me.  So I went back and bought one.

That was a week ago.  Since then, I've been trying to get it to work.  The problem is that I can't install it on the laptop I use for my classes- it belongs to the school and I don't have the appropriate priveleges; and I just haven't had time to go to the help desk and get them to do it.  In the meantime I installed it on my personal computer and have begun to play with it.  I was so excited; but after a couple of hours,  I am losing my enthusiasm. It doesn't quite work the way I imagined; writing with the pen seems a bit awkward.  Perhaps practice will make perfect; I don't know.  I just haven't had the time.

So, the assignments languish in my inbox.  I will not grade them until I get this damn thing working.  It is so disappointing.  I had such high expectations.  Sigh.

The blogosphere is a quiet presence; so a moment of silence for Annie Le isn't the best way to honor her memory.  We all know people like her, or were like her ourselves:  a graduate student just settling in to her dissertation research, with so many plans for her future- her future career, her future with her fiance, her future with her friends.  She was just going about a normal day, carrying on research, and was tragically, brutally silenced forever.

What we can do to honor Annie is to educate.  Educate the public as to the difference between a PhD student and a Med student.  Educate the public as to the reality of life in a research lab:  the research might be 'cutthroat' but that isn't quite as violent as it sounds. Many of us are open and collaborative, not closed and secretive. Educate the public that most students have very healthy normal relationships with their professors.  Educate the press that women can be professors too, and we don't all look like the nerds from Revenge of the Nerds.  Educate the press to the fact that Annie was a very typical graduate student; attractive, vivacious, stylish. Let us not be quiet, let us be heard.

And we can pray that the guilty person is brought to justice quickly.

Things are going on around here that I wish I could blog about, but I just can't.  Let's just say that I will forever remember this day...

(content deleted)

On a lighter note, my personalized lab coat was noticed, with envy, by some of my colleagues.  However, since my boss had to buy her own, too, I don't think they'll reimburse me any time soon.  Ah well, it still made me feel more 'official'.  Good thing, since my students probably think I am some sort of criminal suspect...

My new lab coat just arrived via UPS.  I've never bought a lab coat for myself  before, I mean, with my own money.  Usually I just go down to the stock room and throw one in my shopping basket if I need a new one.  But now I am teaching a lab class at SLU, and needed a lab coat. There is not a stockroom at SLU,  so I ordered one.  While I was at it, I had it personalized.  Some of my colleagues have personalized lab coats, having been gifted one for various reasons.  I never did- it wasn't something that was done at my grad school.  The degree was enough. 

But now that I have one, it makes me feel special.  All for $14.95.

Which I will try and get reimbursed. It would make me feel more special if I didn't have to buy it for myself.

I canceled the late night class. It turns out that one student was dropping the class anyway.

Whoo-hoo, I get three more days to prepare.

Damn, that means I have to pick up a class in the spring.

So I do have to cancel one of my sections, and combine them into one. The question is... which do I keep?  Which do I cancel?

One is at night- going until rather late into the night- and one is during the day.

The day time section fits my schedule such that I can get my girls to school/ daycare; go to class; and then get home in time to get them home from school/ daycare.

The night time section requires me to make alternative arrangements for childcare; also, it goes late into the night, rather past my bedtime.

Guess which section I'd rather cancel?

So what is the problem?   One student.  There is one student who is part time and is possibly not available to come in during the day.  Canceling the night time section could cause major problems for that student.

But, there are other classes. However, this masters level class is part of a masters program that originally started out as an evening program for part timers; so it is sort of a policy to keep evening classes available.  However, everyone else is actually a full time student and can come during the day.  Plus, there aren't other classes on that day that would cause scheduling conflicts for them (we all use the same lab, so that prevents any overlap!) And who knows, maybe this one student could come during the day, too.

... so do I just say screw it and cancel the evening class and let that one student fend for themself?

If I don't decide soon I won't be able to notify them in time to make sure they all know to come (or not) at the correct time!

I emailed this student to ask them to contact me ASAP; but seeing as they haven't responded to my other emails, and this is a holiday weekend, I don't hold high hopes for hearing from them in time.

Won't someone just make the decision for me, the one that I want, so that I don't have to feel guilty over screwing over this one student?

I used to work with someone who had a name very very similar to mine.  Eerily similar.  Almost identical, except he was he and I was she and we were not the same person and not in any way related, my clan being of Sicilian heritage and his of Southern Italian.  Most definitely not related. (Methinks he doth protest too much?).  He left a few years ago to pursue bigger and better things and that was the end of that. Or so I thought.

Lately, he has been haunting me in absentia.  My keycard access and parking were turned off because I was mistaken for him.  Oddly, I was in my parking lot when my keypass was disabled, leaving my unable to get out.  A quite frustrating conundrum, one that found me contemplating the height of the curb and the clearance of my undercarriage.  (Had I driven my husbands pick up truck that day it would have been no problem).  (I ended up calling the parking office and taking fifteen minutes to explain that I and he were two different people. )

It isn't just here, though; he haunts me OUT THERE, too. I applied for a position at his alma mater, and his name came up.  My new part time position is at the place where he did his masters degree, and so of course his name came up. I went through the same old conversation: Haha, yes, that is funny.  No, no we are not related.

Then I found out that he has recently been hired as an Assistant Professor.  At (small local college).

I interviewed for that job.

I was number 3.

Apparently, he was number 1.

!!!!

I was upset when I didn't get the job, although now I am glad because bigger and better opportunities have come my way (that is right, I'll just keep telling myself that).  I always thought he'd be a great teacher, and I can see that he is well qualified for the position, and I do wish him well.

But still.  Do I think he is a better teacher then I?  Do I think he is more qualified then I?

Perhaps this small local college was confused.  Perhaps they mistook he for I.  After all, it has happened before...

I was hired as a part time professor in the graduate program at SLU.

My course load during the fall was sufficient that I knew I couldn't also keep up my part time post-doc.  My PI generously suggested I take a leave of absence and return next semester.

I had to also rearrange my course load at PUI, where I adjunct; the powers that be generously let me switch around my sections to fit into my new schedule at SLU.

I have been getting ready for class at SLU, signing on to blackboard, getting my course materials ready.  Anxiously checking my roster to see how many students I had to work with.  As of Friday, one section had 5 and the other had only 1 student; however, enrollment is this week so I wasn't worried.

Today I got a call from the director.  If enrollment doesn't perk up, they will have to cancel one of my classes, and I'll have to pick up a class in the spring to make up for it.

I rearranged my life to make this part time position fit... and now it might be for naught.

Ugh.

Yes, I am feeling overwhelmed. I have 11 days until my first class and I am still writing up my syllabus and planning out our weekly labs. Four of those days are weekends, and it is impossible to get anything done on weekends; one of those days is a holiday, and two of those days are in the 'before day care starts but after nanny leaves' category. That leaves 4 days to get it all done.

I should include today but I have a different set of tasks for today: clean up my desk, clean off my bench, and get all my notes organized in lab. I am taking a leave of absence from my post-doc* for the fall, while I focus on teaching. When I finally do come back I want to be able to remember what I was doing and to find my lab books and frozen stocks and solutions, etc (assuming no one else lays their hands on all those things). It's weird. Last time I had to plan for an extended absence was just before I gave birth; since I didn't know exactly when that would happen, as my due date approached I would write up a detailed 'to-do' list before I left work each day, just in case… (Truthfully, I only had to do this once each pregnancy. In both cases, I left work Friday night thinking "this weekend will be it" and Saturday morning, I woke up and went into labor.)

I am excited to get a break from the bench and focus on teaching, even for a little while. I hope when I come back I'll be able to jump right back into work.

 

*As of October 1 I think I officially outgrow the title "post-doc". Last time my PI had to introduce me to someone (a post-doc candidate, as a matter of fact) he was puzzled as to what to call me. "This is Tina, a- er, um, ah- senior researcher in the lab."

I'm getting ready to teach my first class at SLU. It is my first experience working completely independently to teach a class, and there is so much work that goes into it.

First, of course, I have to design the syllabus. When I say design I mean two things: First, figure out what to teach, when. Second: literally type it up in a coherent format for distribution. These are two different things but both have to be done well, and they are providing me with quite a challenge.

To be honest, though, I am not starting completely from scratch. This is a course that has been taught before, and I have several years worth of old course materials as a resource. I started with the old syllabi and tried to revamp them completely. The problem is that as a lab course, with experiments that will run over multiple days or even weeks, fitting everything in is like putting together a puzzle. I was advised to keep out one or two exercises that were often problematic to execute, always confusing to understand, and not really integral to the goals of the class. Seemed like good advice, so I eliminated those. I was also advised not to add anything new: leave the vacancy; give myself some breathing room my first semester out. Seemed like good advice, so I decided to reorder the remaining exercises. The next challenge has to do with budget: there isn't much of one. I can't start introducing all these newfangled techniques when we don't have the reagents or equipment for them.

The question becomes, then: How do I revamp an old class with very little money and a very limited number of ways to achieve the goals set out in the course description? I have been working on this puzzle for two weeks now, and have finally come to the conclusion that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I have just taken last years' syllabus, added my name and contact info to the top, and retitled it for Fall 09.I have realized that I can update the class by focusing on the lectures and assignments, and leaving the labs alone.

I'm not done yet, though. That was only one fourth of the overall syllabus. Next topic for discussion: deciding what kinds of assignments to give, and how much each assignment will be worth.

I

I had my first meeting yesterday at my new university, where I will be working- for the next year at least- as a part time faculty member. I have an 18 credit load, which in my case translates into 3 lab classes. I have found an old syllabus online, but that is as far as my preparation has gone. I haven't received an official offer, I haven't been authorized in the school's intranet, blackboard, email… I feel like I am still floating in a cloud and I was looking forward to going to this meeting and being pulled back down to earth.

Yeaaahhhhh… still floating.

They are still doing a background check so I didn't get to sign any paperwork. I was given a quick tour of the labs and lecture halls- I had seen this before but this time, knowing what I would be teaching, I looked for specific equipment. I met my TA. I have a TA! Two, in fact! (what do I do with my TA? I've never had a TA before, and I am perfectly happy to delegate, but how much are these particular people capable of handling?) And they told me I should start ordering supplies now, because sometimes it takes a while for them to come in. Then they paused, looking expectant, and I thought: am I supposed to come up with a list right now?

The general sense of confusion that is apparent in that conversion pretty well sums up the whole afternoon. I went in with a large number of questions, but not only did I not get a chance to ask most of them, I also walked out with two hundred or so more.

However, I did get a CD from the previous course instructor with all of his notes and lectures, and I arranged to meet with him next week. I do feel that I am now prepared to start preparing; I know the workspace and expectations, I have the syllabus and old course documents. I need to look it all over and figure out what I am doing, and once I get the all clear from HR I will begin the work. Phew. How exciting!

In reference to this article in the current issue of Nature; and in particular this:

"Certain corners of the Internet have been erupting in argument in the past weeks following an announcement by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York that it will henceforth require scientists who blog to ask the permission of presenters before firing up computers or mobile phones and publicizing their findings."

I'm sorry, but I thought that once you presented your data publicly- even if 'only' at a poster session at a conference somewhere- it was, well- public. If it is interesting, it will generate discussion. I mean really, your biggest competitors are probably at the conference with you. By virtue of the fact that you are presenting your data, aren't you giving people permission to discuss it?

(Also, can I ask, which corners of the internet? How did I miss this? I gotta get my head out of the clouds.)

(One more thing. I shamefacedly admit that I didn't find this article because I was reading through the Nature eTOC's. I found it because I was looking through my blogroll. Thanks, Cath.)

Terra Chamberlain [aloe9@simplicity.com] sent me an email today:

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Our staff will get back to you in next few days!

 

'Non accredited'. Really? In that case, I can go print myself lots of diplomas. Maybe that'll be my new wallpaper in my office.

A few weeks ago I spent a great deal of time preparing for my interview and my presentation, and I though all went very well. I was extremely disappointed when, two weeks later, I got the rejection letter.

Then I found out there was an internal candidate. Need I say more?

Why, yes, in fact, I do. Because it doesn't end there. However, as this is my future employer, this post will not be a rant, rather, it will be a celebration. Long and short, I have been hired part time for the next year and- if all goes well- full time for the year after.

The greatest irony is that the first class I am teaching will be on cell culture.

Maybe I'll learn something useful.

For my non-scientist readers some background:

Many of us use cells that we grow in special little dishes for our research. These can be different types of cells that are isolated from different organisms. They can be healthy 'normal' cells (although they aren't exactly normal, since they are growing in a dish in a lab somewhere and not in their natural environment- the body). I use cancer cell lines, which means someone at some point took a tumor out of a patient, isolated the cancerous cells, and those tumor cells have been happily growing in our labs ever since. A primary cell line is one that has been very recently isolated- days old. Established cell lines have been growing for years or even decades. Some of these cancer cell lines have survived long past the patient. The T47D breast cancer cell line shown in the picture above was isolated sometime before 1980, and perhaps even as early as 1974. This technique of cell culture is a well established practice, but that doesn't mean it is foolproof. Cells in culture don't always behave the way you want or expect them to, and that can be very frustrating. Case in point:

I work with a lot of different 'primary' –oma cell lines. I use the word 'primary' with some caution, because although our manager of the tissue culture facility goes down to the OR once or twice a week to get new tumors from which to establish these cells, by the time I get them they are really at a passage past the point that qualifies them for still being primary, yet they aren't immortalized either. This is significant because although they do continue to grow for some time, at any unpredictable and random point in time they will reach a crisis and just up and die. It has nothing to do with passage number; and the frustrating thing about it is that they all seem to die at the same time. I will come in one day having plated mass quantities of cells in preparation for big experiment, and lo and behold all my cells are dead.

This has happened to me several times, and I am quite frustrated about it because it makes my progress on this project sporadic and sloooooooooooooooooooow. Several of us are working with these cell lines, each investigating our own angle, and this happens to each of us, but each at different points. I can rule out equipment failures, I can rule out media problems. It isn't contamination. It isn't that they are overgrowing, because that will actually cause this same problem so I am meticulous to the point of being anal about preventing that particular phenomenon. I have been doing tissue culture for 16 years now, and this is the first time I've had this problem, and it is driving me batty. My only other option is mycoplasma, so I am testing for that now, but even treatment with Ciprofloxacin doesn't help.

It makes me want to give up. I am incredibly discouraged. My PI keeps telling me not to wait for the cells, but since all of my experiments hinge on having these cells to work with, I don't really think there is any other option. Grrr. Meanwhile, I'm a cell miser. I don't throw anything away; I'll freeze the cell pellets, or freeze lysates at -80 and stock them away for future use. It isn't my favorite way to work, but at this point, it is the only way. Sigh. Maybe it is time to find a new model system. I'm thinking zebrafish.

To some extent our gender will always affect our work; that isn't sexism, that is life. My husband didn't have to carry around 30 extra pounds, run to the bathroom every hour, or modify his work practices to avoid exposure of our unborn baby to hazardous chemicals or radioactive substances. He didn't have to write detailed to-do lists at the end of every day just in case he went into labor that night, and he didn't have to stay out of work for 6 weeks after finally giving birth. He didn't have to drive to work exhausted after being woken three times during the night to breastfeed an infant, and then stop what he was doing twice a day to go pump. As much as we might not want them to, these things do impact your career. And that, right there, is the problem; not that they impact your career, but that we don't accept that they will.

The fact is, when I was a technician and then a graduate student, there were very few women in tenure track faculty positions at my university. As a technician, I worked for the only female faculty member in the whole department. The whole OB/GYN department! While I was there she was undergoing all sorts of hormone treatments in an ultimately futile attempt to get pregnant- she had put it off until it was too late. Later, as a graduate student in a different department, things were a little bit better. There was not one, but two female faculty. Neither of them had children.

All of the married men did.

However, in my class, in my department, there were only female students. In our program as a whole, the majority were female. That is a trend that has continued. My graduate lab had a male PI… and the rest of us were female. My current post-doc lab finds itself in the same situation. In a way, that is hopeful; so many women being trained, some of them must succeed. The problem is this: the reason there were no men was because they all went out and got jobs.

The women, though equally talented, had more to worry about: their spouse's career; the extra time it took to have children; geographical limitations. It's nice to say "don't let these things impact your career choices" but the reality is that they do. I'm sure I would have a faculty job right now, maybe not at Major Research University, but certainly at Small Liberal Arts College… if I was willing to move. But I'm not. And I still have to reassure myself that That is OK. I am driven; I do long for success; I applaud those who have achieved it; but don't denigrate me for the sacrifices I chose to make. Because it is a sacrifice.

The hardest thing about it is not looking at it as a failure. It's not that I have failed to get a job… it is that I have succeeded to make a Home.

The other kind of discrimination that really gets to me, and no one talks about, is career discrimination: the idea that of these alternative careers (by which I mean, anything other than a full time tenure track position at MRU) is really just the backup when you fail to get a 'real' job. When I tell my PI "I made the top four for this faculty position at small college" and he responds with the completely unenthusiastic "Oh. Well, it's too bad you'll be leaving science now", I cringe. Gender discrimination stinks, but career discrimination affects us all. We need to understand that there are many different definitions of success; we need to embrace our strengths and let them take us to the best path for ourselves. We need to understand what it takes to be a successful scientist/mother, and then define that as success. Then the guilt and strings will stop holding us back, and we can be free to work on removing those gender gaps.

At 1:00 yesterday, completely by accident, I realized that it was my turn to present a paper at journal club at 9:00 today. I decided to present something that was interesting, different and uncomplicated, seeing as I had only two hours to prepare. This is what I found: the best excuse ever for going to have that extra cup of coffee. It will prevent skin cancer! The only way that this is related to my research is if you apply the six degrees of separation rule. Productive use of my time? Puh-lease! But I'm not the one who insists we sit in random journal club once a week*. Anyway, the authors, following up on some mouse work and some epidemiological studies, examined the effects of caffeine on apoptosis in UVB exposed keratinocytes, and conclude that caffeine pretreatment leads to an increase in apoptosis via ATR/ CHK1 signaling pathways. A dead cell can't cause cancer, so ergo caffeine is a good anti-cancer prophylaxis . Actually, when reading through the article, I think the whole point was to introduce a potential new specific inhibitor of Chk1 kinase; however, they never actually show that Chk1 is inhibited, so I'm not sure I am convinced.

The part that was really interesting? The fact that the journal had a press release detailing the study. How can I have been doing research for so many years and never realized that journals did this???? I guess I just always skipped that section. The "In the Press" section. So that is what that means… ahh, to do research that would get one In the Press. The mainstream press, that is.

We interrupt this daydream to move on to the point at hand: journal club is done, I drank my grande extra bold turbo coffee with extra cream and sugar, went to the bathroom three times, and now it is time to soak up some sun while I eat my lunch outside. Sunscreen? Nah. I'm good.

*yes yes, journal club can be informative. But 95% of the time it only serves to provide me with more time to sit and drink my coffee before it gets cold.

**as if I planned it, this was the PhD comic from today.