Who are you and what do you do?

I can't tell you how happy I am that the weather finally cooled down. I can actually wear my hair down without worrying that the humidity will give it a reason to go wild. The temperature indoors feels about the same as it does outside so walking out the door isn't like hitting a wall of hot wind either. No one likes to stand around waiting for the bus in the hot, summer heat; makes the wait seem a lot longer than it really is--especially for this gal from Northern Ontario!


I spent most of the last two days on my feet almost non-stop. Now that I've gotten more comfortable with the all the new procedures I've learned, I've started running multiple experiments in parallel. Since I am also past the point of having to replicate previous experiments conducted by other people, the promise of future publications compels me to cram as much as I can into each day I spend in the lab. It hasn't been easy to get things done this past week with all the interruptions and appointments outside the lab. My PI laid down a concise plan for what she wanted accomplished and when she expected things to be done so it's important to me that I stay "ahead of the curve" so that when the next few interruptions come along, I don't fall behind schedule.

Not all PIs have the same expectations. Most of the people I worked for in the past didn't have deadlines and just about all of them kept me in the training/study reproduction phase a lot longer (which is frustrating for any scientist yearning for new discoveries and/or independence in the lab). If there's one thing I don't cope well with, it's feeling held back! Since I feel challenged and stimulated in this lab, I don't expect motivation to ever be a problem. I also enjoy being able to talk to my PI directly, instead of having to work my way up through an extensive hierarchy of post-docs, managers, and senior grad students. Dr. Sahai never makes us feel as though her time is "too important to waste on us". I have to admit though, I'm still trying to find a balance between sending her every data point as it comes in and not sending anything until it's requested. Some people are born "micro-managers" and others spread themselves so thin that they become "absentee PIs" (they have an office but hardly ever use it).

Being the first student in my class to arrive (the rest won't come until at least mid-August) also gives me the opportunity to get to know others in the department separately. Sometimes, that can be a bit spooky. It's gotten to be fairly typical for people I'd never met to greet me by name, know whose lab I was in and where I'd come from (schools & hometown). I guess it's fairly simple to remember just one person. What I find so striking is that people often seem to know more... like what I plan to do when I graduate. Most people are genuinely surprised when I tell them I'm keeping a blog, that I have my own business and make my own jewelry, etc. But they seem to know the sorts of things that are important in an academic setting (is my file posted on the wall somewhere in Weeks Hall?).

Just today, in fact, a professor dropped by my office as I was eating lunch and he seemed to recall all sorts of things I wouldn't have expected him to know. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm from Sault Ste. Marie; a favorite geological expedition destination (precisely why I wanted to create a research center there!). Maybe it's the fact that this department is so close-knit (like a little village or a small town where everyone knows everyone else's business). Maybe I have more (blog) readers than I realized. Whatever the case, I'm not used to getting so much attention. I usually just fade into the background... and silently slip below the radar...

Wasting Time

Yesterday I didn't get a single thing accomplished. Here's why...

I was just finishing up a 2-hour-long XRD analysis on the corundum sample I recently dialyzed when suddenly, the room plunged into sudden darkness and silence. Most likely, the campus-wide power outage was caused by an error at one of several nearby construction sites. "Maybe someone made a discovery at the (new) Discovery Institute (site)," someone said. So, I waited in the lab and stared at the screen like an idiot for the next few minutes while I attempted to come up with a plan to get everything done on schedule anyway; power outage or not.

Slowly, we all began to realize that this situation wasn't going to change anytime soon, removed my sample, picked up my belongings, and with a heavy heart, trudged back upstairs to my office. Other grad students were beginning to emerge from their labs and offices as well-- as if from a deep hibernation. Since the labs are generally located in the core of Weeks Hall, they lack windows and were simply too dark to work in. Windowless offices also fall into this category. The network and Internet were both out of commission as well so anyone doing computational research was also out of luck.

People gradually congregated in larger and larger clusters. Eventually, the "collective" came to a consensus about what should be done-- there was really only one thing we could do: go to the bar! It was just past 11:30 as we wandered down Orchard St. to Jordan's Big Ten Pub and yes, it would have been too early to start drinking (not that I could have anyway). We had a nice lunch and by the time we finished, the power was back on. Unfortunately, by then it was too late for me to squeeze in another XRD session before I had to leave for the pain clinic.

It's times like this that I really resent all the added responsibilities I have because of my chronic condition. Here I am trying to make the best possible impression and I keep getting interrupted... It wasn't just that appointment really; that was just the tip of the iceburg. What really got on my nerves were all the phone calls and messages I'd been getting from all of the clinics I have to visit all week long prior to that!

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had my own wheels. Most of the clinics are off-campus and more than a single bus transfer away. Unless my departures and arrivals are timed perfectly (they never are), and I'm not kept waiting at several crucial junctures during my visit (and I always am), or asked to hang around to fill out forms (and I always do so they won't call me in the middle of an experiment later) I would still be gone from the lab for at least an hour. Adding all of these to a long bus ride means I might as well cancel the whole afternoon.

As it turned out, they not only wanted me to have some films taken (for tumor hunts even though I feel just fine), they thought I should see a few other specialists too (sure, why not just completely strangle my academic career before it even gets off the ground!) on top of the docs I already have. If my lab mates didn't know better, they'd probably swear I was a hypochondriac! Aren't there any sick people around here who truly deserve all this attention? I'm hoping that once the films come back clean, everyone will just relax and let me be!

House of Pain

Things are starting to go a more smoothly now. Apparently, a crucial step was missing from the protocol I was trying to work from before. Sometimes a simple dilution step can make all the difference! Obviously, this meant I had to re-do the experiment... You see, even though the rest of the experiment proceeded as intended, the aliquots which were produced by it were far too concentrated for the spectrophotometer to measure the samples. Fortunately, this was an easy fix; do it over with the dilution step. The isotherm I plotted with my data looked much better than the first; smaller error bars, most points fit the overall pattern, no negative concentrations... Now I have to wait for my PI's 2 cents before I either break into a happy-dance or have a nervous breakdown.

I still haven't heard anything from University Housing about getting reimbursed for the spoiled food I had to throw away a few days ago. Since it IS summer, it's possible that the manager I wrote to is away on vacation. A lot of people seem to be away at the moment. Weeks Hall is looking more like a ghost town these days. I haven't seen most of the people I met during interviews last March since I got here and most of the people I have seen since arriving in Madison, have only cropped up once. To be honest, it's getting a bit lonely around here! A large portion of the department happens to be at a conference in Switzerland at the moment too. Lucky ducks!

Tomorrow I go for my first appointment at my new pain clinic. It's just a general consult before they officially take over maintaining my implants (since the pump covers the pain so well, there won't be much else for them to do). I've been on the phone a lot this week with medical staff who have all sorts of questions about my history. I guess I can understand. I mean, most people who've been through what I have aren't working; they're on disability. I don't look sick and I don't know if there are any other young adults out there at all who have been through a nightmare like mine. In fact, one nurse said to me, "I'm surprised you don't have post-traumatic stress disorder!"

The typical lifestyle of a chronic pain patient who isn't receiving effective pain management

It truly is a miracle that I'm even here at all. Millions of people around the world are suffering from chronic pain but most never find adequate pain management-- even after years of actively seeking it out. I suffered in agony for 7 long years before finding my way to Brigham & Women's Hospital's Pain Management Center (and that was after wasting a year-and-a-half at another Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate, Massachusetts General Hospital where they have an initiative called, MGH Cares About Pain Relief“ which appeared to contradict what happened in their clinic).

TV character Dr. House from the TV show, "House"; popping pills as if they were candy (a trademark gesture repeated ad nauseam throughout every episode of the show). Most chronic pain patients find this character to be an offensive stereotype of a chronic pain patient.

Society isn't exactly making it easy for pain patients to recover either. With pop culture making a mockery of us through TV shows like “House“, the DEA criminalizing our dependence on (not addiction to) Schedule II narcotics (and all the hoop-jumping & red tape that goes with that), the financial fallout associated with any chronic illness in this nation, and ignorance by medical professionals and the general public alike (if no one teaches them, how will they ever learn?), patients find themselves having to treat pain management as a full-time occupation. So much manpower and talent wasted! It's truly one of the most understated tragedies of modern medicine.

Urge the FDA to Protect the Rights of People with Pain:
Sign the Petition!

The Fridge Fiasco

As much as I needed the whole weekend to recharge, I didn’t actually get it. I spent all of today trying to cram an entire weekend’s chores into just one because of a refrigerator malfunction in my apartment yesterday. As I mentioned previously, I’m living in UW’s grad student/post-doc/faculty housing and for the most part, I’ve been pretty happy here. It’s peaceful, the staff are courteous and professional and I enjoy the convenience of living directly on the campus bus route. Yesterday morning, I went to pour milk on my cereal and big, gooey chunks of putrescence poured out. As I emerged from my semi-conscious state (I’m generally still half-asleep when I start rummaging around the kitchen for breakfast) I realized that the jug I was holding wasn’t actually cold. I soon realized that nothing in my fridge was cold at all! I immediately called the resident manager on call (the equivalent of an “RA“) who came right over to my apartment and in turn, called maintenance.

It was decided that I would attempt to salvage what I could from my freezer and fridge and take it up the hill to the community center where there were industrial fridges and freezers with locks in which I could store my things until my own fridge had been fixed. We quickly sorted through everything and packed it up in a cart I used to use for laundry and groceries when I was living in Boston’s North End wheeled it up. Fortunately, the malfunction didn’t cause anything to thaw in the freezer but I was forced to discard over $20 in perishable items. Fortunately, I had not yet done my grocery shopping yet (I had intended to go later that day) for if I had, losses could easily have exceeded ten times that amount-- not exactly chump change these days!

Spoiled items in my fridge that had to be thrown out

Soon after my food was safely stored in the community center, the guy from maintenance showed up. He removed the paneling from inside the freezer and the source of the problem soon became apparent.; a thick layer of ice coated everything and clogged the vent which led to the refrigerator below. He instructed me to begin thawing the ice with a hair dryer while he left briefly to procure new parts and an industrial dryer to melt the ice. Once he returned, and the rest of the ice had been molten, he replaced a cap that had been warped by the ice and explained that the ice buildup was due to a known structural flaw in the refrigerators purchased by University Housing. Apparently, every few years, UW puts out a fresh contract to the company responsible for supplying appliances. Rather than replacing faulty appliances, it is simply more cost-effective to continue repairing them as they break and/or malfunction. For the record, the fridge in my kitchen is a “Roper”; a name I have never heard of.

As we sopped up all the water that had seeped onto the floor from the melting ice, he also explained that in a well-made refrigerator (i.e., GE models), certain parts would be made of steel, not Styrofoam and that an appliance could be expected to last 25 years. The models purchased for University Housing, however had a much shorter life expectancy, in the neighborhood of approximately five to six years.

Water, water everywhere! All this came from the ice we had to melt in the freezer.

While I completely understand that the university would want to get the biggest bang for it’s buck by purchasing appliances at discount prices, how deep a discount is too deep? It seems to me that if a product is deemed substandard that it should be grounds to terminate the contract with the manufacturer in question. What if this had happened in a full fridge? Like most other grad students, I live on a tight budget and unlike most other grad students, my budget is tightened even further by financial obligations associated with past medical expenses. $20 may not sound like a whole lot to most people, but it easily could have been $200 and I don’t know whether or not housing reimburses residents who accrue losses of this nature through no fault of their own.

Like I said before, people here seem to be pretty nice. I think I’d be surprised if I couldn’t get that money back. Maybe if enough refrigerators break down here this summer and enough people also seek reimbursement, the policies which led to purchasing these particular appliances will be reviewed. I know I had better things to do this weekend than baby-sit a bum fridge!

Sense and Salami Science

The last few days have been pretty rough. Perhaps the thing I hate the most about starting in a new lab is picking up other people's projects where they left off. I hate trying to decipher protocols that have been tweaked, or "refined" across hundreds of rounds of experiments and across multiple labs at various stages of evolution. I hate trying to find the original authors of those cryptic sets of instructions so that I can ask them about vague generalities or the equations they used in their calculations because mine don't seem to make any logical sense at all.


Above all else, I despise the software they leave behind to analyze their data! Their minds always work through problems differently than my own and since I generally haven't seen software package x before, of course I'm going to be asking people where the user manual is...

What do you mean "there is no manual?" How in the world are you supposed to learn how to use this program? Oh, I see... You haven't ever used it yourself so you really have no clue either. Do you know who I can ask? I know you're really busy and I'm sorry my intellectual repertoire doesn't include clairvoyance but my PI wanted this done immediately and...

If you haven't ever worked in a research lab before, you might think this sort of thing was a unique case-- It isn't. I've been through over a half dozen labs and it's always the same thing. It pretty much boils down to the fact that no research project ever starts from the very beginning. Everything we do heralds back to earlier projects and those projects were based on someone else's work before theirs, etc. Those old projects don't even have to be similar or even support each other. For instance, I've been instructed to review a lot of papers published by the my last lab but not for the purpose of mimicking what they did with a few slight improvements. Actually, the changes we are looking into are really quite dramatic and in some ways contradict previously-made assumptions.

Scientific research in general has become less about the quintessential "eureka" moments and earth-shattering discoveries and more about taking smaller, less risky steps and publishing as many papers as you can. In fact, there's a name for the kind of research that gets scattered across multiple publications when it really could have been covered by just one; “salami science“. There should also be a term to encompass superficial publications that just barely scrape across broad surfaces without going into any real depth. So, I’m tentatively proposing the term, “skimmed science”. If a better term already exists and I don’t know about it, please by all means, let me know.

My office came in really handy today. I could pace, swear, cry and mutter to myself all day long with the door shut so I didn't bother anyone else while I tried to make sense of everything. Wednesday, I told myself I just needed a good night's sleep so I could facilitate that breakthrough on Thursday. On Thursday, when the breakthrough didn't come, I told myself that I was just really fried because I'd had 2 bad days in a row. By the time this morning rolled around, I was completely ready to pitch my annoying little side-project out the window (along with my laptop).

I managed to turn in something at the end of the day but whether or not it makes any sense remains to be seen. I fully expect to have to re-do that particular experiment over again and I’m told it’s not uncommon when you’re just starting out. I just hope it doesn’t take me as long to sort out as it did my predecessor. Like all other first-year grad students around the world, I have big plans, lofty goals and great expectations. Seriously, who has time for this?

For more on “Salami Science”, read this article.

Adsorption

Last time I talked about making the transition between training and independence in the lab. Today, the shift occurred! My activities currently involve preparing my first batch of mineral oxide (specifically, corundum) and checking it by XRD to make sure it's clean and ready to use. While that's going (dialysis typically takes about 3 days before drying and XRD which tack on at least another day), I'm also performing an amino acid adsorption isotherm with L-aspartate and some corrundum that someone else already prepared. Adsorption isotherms tell us something about how amino acids, (in this case, the adsorbate) the building blocks of proteins, interact with mineral surfaces; something that's important to understand if we think the first protocells relied on mineral surfaces as structural supports (scaffolds) and catalytic surfaces (to facilitate chemical reactions that might not otherwise occur).

Amino acid adsorption isotherms generally take 2 days to run (because of the 12-hour adsorption step which we generally run overnight) and analyze. Although the procedure doesn't seem any more complicated than those I'm more familiar with in molecular biology, it's my first attempt at doing this particular reaction on my own and I have no idea how it will turn out. Any number of things can go wrong when you are doing an experiment on your own for the first time. Technical errors, computer/equipment malfunctions and simple lack of experience (esp. troubleshooting) are only the beginning.

As I'm writing this entry on the bus, on my way home from the lab, my L-aspartate is supposedly busy adsorbing to tiny grains of corrundum on my bench. First thing tomorrow, I'll have to remember to turn on the hot water bath. UW is currently on an energy-saving kick so that means the baths all get turned off in the lab at night and the darned things take FOREVER to reach 100oC! I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to wait around for it all day! At least I have everything else set out & ready to go so I won't be scrambling to find and/or label things.

Hmmm... The sky's a funny color. It looks like we're about to get dumped on! I just hope I make it into my building before it does!

Recent Activities

Okay, I'm really tired so I'm going to keep this short and sweet...

Over the past week, I've been going through various training sessions; everything from learning how to use XRD (X-ray diffraction) to identify solids to how to do an amino acid adsorption isotherm. Oxide preparation, operating the Zetasizer, phosphorous assays and many other protocols are spinning through my head as I try to nail them all down in preparation to break free and finally do some work on my own. With my background in molecular biology (mostly), I have a lot of catching up to do in the geochemical department. So far, I think I'm keeping up with everything but it's still tiring and I don't quite trust myself to remember everything after seeing it just once. So after each session, I'm left with a bulging folder of chicken-scratch-saturated sheets of looseleaf paper that must be typed and organized before it can be added to my growing collection of lab protocols. For those of you who don't know what a protocol is, it's like a recipe or a set of instructions that tells you how to conduct a given experiment or procedure in the lab.

The sudden upsweep of activity means that I've progressed from the first stage in which all I did was read papers all day, to the second, where I not only spend every spare moment I have reading papers, but learning new procedures as well. Shortly, this second stage will give way to a third; independence in the lab (at least, where my bench work is concerned). No, this doesn't mean I get to go crazy and spend all my PI's hard-earned grant money-- she still gets the final say about what I will do when-- it just means that I will become responsible for balancing literature review with prep time and experiments such that a reasonable amount of progress is made each week. Progress is guaged at informal lab meetings which, I'm going to discuss in greater detail once I have a little more time to do justice to this particular topic.

For now, I think that's about all I can handle. I have a lot to get done tomorrow and if I don't get to bed soon, I may find myself falling asleep on my desk after lunch (not how I want my PI to find me if she comes looking for me!).

Consider Consideration

Now that the whole social security/background check issue seems to be cleared up, I can go back to all my usual activities; namely, trying to work medical appointments in around my technical training in the lab. Although my intrathecal pump isn't scheduled to run dry for another month or so, I have half a dozen hoops to jump through to be sure I get it refilled before my belly (the alarm in the pump) starts beeping! I mean, how embarrassing would it be to be sitting in the middle of someone's thesis defense and have to explain what that sound is to everyone in the room? At least a cell phone can be answered or shut off if it rings-- the same isn't true for the pump. The only way to shut it up is to fill it.

So anyway, I called Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, where I had it implanted and did I ever get a rude reminder of why moved out here in the first place! Now, don't get me wrong... I received excellent medical care at the BWH Pain Management Center. My pain specialist in particular, was exemplary and so were all the nurses and support staff in the pain clinic. The records department on the other hand, left much to be desired! Either the woman I spoke with was dealing with a personal crisis of some sort which prompted her to bite my head off at every turn or she was just another person coping poorly with the stressful lifestyle thrust upon most Bostonians in general.

Each day I'm here in Madison, I marvel at the apparent absence of aggression in most of the people I interact with. Maybe it's the fact that we wake up each morning to the sound of birds singing instead of blaring car horns, sirens and construction. Maybe it's the conservation of green space; keeping the concrete jungle of urban sprawl at bay. Maybe it's the contagiousness midwestern courtesy-- uh, scratch that.

Crowded Route 80 Madison Metro bus

As I'm writing this entry from one of the UW buses that circuits the campus, there some loudmouth yapping away on his cellphone, despite the dirty looks he's getting from the rest of us! I guess no matter where you go, there will always be somebody who thinks they're "special" and that the rules don't apply to them. *shoots dirty look over shoulder* Can't this guy take a hint? He's as dense as a neutron star!

Seriously! Who cares?

Okay... Looks like I'll have to try to ignore him. I'm almost home anyway.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Over the past few days, I've had my hands full with a major bureaucratic crisis, of sorts. It all started with a letter in the mail from UW which stated that the social security number I submitted during the consent phase of a criminal background check (required for all new university employees), belonged to someone else who lived in Michigan from 1934-1951. Superficially, it seemed utterly ridiculous, and even a bit funny (clearly, I am NOT that old!), but this letter heralded the arrival of some serious consequences!

Since no one could be technically hired by the University of Wisconsin without first passing a criminal background check, if I didn't find a way to fix this problem, I wasn't going to be paid or get health insurance coverage! Needless to say, panic quickly set in and I immediately called my PI to tell her what was happening (thankfully, when she says she has an "open-door policy", she really means it!). She gave me the name of someone else in the department who oversees new appointments and told me to call her. Although I wasn't expecting to get a response to my voicemail message until the following day, Michelle Szabo got right back to me. She reassured me that this was probably just a minor typographical error and would be quickly rectified once I went in to South Hall the following day to straighten it out.


The next morning, I brought in heaps of papers to support my claims (that I was who I said I was and that the SSN I use really is mine... And has been since 1996!). I had to beg to get the check re-run by Hire Right, the company UW contracts to conduct them. The same methods led to the same result so, one thing led to another and ultimately, I was forced to go to the social security office here in Madison for proof that my social security number really was mine and hadn't ever been issued to anyone else.

Not only did I receive a certificate to verify what I had been saying all along but the lady I spoke with at the Social Security Administration actually picked up the phone and called the criminal background check coordinator whose number was on the letter I received. She asked the coordinator how the checks were being conducted because the only way they could have gotten such a ridiculous result would have been to use only a portion of my SSN and assume that I was born in the same state that issued my social security card, Michigan (which, I was not, since I was actually born in Canada!). Want to know what the real kicker is? If I had come to Madison as a Canadian (or any other foreign national), I would not have had to go through a criminal background check at all! How outrageous is that?

So anyway, I brought the certificate I received from Social Security back to the criminal background check coordinator and spent a very nerve-wracking weekend without medical insurance (a very dangerous thing for someone like me). Over the weekend, my PI kept a close eye on my situation and made recommendations which, I believe, finally got things moving along. The following morning, I camped out at South Hall until a call was finally placed to Hire Right (that continued to insist that they were using my full social security number in their search and not only that, but that the data came from the Social Security Administration itself!). Clearly, we weren't getting anywhere.

For the time being, it was decided that the results of the background check would be ignored and my appointment would simply proceed as planned. It only made sense... I mean even if I was an ex-con (and I'm not-- but you'll have to take my word for it *LOL!*), what harm could I possibly cause in a geology department? We don't work with hazardous biological agents (for the most part), children (except during supervised outreach activities), or other people's money. Seriously, if I was a criminal, I'd think my department was a pretty lame place to hang out.

So there you have it. Criminals beware! The University of Wisconsin is keeping a lookout for you! Even innocent people aren't immune. Those who passed their checks, interestingly enough, seemed to be the most vocal in stating their objections to them. Quite frankly, they felt it was an invasion of their privacy. Although I personally have nothing to hide, I have to agree.

I only hope UW comes to realize that the money currently spent on these silly background checks would be better off going towards other things... like academic scholarships. Surely, cutting down on the debt loads of UW graduates would be a smarter investment! Just think of all those grateful future-alumni with their big fat paychecks (because they don't have student loans to repay!). It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Astrobiology at the Ballpark

Last night, I participated in a NASA-sponsored education and outreach activity. We went to a Madison Mallards game and set up some booths with materials from the UW Geology Museum. Our goal was to bring astrobiology to members of the public who might not ever be exposed to the field otherwise.

In all, we had about 6 tables:

1) Banded-Iron Formations (BIFs)

Here we are at the BIF table in our matching WARC T-shirts!

2) Extremophilic Microorganisms

3) Zircons (Radiometric Dating)

Prof. John Valley telling a mother & son about the oldest rock in North America (the big, grey one on the table)!

4) Stromatolites

Running through the pre-game spiel

5) Friends of the UW Geology Museum


6) Free Stuff from NASA (bookmarks, CDs and extremophile trading card packs)
*You can get the CD contents yourself here!

Free NASA Stuff Bookmark (left), CD (about extremophilic microorganisms) and Trading Cards (about different types of extremophiles).

By far, the BIF table was the coolest because we had cool hats and "build-a-BIF" blocks.

These were supposed to be for the kids to wear, but I think the grad students spent more time in them than the kids.

This was the "build-a-BIF" activity which consisted of two kinds of small blocks, oxygen (white) and iron (grey) which together, fit under the large hematite box (black). The red box represents chert and may alternate with the black hematite bands as the BIF is deposited on the ocean floor (built).

Again, I think the grad students played with the blocks more than the kids did...

Since this was my first NASA outreach activity at UW, it took me a while to hit my stride. At first, I wasn't really sure what to say. I mean, when you're used to talking to other scientists, how do you break the ice with kids? My friend and fellow grad student, Jason Huberty, regularly helps out at the UW Geology museum so I watched him give his speech a few times before trying it myself. At first, I tried to mimic what he said but soon realized that I'd be better off coming up with something that was uniquely my own. After all, our backgrounds were different so it only made sense to change my approach to suit what I was familiar with.

I found that the best way to attract kids to our table was to lure them in with a challenge, "Who wants to try and lift a really heavy rock?" Gently, I placed the smallest rock we had into each little hand that crossed our table and encouraged them to pick up the others as well (see photo above). Once the rocks were in-hand, it was easier to hold their attention as I explained why some had stripes and others didn't, some had straight stripes and others had squiggly ones... Even parents seemed interested in the idea that Earth didn't always have an atmosphere rich in oxygen like we do today. Many had never heard of hydrothermal vents and I even had one religious question that tested my abilities. I also thought it was nice that my colleague could explain BIFs to some of our Spanish-speaking visitors in their native toungue (something I could not have done since I was raised in Canada where Spanish is almost never taught in schools).

All in all, I think everyone had a blast and we certainly introduced astrobiology to a lot of new people. I hope we get to do more of these sorts of activities. Who says a scientific education must be confined to the classroom?

Jason Huberty with the Madison Mallard (mascot)

UPDATE: For more about this activity, visit the following websites...

• NASA Astrobiology Institute
• UW-Madison Geology Museum
• Museum Alliance (NASA)
• University of Wisconsin-Madison News

Offices & Acts of Kindness

This morning I brought in posters, binders and some of my old text books. The office I'm supposed to be sharing with another grad student who, conveniently, never seems to come in, is really starting to feel like a second home to me. I have the tendency to surround myself with images that inspire me. In my case, that means plastering the place with Hubble Space Telescope images of the cosmos. The image below is a "before" photo. I'll post another one after I'm through redecorating. ;)

As you can see, I did not have to give up my precious office space (made all the more precious by the fact that it is, by far, the nicest workspace I've ever had in any of the labs I worked in. Not everyone in my program is as lucky as I am (to have so much privacy and natural light) but even those students who must share with more than one other person still have it better than their Penn State counterparts. When I was there, the fewest I ever had to share with was two (during a short 6-week rotation). I went through two labs there where six students shared the same office space (that is, where office spaces were not in buildings with noisy "open concept" labs, in which case, bring the number up to ten!)! Yes, it could always be worse.

The last lab I was in at Mass General was an open concept lab on a grand scale (all labs on the same floor of the Richard B. Simches building in the same room). If a few people decided to horse around, everyone paid for it! For someone who is easily distracted like myself, trying to concentrate there was a total nightmare (this was my desk behind us in the photo; right next to my bench)! As if that wasn't enough, I was stuck in the middle of the room, about as far away from a window as you could get and... right next to the hallway that housed an unshielded NMR... The one piece of equipment I could not approach with my implants. Requests to be allowed to move fell on deaf ears. I often sought refuge in other areas of the building so I could actually get some reading done. I was probably the only person with implants that were sensitive to magnetic fields but no one seemed to care at all. It simply didn't matter to anyone else.

Speaking of which, one thing I find so refreshing about UW is that they tend to do the exact opposite of what I expect (given my past experiences). The other day, I was so worried that my actions (namely, moving someone else's belongings from my assigned work space) was going to serve as a source of long-term friction between myself and my new colleagues. As it turned out, it was no big deal to this other student at all. He was polite and easygoing about the whole thing and this was a complete shock to me! If this had happened at either of my last two schools, I never would have heard the end of it! People genuinely seem to care about each other here.

The View from my 4th floor office window in Weeks Hall at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

People are just so darn friendly here that when the bus drivers see someone running to catch the bus-- even if they don't actually catch up to the bus when it's directly in front of a stop (i.e., stopped at an intersection)-- the drivers will stop, open the doors to let poor, would-be passengers on! Yes, to a former-Bostonian, this is quite a switch indeed! I have witnessed similar acts of kindness on a daily basis since coming to Madison and I still can't quite believe it. I guess it's going to take some getting used to...

I survived my first (official) day at UW-Madison

Well, here I am... so tired I can hardly breathe but I'm surviving. Yesterday was my first day as a graduate student in Astrobiology (technically, Geology & Geophysics) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Before I even set foot in the door, I had already been recruited for an educational outreach activity that's going to happen this upcoming Friday called, "Astrobiology at the Ballpark". Apparently, I'm going to be helping out at the BIF (Banded-Iron Formation) table (I'll tell you more about this activity in a later entry).

Shortly after getting to the lab, I had to move another student's belongings from my assigned office space (as gently and delicately as possible since he's on vacation and probably didn't realize that the space was assigned to me). Later, I received a mountain of papers to read (I like to call this the "mega-stack"; a pile of papers your PI will want you to read before getting started on your research projects). In fact, there were so many papers, that they exhausted the quota on my brand new geology email account and froze it (meaning I couldn't send or receive any more emails until I deleted the attachments--papers--from my account). To top it all off, I wound up staying late on my first day to babysit the printer... as each sheet of the mega-stack was painstakingly printed. So, there's my first day in a nutshell!

I don't mean to make it sound like a negative experience. In fact, I came home in a rather good mood, despite my fatigue. I promised you a real look at what it's like to be a graduate student in astrobiology at an NAI-consortium member school and I'm sticking to it. Getting started at a brand new place in a new position is always exhausting. There are so many names, places, things, and rules to remember and you have to get all of it straight sooner rather than later because the remainder of your time there could very well depend on it. There are cards to get, keys to pick up, forms to fill out, people to get acquainted with... etc.

We all want to make a good first impression when we start somewhere new. In my case, I consulted others as to how to handle this situation where another student had taken up residency in my office space. The student in question was on vacation and the person in charge of office assignments was too (great, huh?). To be honest, I felt really guilty moving this student's things without his permission even though my name was on the list and his wasn't.

Although I hadn't met him yet, I wanted him to like me. Let's face it, moving someone else's things usually isn't the best way to make that happen. I left him a note, explaining my actions, along with a copy of the office assignment roster but I don't think I'll feel any better about it until I have had a chance to meet with him face-to-face and discuss it. I also informed my new PI of the situation since I know it's important to her that she be able to find me (in the event that I am the one who must find a new workspace). At the very least, I don't think I could have done anything other than what I did. My PI already has work for me, she needs me to have a place to do that work, the space was assigned to me, case closed, right? I guess we'll just have to see where that leads-- the other student is due back tomorrow.

Otherwise, things seem to be going pretty well. I like my new colleagues. They're curteous, helpful and hard-working. My PI is easy to talk to, has lots of interesting ideas and plans for the future. I feel like my interests and hers mesh well together. The papers she wants me to read are familar to me. I do not have to start from square one in the lab since I already know many of the techniques I will need (picked up from previous labs). I appreciate the fact that Dr. Sahai is always thinking of the present in terms of the future. When she comes up with a plan for one of her students, it is with timelines in mind-- any shortcut that could minimize the time needed to complete a PhD is considered. She also places a heavy emphasis on preventative measures. By keeping the lines of communication open, potential problems in the lab-- interpersonal or technical-- get nipped in the bud while they're still small enough to fix. I should say that not all PIs are like this; I feel these are really unique traits.

Dr. Sahai once told me that she keeps the lab small on purpose, for if she allowed it to get too big, she would not be able to invest so much effort in each student's development. For someone like me who came from a lab with over 30 students and a PI who was away from the lab more often than not, this is a drastic change. Over the years, I have come across many PIs with "open-door" policies who simply were not present to be available in the first place. Some students prefer this approach because it maximizes independence early. However, this can be a rather risky proposition too because it leaves you vulnerable when mistakes happen. Small problems can get very big, very quickly before anyone realizes what's happening and then, it could very well be too late to salvage anything. I also have a hard time understanding how a PI can get to know their students if they never interact with them. Let's face it. If we didn't need to learn anything from our PIs, why would we be in their labs in the first place? If I come Y University to learn from Professor X, then I would expect to spend at least some time benefiting from Professor X's wisdom and experiences... not those of his post-docs exclusively!

At any rate, I think you catch my drift. I'm starting to get a feel for what the next few years are going to be like here at UW and it seems like it's going to be vastly different than what I've experienced before at other institutions. I feel I am in a rather unique position to make comparisons between UW's astrobiology program and Penn State's (another "big 10" school that also happens to be an NAI consortium member). I will be scrutinizing everything from education & outreach to academic rigor and student retention! I hope my rambling will be helpful to other prospective astrobiology students out there who may be feeling torn between these two programs (or even, one of these and other schools I have not attended).

I expect to spend the rest of my first week reading that mountain of papers I mentioned before, and starting to get familiar with where things are in the lab. I'm already doing small things in the lab itself, like making buffers in preparation for dialyzing oxides that will be used in liposome adsorption experiments later this week. I will also be having a training session this Friday in XRD (x-ray diffraction). I realize it doesn't sound all that exciting but it is perfectly normal not to be doing much in the lab in the beginning. Now, the emphasis is mostly on literature review.

Lewis G. Weeks Hall of Geological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.