The changing of the guard

Writing is exactly what I shouldn't be doing and really don't have time for now, but it was either procrastinate this way or by cleaning up the kitchen. I had an 8:00 am meeting today to go over requirements and what is expected of me as one of the 6 recipients of an NIH training grant (Minority Biomedical Research Support Program aka IMSD) that will fund my tuition and stipend for 2 years and give me a little bit of money for research supplies and conference travel. Basically, the message is "no pressure or anything, just don't screw up and you'll be fine!". The program director sent out an email with the date and time of today's meeting and closed with the request to please be on time. I left the house at 7:15 and was delayed this time not by rain, but by some moron who couldn't figure out where the brake pedal was and rear-ended the car in front of him. In bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. In the left lane (which has no shoulder). I just about came unglued. I finally got clear of that and raced up to my exit only to get tied up in construction on John R at Warren. Are you fucking kidding me??!! The light cycle for traffic on John R trying to cross Warren is ridiculously short. The light stays green for no more than 15 seconds (I've timed it), just enough for 4 cars to get through - at most. Unless someone just has to turn left onto Warren (no Michigan left turns here!), then only 2 cars get through. After a few light cycles, I got through, got to school, and yada, yada, yada I ended up being 5 minutes late. I hate showing up anywhere late. Especially for the first meeting of the semester. I had even called the program director's cell phone to let her know, but she didn't answer. ARGHH!! Deep breaths...

Lucky for me, one of the other 5 recipients of this training grant is D, who I've met a couple of times before and is a 2nd year student in Immuno & Micro. I had emailed him yesterday asking about the content and format of the molecular biology test and we chatted a bit about the tests today. After this morning's meeting got out, we went up to his lab and he grabs this HUGE stack of old cell bio and molecular bio tests off a shelf and basically tells me that I am now the keeper of the exams. I guess the stack is added to every year and passed on to the next newbie. There's stuff going back to 2002 in this pile - it's amazing!

My pile of salvation.

I feel like I don't know anything, even though I've had this material before. It seems like for every new bit I can cram into my head, something else that I really needed falls out. Are PhDs just really good at faking like they know shit or do they really and truly learn it? I'm not talking about "learning" something to get a passing grade on a test and then promptly purging it. I always viewed the PhD as the stage where you finally and permanently master all of this crap that you spent umpteen years in undergrad or other grad work practicing with for when you have to learn the stuff for real. The depth and breadth and magnitude of the knowledge that I always thought PhD students were gaining is not possible!! It can't be, especially with the amount of material we have to know and how fast we have to learn it. It's like trying to create the philosopher's stone - the substance that would magically transform ordinary metals into gold. Every alchemist thought every other alchemist had a leg up on them; racing to unlock that final key step that would to allow them to make the stone, and thus become infinitely rich. When will I figure out how this whole system works?? That is, the PhD/learning thing, not the alchemy thing. Although I may end up having to resort to that.