Learning how to think

I have two predictions for the future. One is that life is going to get a lot more hectic and time is going to be at a high premium. The other prediction is that it will rain in the next day or two. I have two reasons for making these predictions: I start my first lab rotation tomorrow and I just washed my car this afternoon. Sigh. I have lots to write, but no time to write it.

Today in cell biology, the class was broken up into small groups and sent to different departmental libraries to discuss a problem set that was assigned last week. My group met in the Pharmacology Department library. The problem set told you to pretend you were a researcher studying breast cancer in the MCF-7 cell line (developed at Karmanos). You wanted to figure out the mechanism by which estrogen activates MAP kinase (to stimulate cell proliferation) in these cells. Some fake data is given along with some background info and limited descriptions of what was done to produce the data (i.e. inhibitors used to block certain substrates and Western blot results). You had to reason through the information that was given to you and apply what you should already know about the specific receptors, second messengers, etc. in order to sketch out a pathway. It's one thing to be able to analyze and interpret data from your own research project, but it's another thing altogether to have to do it for a completely different project in a different system that you really don't know much about. It's hard! I spent a lot of Saturday night reading chapters of background on G-protein coupled receptors and GTPases and nuclear receptor signaling (barf). Then I spent most of yesterday struggling through the problem set. Right when I was about to give up and go to bed, the mechanism snapped into place in my head, so I quickly sketched it out and wrote which reagents were critical to determining each step in the pathway and hoped that my interpretation wasn't completely wrong. Long story short is that it turns out my interpretation was correct. I think half of my group mates had come up with different mechanisms, judging by the looks on their faces when the correct pathway was brought up on the screen. It isn't necessarily bad to come up with alternate mechanisms, but at least I know that I was interpreting the data correctly and that I was thinking through the evidence in the way the instructors had intended. This is what I call learning how to think - probably one of the most valuable skills I can develop while I'm here. I'm not really sure if it's something that can be effectively "taught" or if it's just a matter of being forced to wrestle with papers and data and more data and papers until you kind of figure it out for yourself. In any case, it's exhausting. Ugh - that last passage just sounds so damn egotistical no matter how I phrase it. It's totally not intended to sound that way though! I mean, no one is penalized for "wrong" answers - which is good because I certainly don't get everything down on the first pass. But it is good to know that I seem to be on the right track and that I don't seem to have to work significantly more (or less) than anyone else to get my work done. Well, sometimes I may have to work a little longer just because I am easily distracted by shiny objects, court shows, belly button lint, you name it. For tomorrow's discussion I have to hurry up (yeah, right!) and finish muddling through this 2005 paper out of PNAS: "G protein-coupled lysophosphatidic acid receptors stimulate proliferation of colon cancer cells through the beta-catenin pathway." Oh joy of joys.

On tap for tomorrow is molecular biology, stupid paper discussion, 1st micro departmental seminar, then (finally!) I get started in Melody's lab. Eeeee!!!! Crap, I have to finish reading the paper she gave me to read a couple of weeks ago. Gotta run...