Minioning leads to wacked out poo brain

I am exhausted. Just mentally spent. Thinking for myself is taxing enough, but having to think for myself and another person every single day is really wearing on me. A little background is called for here.

At the beginning of May, I was given an undergrad student. It kinda sounds like a late birthday present, but I assure you - an undergrad with no real lab experience is no gift. Particularly in advance of my first national ASM meeting representing the lab and my first committee meeting. My PI ultimately wants her (my undergrad / minion-in-training) to have her own project investigating whether quorum sensing is important for V. cholerae colonization of the zebrafish gut. However, there's a TON of work involved in teaching her the stuff she needs to know (what I call "minioning") to become even semi-independent. She's really smart and asks good questions, but she mumbles like crazy, sneaks up on me, almost never shuts up, has come down with some form of selective deafness, and is generally irritating the fuck out of me. Let me break this down point by point:

1. "mumbles like crazy" - I have auditory processing issues that make it hard for me to understand speech when there's a lot of background noise. Even giving myself slack for that, it makes me feel SO OLD having to say, "what?" or "I really can't hear you" 50 times a day. When I've had enough, I'll just smile and nod or run off to the bathroom and just sit on the toilet, not to pee, but to hide.
2. "sneaks up on me" - She doesn't do it on purpose, but she has walked up behind me so silently that I have literally jumped at the sight of her on least 5 separate occasions. I told her to cough or make a noise when she's about 10 feet away, or I'd have to start calling her The Sidler.
3. "almost never shuts up" - today out of the blue she looks up from her reading and says, "I do Tae Kwon Do on the weekends" - I think that's what she said anyway, because she was mumbling. I said, "really?" to which she replied, "no, not really. But I want to." I think it was at this point that I got up and went to go hide in the bathroom.
4. "has selective deafness" - Lately, I'll explain to her why we're doing something or I'll show her how to do ethanol precipitation, for example, on a few samples with her doing the remainder of the samples. As soon as I tell her to go ahead and finish the last few, she says, "okay, what am I doing now?"

There's more stuff, but I think you get the idea. It has recently come to my attention that she annoys everyone else in my lab and the fish lab too. <face palm> My description of her really sounds bad, but I'm pretty sure most of the annoying things she does are unintentional. Unfortunately, that only makes it worse in that this is just her personality. Granted, she is only 19 and likely just acting her age. I've been asking myself if I was that annoying when I was 19, and I'm fairly certain that I was not, although I may be somewhat biased.

I'm glad for the chance to vent. Fortunately, we have lab meeting tomorrow and there will be no real time to do benchwork with her. She comes in the afternoon Monday - Thursday because she has class in the morning on those days. My feeling of dread is only slightly diminished though. I have to come up with enough stuff to keep her busy, yet out of my hair, on Friday. I forgot to mention - she has no classes on Friday so she will be in the lab with me all. day. long...

The bitch is back!

I've finally gotten around to updating the blog. It's funny, for weeks now, I've been thinking of all kinds of great things to write about. Now that I actually have time to write about them, I can't think of a single thing I want to write about. I guess I'll just give a rundown of what's been going on since my last post.

The biggest change is that I've advanced to PhD candidacy (I'm not waiting for the paperwork to go through to claim the distinction. God only knows how long that will actually take.). ABD, baby (thanks, Jamin)! So, I had my first committee meeting last Thursday to present and defend my research proposal. I was a little surprised at how long it took. My committee and I were holed up in the department library for nearly two hours. I only had 35 PowerPoint slides in my presentation, so I figured I would spend about 40-45 minutes presenting my stuff. No. When I finally reached my last slide, it was an hour and 26 minutes after I had initially opened my mouth to start speaking. Holy shit. Thankfully, I was only stumped by one question: what is the conductance of the water the zebrafish are kept in? No clue. I still don't know and, at this point, don't much care. Even better is that the PI of the fish lab (where I do my zebrafish experiments) didn't know either. I didn't get any criticisms and was told that I gave an "excellent" presentation. My PI said that it was obvious that I had read everything he thought I needed to and he said I did a great job. That made me feel awesome - almost embarrassed. This project is my boss's "baby" and I really wanted to make sure that I represented the project and him well. Comments from other committee members like, "you're a really good speaker and you gave a great presentation," and, "you didn't just tell us about your project, you taught us," told me that I nailed it. I feel like I have finally earned my place in the lab. All the teaching I did at EMU and WCC has really been advantageous to me. I am comfortable speaking in front of groups of diverse educational backgrounds, I know how to tailor a presentation for a particular audience - what background to include and details I can (and sometimes should) leave out. I've also gotten good at anticipating what questions might be asked of me. The one thing I really need to improve on is time management. I always wait until the last damn minute to do everything - to the point where it isn't unusual for someone to get pissed at me as a result. Oddly enough, putting the finishing touches on a presentation just minutes before I'm scheduled to give it seems to work for me. I prefer not to practice beforehand - I feel like my talk will be too rehearsed and lacking in spontaneity. I feel like I express enthusiasm more authentically the very first time I give a talk. Don't get me wrong, I don't go into a presentation unprepared. I scrutinize every image and line of text on every slide. I know exactly what information needs to be conveyed, but my preference is to figure out how exactly to convey it while I'm in the moment. I think many of these idiosyncrasies can be blamed on my attention deficit disorder. For optimum performance, it seems that my brain requires an absolutely ridiculous amount of stimulation. This comes in the form of pushing the limits of my superiors (how much will they let me get away with before they get pissed?), seeing how long I can put off a task before it becomes impossible to do by a certain deadline, things that cause me almost crippling levels of anxiety. It drives me nuts and I absolutely hate this about myself. However, I'm at a point in my life where I wonder if it's too late to "fix" me. I feel far too old to keep getting chastised like a small child. I also wonder if faculty would respond to me differently if 1) they knew I have ADD (I don't make this known because I'm convinced it will be perceived as a "convenient excuse" for why I  sometimes don't perform up to expectations), and 2) that I am actually 37, not 27 - also something I don't tend to publicize.

One more bit of self-reflection before signing off. Here's an enlargement of my new profile picture:

An early iteration of my "bitch face"

I'm three (possibly four) years old in this picture. Something I've been reflecting upon lately is that fish  have been a consistent thread running through my life - especially now. My astrological sign is Pisces, in this picture I'm wearing a swimsuit with fish on it while holding a dead bluegill that my dad - an avid fisherman - had just caught, and now I'm sitting here writing about the zebrafish project that has gradually come to consume me. A little freaky. While my father was alive, I never shared his love of fishing - although I did love to eat what he caught and cooked for me. When I was pregnant with Elliot, it was so hard to have to keep telling him that I couldn't eat his fish. Even with that temporary abstinence, I'm sure my body is loaded with enough mercury to make even the Mad Hatter cringe. Man, were those fish delicious. I miss them. And him. Now, I essentially go fishing in a barrel every week for my job - with a net in a full aquarium in a lab. I sometimes like to think that maybe, just maybe, he still hasn't given up on trying to get his youngest daughter to love fishing the way he once did. She's working on it.

A bad day for science

Today was a minor disaster of a day. I'm taking this stupid grant writing class that second-year PhD students have to take, and over the last few weeks we've been writing the individual sections of a grant. Specifically, the F31 pre-doctoral fellowship (NIH). Today we had to submit the complete grant,  incorporating the suggestions of the reviewing professor. Ugh. Writing shit for this course has been almost as painful as writing my master's thesis. I've hated every minute of it, even though it's a good practical course all grad students should be forced to take.

Anyway, being the dingus that I am, I thought that I could get the whole thing knocked out last night. Ha! Silly me. I couldn't even concentrate long enough to open Word and type my name, much less knit together a cohesive scientific-sounding thought. So I got up early-ish (for me, anyway), and got to school a little after 9 am today. I thought that I could easily crank out my finished grant in 4 hours and submit it before the start of class at 1 pm. Well, I cranked out something and submitted it by 1 pm. I think I incorporated at least some of the instructor's suggested edits, but I know I missed a bunch. Based on past experience, (having been severely chastised - by one of the instructors who is probably my own age - for turning something in late) I've learned that as far as the profs are concerned, it's better to turn in a steaming turd on time than it is to turn in Pulitzer Prize-worthy work late. I think that's bullshit, but whatever.

Incredibly, I thought I would have time to do some science today before and after class. The only science-y thing I was able to do this morning was to tell my minion (she's actually an intern, but I like the way minion sounds) to repeat last week's fish infections using a higher inoculum. Unfortunately, the shaking incubator decided to quit shaking sometime before 5 am this morning, so that introduces an additional unwelcome variable into my planned experiment. I did manage to infect some fish also, but it was almost 4 pm before I had time to do so. Bah.

My main goal for this week was going to be optimizing a protocol for fixing and paraffin-embedding V. cholerae-infected zebrafish for histology. Infected fish aren't completely infiltrated with paraffin and don't cut well. Therefore, we haven't been able to conduct much histological staining/analysis (looking for the presence of colonizing bacteria or other signs of pathology due to infection). Because I didn't read the protocol carefully enough, I neglected to put the infiltration paraffin in the water bath last night to melt. I didn't think it would be that big a problem - I could just melt the stuff in the microwave, right? WRONG! Apparently, infiltration paraffin is immune to the microwave's melt-y wiles. It didn't matter how long I nuked that shit, it would. not. melt. Not even a little bit. If it had been in a non-plastic container, I could have torched it or put it on a hot plate or something. Anyway, this seemingly minor oversight has royally fucked up the time frame for the protocol and may lead to my samples being ruined. Instead of being in clarifying solution just overnight, my fixed fishies will end up marinating for 2+ days. I don't know how this will affect my samples yet. I guess I'll find out tomorrow or Thursday.
Speaking of tomorrow, Wednesday is apparently "40 oz. Wednesday". I guess a bunch of us are going to sit around and drink 40s in the afternoon. Maybe my science is just suffering from delirium tremens. Beer ought to fix that. I don't think it could make anything much worse, anyway.

Say hello to Ms. Sacher-Masoch...

i.e. the original masochist. I just can't seem to stop inflicting great pain on myself. For example, this week I am infecting zebrafish larvae with GFP-expressing cholera in order to (hopefully) visualize the bacteria using fluorescent microscopy. The idea is to get a good image that demonstrates cholera colonization of the zebrafish gut, which my PI can use in the paper he is writing and he said would get me co-authorship. Yay! I also have to plan out an experiment for my rotation student to see if fish infected with cholera can spread it to uninfected fish when placed in the same container of water. Plus, I am apparently getting an intern tomorrow. (I told Chris that I will refer to her in private as "Monica the Intern", just to be lewd 'cause that's the kind of person I am) I will have to plan stuff for her to work on once I know when I can do my own experiments in the fish lab.

I'm in a weird, yet incredibly exciting, position; I'm now considered the lead researcher in the development of the zebrafish model of cholera colonization/infection - I think. So anyone that comes into the lab to do fish stuff gets assigned to me. To the best of anyone's knowledge, I am the only person in the world working on this. I didn't expect this to happen so soon. I honestly can't imagine being in the shoes of my PI, entrusting me with the project that everyone in the lab calls "his baby". I don't know if it's just because I'm the warm body who landed in the lab at the right time to get the project, or if he sees qualities in me that make him think I'd do well in this role - qualities that I don't often credit myself with, like a general lack of idiocy for starters.

Tuesday is going to be a real banner day. First, I have to rewrite a scientific journal article into a "News and Views" type of summary piece for a general (read: non-scientist) audience and turn it in before class begins at 1:00 pm. Then, we have a departmental seminar from 12:00 - 1:00 pm. The final coup de grâce is the abstract I still need to write for the poster I'm presenting at the national ASM meeting this May. The abstract submission deadline is also Tuesday, the 15th.

So that's my upcoming week in a nutshell. I just hope my head doesn't explode before I have a chance to knock back a beer with friends at the Corner on Friday. That would totally suck.

The wheels of science keep grinding

A full week into 2013 and I think I have finally accumulated enough stuff to write about. I guess it's similar to how I wait to go to the doctor until I feel like I've "saved up" enough maladies to make it worth my while. Unfortunately, once I unfurl my laundry list of complaints, I sound like a raging hypochondriac to anyone within earshot.

I had initially intended to do some lab work over Christmas break, but I ultimately talked myself out of it. This past Sunday, I started feeling really anxious about starting back in the lab on Monday. I had it in my head that the other grad students in my department had all worked diligently through the break, and would berate me for my laziness in staying my unmotivated ass at home. I had also told myself that I would catch up my lab notebook (for reals this time!) and start the year with unbridled enthusiasm and a clear vision of what I want to accomplish in my research project. Oh, what lofty unattainable traps goals I set for myself! I'm so far behind, I'm still writing up shit I did in September. Ugh.

I have a few things going on that should keep me pretty busy for the foreseeable future. One is that I'm taking a scientific communications class, which is similar to the proposal development class I took at Eastern. It does seem to be quite a bit more structured than proposal development and it delves into scientific writing with specific goals/audiences in mind. I forgot how much it sucks to have classes again. By the end of the semester, I should have slowly and painfully birthed a grant proposal for my thesis project. I really need to sit down with my PI and hash some shit out. I need to stop being so afraid to ask questions about what I'm doing!

Another thing I need to do this week (that I should have done in, like, November) is flow cytometry on the cholera strain I made - and resuscitated from Christmas break benchtop desiccation - that is supposed to constitutively express GFP. My sequences came back with some possible point mutations, which may or may not affect expression of GFP. Colonies seem to look green when I expose them to blue light, so at least I know that something is working somewhere in the black box of the transcriptional unit. Here's a picture of a GFP-expressing strain (not the one I just created) that I took using the fluorescence scope I learned how to use. They're purdy :)

My PI dangled the carrot of co-authorship on the fish paper he is writing if I can infect zebrafish larvae with my GFP strain and show gut colonization via fluorescence microscopy. I'll write more on this exciting new development in my research saga tomorrow, as well as my being charged with the care and feeding of our rotation student for the next eight weeks. I'll probably do a better job of taking care of her than I do trying to look out for myself. Enough for now; I couldn't sleep at all last night and I'm really tired all of a sudden. With that said, I'm gonna quit writing and thinking now and just go to bed.

さようなら (sayounara) 2012!

I used to be able to hold a very basic conversation in Japanese, as well as read a fair amount of it,  but now I'm reduced to looking up how to spell "goodbye" in romaji (roman letters). I was actually only a class or two away from being able to minor in Japanese at Eastern. Bah. I also took 3 or 4 years of French in high school and at least 1 full year of it in college. Can't remember much of that now, either. Maybe I'll try to re-learn some of that stuff in the coming year. I was always very good at quickly picking up foreign languages.

Although it's New Year's Eve, we're pretty much treating it like any other weekend night. I don't think we've ever procured a babysitter so we can go to NYE parties or anything - the last time we went to such a party was, I think, in 2002 when we were newly married. I'd probably feel more deprived if I hadn't spent the night at my friend Mary's house the other night. A few of us watched several episodes of Girls, we drank lots of wine and generally had a good time. When I woke up in the morning, however, I wasn't sure if I was still drunk or just really really hungover. After I managed to get stuck in the snow - for a good 30 minutes or so - trying to leave Mary's, I decided that I was just really hungover. If I had still been drunk, the whole stuck car ordeal probably would have been far more amusing than it was. Stupid German car with no snow tires. Grrr. Thankfully, Mary and a friend of her brother managed to push me free of the snow drift I was sort of wedged in. I thought that since I bought Elliot all new snow gear from L.L. Bean super early this year, we were sure to have a dry winter. I thought wrong.

As far as Phudland goes, I've survived the first six months in my chosen thesis lab. Yay! Now, I need to define the goals of my project, in consultation with the PI, in order to come up with a decent proposal over the course of the coming semester. One of the new students will be rotating in our lab starting in January. I think the PI mentioned that he will have her working on some aspect of the fish project, but no one knows exactly what just yet. I'm a little excited at the prospect of quasi-mentoring one of the first-years. For eight weeks, at least, I won't be the newbie and maybe I'll get to feel smart again, like I did when I taught at Eastern and Washtenaw. I can hope anyway.

In 2013, I hope to continue settling in and really start to think of Wayne State as my home away from home. I'm looking forward to going to the national ASM conference in Denver, as well as the Cold Spring Harbor conference in the coming year. I'm also going to try to incorporate more activity into my life and maybe get to the point where I can run a little bit - for exercise and not for my life, as in running from muggers in Detroit or bears up north. That might be nice. I'll have to get my bum knee looked at to make sure I don't injure it further (I have a probable torn meniscus), but it'll be okay. Everything will work out the way it's supposed to. More patience, less twitchy-ness, good health, safety, and happiness; those are a few of my major hopes for 2013 and beyond. I wish the same for everyone reading this, and even those who don't. Be safe and have a Happy New Year!!

The worst is finally over!

Christmas is done, bitches! And I couldn't be happier. Ok, I could always stand to be happier, but whatever. I really dislike the stresses of shopping and increased social interaction that come with the holidays. This year, I just couldn't make myself do any shopping until nearly the last minute - after the last "guaranteed delivery for Christmas" shipping deadline for any online retailer had passed. I finally decided to start, yes - start - my Christmas shopping at about 6:00 pm on the 23rd. I took with me a short list of stuff to get, a box of Kleenex (and I'm still sick, even now. This is fucking ridiculous.), hand sanitizer, and I stuffed my driver's license and credit card into my back pocket. I hate wrangling a purse - plus it makes me more of a target for thieves and other ruffians. I think I've actually thwarted one would-be purse snatcher at Meijer by not carrying a purse to be snatched, but I digress...

I started at The Rocket in Ypsi and worked my way over to Target in Canton, then I took a break for dinner around 8:00. Around 9:30 or 10:00, I went to the Westland Mall to check out Kohl's and Macy's, which both totally sucked. I tell you, Macy's is certainly no Hudson's or even Marshall Fields. After the mall, I went to the Toys R Us across Wayne Rd., which is where I probably spent most of my shopping gusto. I love, love, love that Toys R Us is open 24 hrs during the several days preceding Christmas, only finally closing at 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve. I really enjoy shopping late at night, a time when mostly only frantic dads are doing their shopping. Fewer whiny kids with their bitchy overworked mothers. I like it. Anyhow, the moral of the story is that I finished my shopping and was home by 2:00 am. Boom. Done.

Traditionally, we spend Christmas Eve with Chris's dad's side of the family; then on Christmas Day, we open presents at our house before heading off to Chris's mom's house for dinner and gifts. Finally, we go to my mom's house and visit with her and my brother before calling it a very looong day and going back home. I won't bore you with details, but here is a very short pictorial chronology of Christmas celebrations.

My very first Christmas Eve with the Visels. My (then) future father-in-law took this picture of me. I was 16 - note the pink hair.

Elliot at my mom's late on Christmas Day this year. This may have been the last smile we got out of him that night before the "tired tantrums" set in.

There was a very cute picture of Chris at his mom's in a paper crown holding up a Lego set he just built, but he forbade me from posting it online. Although I'm not happy about it, I suppose that I should abide by his wishes. Such is life.

There is nothing worth watching on TV right now. Perhaps I will pop in the first DVD from my Golden Girls box set that Chris gave me for Christmas. If that gift isn't a sign of a man's true love, then I don't know what is.