Well, Hello California!

My boss went out to California a few years ago to give a talk (there's a video of it) and the first thing she does when she gets on stage is, in the most enthusiastic tone, say "Well Helloo Californiiia". I would link the video, but we make fun of her enough for it as is and I think it would be nice to give her a break.

Every year we have to outline our goals for my PI (Principle Investigator, i.e. boss) in my lab. It's a nice way to see what we've accomplished in the last year and what we need to do to move forward in the coming year. This year, one of my goals was to present at an out-of-state conference. I wasn't expecting anything big, anything expensive, or anything far away. A month or so after that, my graduate student comes up to me and asks me if I'd like to go to San Diego, California for a big Experimental Biology conference. Apparently a few of the graduate students that were going won travel awards so my PI had thought it would be great to send me. The only problem was that I needed to have an abstract to submit by Friday and the conference would be during my Final Exams. I had 5 days to convince all my professors to allow me to reschedule my exams and have an abstract ready for submission in less than a week. Fun stuff. 

I'm much too lazy to detail how much convincing I had to do. Some professors would only let me go after I got all other professors to agree and blah blah. I had to take some tests a week earlier and my professors were very kind in letting me take them so early, and the day before I left for San Diego I had 3 tests and several papers due. But, I got to go. I was going to a big conference, that was far away (2100 miles), and I didn't have to pay for anything. It probably also looks good on my CV, but who cares about that? I was going to San Diego to soak in massive amounts of science and it was going to be fantastic. 

The flight was pretty standard. The last hour from Phoenix to San Diego had several crying babies, but headphones and sleep pretty much fixed that. The first 2 days we were there consisted of exploring and getting our badges for the conference. We took a nice little tour of the city and spent some time at the beach. Here, have a few pictures.

Random Boat and the Ocean. Also clouds.

My Badge! I think this is #4 or 5. I'm losing count. 

On those first days we went to the beach (the water was very cold), looked at small shops on the shore, took a trolley tour, ate very tasty food, and just took in the city.

San Diego is the most beautiful city that I've ever seen. If you know me, you know that I absolutely adore pretty much any city, but San Diego was just...wow. Something about the combination of the people, the beach, the ocean, the military base, the culture, the transportation, and the shops just made me think about how great it would be to live there, even if it is extremely expensive. Luckily, there's a large Research University, University of California San Diego, that I can add to the list of possible graduate schools that I can attend. I like living in Atlanta, but it has a far way to go before it can be anything like the greater North Eastern and Western cities. The convention center was also beautiful and the weather was fantastic. It rained every now and then for the first 2 days we were there, but it was the nice kind of rain that I appreciate.

 




Day one of the conference wasn't anything too exciting as far as the science goes, but there was an undergraduate poster competition (I was not a part of it). It was nice getting to meet other undergrads and it definitely made me appreciate my position more. I'm in my second year of schooling and I've been in my lab for 2 years now. I'm also at a large research university, which makes my life a lot easier. Many of the students I met went to undergrad only universities and didn't have access to a lot of the resources I do. It's definitely nice having grad students around for advice and they oft times set a good example of what I should reach for.

At the first undergrad meeting, the encouraged us to find a partner from another school and complete a scavenger hunt for a prize. First few people won a shirt of their choosing. Long story short, we won. I got this awesome T-shirt that says "[Cite Me]" and it was great. My labbies were very jealous of my awesome shirt. I would post a picture, but that's a lot of work and there isn't much to it.

When the talks started the next day, I was very excited. There is SO MUCH going on at EB. You have the meeting of various organizations who study different things. From Molecular Biology to Anatomy and I had to schedule out each day what talks i wanted to go to. There was a decent amount of stuff pertaining to my work, but some of the more interesting things were a bit out of my realm. I absolutely hate it when people start out talks saying "I know everyone in here is a [insert field that I had no clue existed until about 5 seconds ago, so I'm just going to skip all the background!" Because it makes it much harder for me to follow along. Oft times you'll see me in talks with my tablet looking up things as they talk about it just to keep up. All that aside, I learned a lot.

Another thing that I really appreciated were the career oriented talks. Some were focused at undergrads, others at people going into industry, making a nice CV, and choosing a grad school. I me the former head of admissions for a grad school that I want to go to and I got great advice.

I would give a play-by-play of the week, but this post is running a little long and it would take FOREVER to explain everything. The last thing I'll say is that the best part of the trip was definitely spending time "outside of work" with the grad students. We spent a decent amount of time together in the hotel hot tub talking about life and friendship and the latest department gossip. We spent an equal amount of time drinking tea and talking about science and watching TV. Now, enjoy a few more pictures.

This was my undergrad Scavenger-hunt buddy practicing her poster presentation for me!

The grad students had an event to go to early because they won travel awards. I just chilled in the convention center for a bit. Note: That is the softest hoodie in the world. 

You can see the red trolley in the background just in front of the convention center. I want to go back!

There was a HUGE vendor show. I got this awesome tote bag that I've been using for groceries. Look at all the science!

Just Me Doing Science

My First RIP Went a Little Like This

First thing. Name change again. I like how it rolls off the tongue and I don't actually talk about girls or cars... In other blog concerning things, there's no shortage of ridiculousness going on and I have a backlog of awesomeness to tell everyone about! So next week I'm going to post about the Experimental Biology conference I went to in San Diego a few weeks ago and the hell I had to go through for that to work out (preview: It was an absolutely amazing experience).

The picture above is from just before my first RIP... Every month someone from either my lab or the lab we meet with every-other Monday presents all of his/her research and it ends up everyone presents all of their research ever once a year. We call this our Research In Progress or RIP. When I first saw it listed out with Name: RIP and date, it seemed like my boss was planning the death of my labbies... I didn't have much to present last year so this year was my first RIP. 

The hardest part of the whole thing was learning how to tie a bow tie of course. It is ridiculousness. I spent 3 or 4 hours the night before trying to make it look decent and when I finally got it down, I wanted to sleep in it so I didn't have to try again in the morning. It was also pretty unfortunate that it was on memorial day because everyone else was enjoying their day-off-goodness. So after a week and a half of practicing in front of my boss and making a reasonable presentation and 3 hours of learning to tie a bow tie, I was ready. I do this thing when I'm nervous where I speak really really really fast so I started to do that at the beginning my PI looked at me and told me to calm down so I did and the presentation was comfortable from then on out. It was also a nice ego-booster for the PI of the other lab we meet with to tell me that one of my diagrams really helped her understand a concept that she had trouble with in the past. All-in-all it was a good presentation and there were also really tasty cookies that my PI brought. Actually, she's been bringing cookies to pretty much every lab meeting and I have no self control around cookies. It's a bit unfortunate. 

In other lab news: We got these really cool conductive beads that replace our water baths and they're pretty magical. Now when I take my media out of the water-bath it's not wet! They're also really shiny. I'd definitely recommend them. They also seem a bit cleaner than water obviously because, well, gross things can't grow well on solid things.

I'm actually on a deadline to take down the spring decorations before weeks end and put up summer decorations so I should probably go do that. 

 I also just wanted to share this picture. No real reason, actually. 

I Wish I Could Say I'm Sorry

When I started this blog, specifically the posting of my college experience, I had two main purposes. The first was to express myself and the second was to just document my experiences for myself and for others who I thought might be entertained by them. For the first half of my first year, I was pretty sad. I didn't go to the school that I had intended, I was in a new environment, and for the first time in 4 years, the people I had been used to seeing pretty much everyday suddenly weren't there. To some extent, expressing this sadness and my feelings and having not much to do contributed a lot to my posting to the blog.

 I'm happy to say that I'm happy in my life right now. Sure classes are still stressful and I have a way to go as far as career building and working to get into grad school, but I'm happy. With that being said, I feel bad for not posting for the whole of last semester and will start posting regularly again because I feel as though me in my happiness should be as well documented for Future-Ron as my not-happiness.

 I figure I'd go through the high-lights of last semester and the end of my year, starting with the above picture. I collect bubble wrap in one of my drawers for stress-relief purposes and foam pads from packages for absolutely no real reason other than the fact that they're soft... When studying one afternoon in my downstairs office, My Grad Student and another grad student knocked on the door and led me upstairs to a lab bench covered in bubble wrap and packing peanuts. It was very nice of them, even though I had to clean it up. It's the little things that go towards making you feel part of a family and I'm definitely glad that I have my lab family.

Promoted

 I was promoted last semester! As you all know, every semester we do decorations for various seasons. This year during Halloween, I got promoted to Senior Decorating Officer. I'm too lazy to post all of the pictures, so I'll just show you my crowning achievement to date in my new position. I'll definitely get better this semester and trust me, they're going to be absolutely amazing.



Culture and Stuff

Last semester I came to the conclusion that I would much rather spend my money on experiences rather than things. The first result of this decision was me going to go see the play "Warrior Class" which was an awesome political drama and probably my favorite play at the moment. I initially planned to go see it with a certain girl that I am now dating (Probably talk more about that later... the blog is called "Girls Cars & Science", but it seems to be more science than anyhting else), but that didn't happen. I met some cool grad students on the train to theater, enjoyed the play, met Buddhist monks, and met this lovely couple that decided to start up a series of hot dog stands on a whim. The day was definitely worth the $33 play ticket, $5 train ride, and whatever I paid for the hot dog.

Also: When I got back to my room there was a blanket fort... Life.

Poster! 

Presented my first poster. It was an on-campus event and was nothing big, but I got plenty of compliments and great suggestions. I have a bigger, still on campus, event coming up in March. It was really cool to see my work on a big piece of paper that was orange.


Mmmmm

I thought about having a certain order to this post. You know, something sensible like chronological or importance or something like that, but I'm too cool for that.  For the yearly Thanks Giving party where everyone makes food I made a sweet potato casserole and it was delicious. We also played pin the feather on the turkey and I almost won the sexiest science-themed Christmas ornament to ever exist, but I got second place to one of the peeps from the enemy lab (But not really. We love them). We had to do a pin-off round in order to determine the winner and I lost by a few inches.  A pin the tip on the pipette game was also prepared, but the turkey antics lasted a bit long. We'll save it for next year.

Random events in not as much detail as I would like, but it happens. I'm definitely looking forward to 2014 and becoming a better scientist and person.

P.S. I forgot about the girls and cars parts. My car was crushed by a tree (it happens) so I got a new one and its name is Enris. It's not as cool as my baby Felicity that was brutally murdered by a tree, but she's a classy gal. I have a recent girlfriend and she's nice and makes me food. That about covers it.

The 99%

Get ready for my yearly overly sentimental post.

To start this out, I should make it clear that "99%" has nothing to do with Wall St. or economics or people. It has to do with a quote from my boss. At the beginning of the summer, she said, "In Bench Science, 99% of what we do ends in failure. We live for the 1%."  I heard it and I liked it, but I didn't take it seriously. After this summer, I know exactly what she was talking about.

This summer I got my own project to work on (yay!) whereas over the course of the year, I've been helping my grad student with her project. My project involved lots of trouble shooting, a terrible antibody, a not-so-helpful tech support team, and 5000 repeats of the same experiment, but it was absolutely worth every second. I can honestly say that there are few things in this world that make me as happy as getting nice, shiny, interpret-able data, whether or not it's what I had expected.

It has been a summer of forgetting my protein ladder and using it in every lane. It has been a summer of cursing out Western Blots, dancing in dark rooms, jubilantly repeating experiments hoping to get data that looks just like it did last week, and repeating them begrudgingly hoping that I never have to do them again. It's been a summer of happiness and frustration and mistakes, but most importantly, understanding. This is science. It's hard and frustrating and time consuming and mentally exhausting, but it's also the best thing in the world. This summer has been a lot of that 99% and I won't go so far to say that without the 99% I couldn't appreciate that 1%, but I will say that the 1% of success makes the 99% more than worth it and it's the 1% that makes the world what it is today.

I'm sitting in my room enjoying my 5 days of vacation before school starts. I'm supposed to be packing and getting ready to go to the store and go dorm shopping, but I decided to be lazy. Instead, I'm sitting on my bed going through old Facebook messages, Facebook stalking people I haven't seen in about a year, and thinking about how much things have changed since I've started school and started working in the lab.

It's officially been a year of my working in the lab and I can't say that it's been anything less than amazing. I'm a firm believer that some years are bigger than others and this past year has been amazing and fun and interesting and really really big. I got into a lab, I made friends, and I did science and I couldn't have asked for more.

We also had lab pictures recently. We're the hottest scientists in the south east.

Preview Pic.

Kimwipes are Great

For those of you that don't know, Kimwipes are "delicate task wipers" designed for lab use. Sure you can use them to clean your glasses, do too-lazy-to-take-out-paper math, or wipe away tears, but they're made for science. Cleaning up media messes and wiping off cell scrapers and wiping the lens of something that you probably don't want to scratch.

Today was the last day of one of my labbies. I've only been in the lab for a year, so it hasn't been as hard for me as it has been for the others, but I'm definitely going to miss him. Yeah he's going on to bigger and better things, but it really doesn't make it any easier to not see someone that you've seen almost every day for the past 345 days. My grad student has always told me that one of the greatest things about science is the fact that we get to meet all of these smart, charming, and amazingly unique people, and from what I've seen in my short career, that is ABSOLUTELY true. Over the past year, my labmates have served as examples of how I want to live my life; they've become a second family to me. They've been the friends I wish I could be, the parents I one day want to be, and they have the kind of deep and meaningful relationships with those around them that I can only hope for when I'm older. They're kind and smart and cool and funny and I honestly don't think I could have stumbled into a more amazing group of misfits.

Today my grad student told me that one of the worst parts of science is getting to spend time with and bond with all of these smart, charming, and amazingly unique people only to have them leave. We understand that every experience is just a stage in our careers and in our lives, but wow, it's sad. Since this is just a part of science, does that make it okay to use Kimwipes to wipe away the tears? Who cares? We'll do it anyways.

If you have 'Myco', 'Myces', or 'Mycena' in your scientific name, I HATE you.

We have recently ended the war on gels. We've undoubtedly won. I made 6 Western-gels the other day and not a single one leaked. Mission Accomplished (hopefully I won't regret saying this).

With the end of the war on gels, a new enemy has, again, reared its ugly mycelium. Of course, like any scientist that works with tissue culture, I hate having my cultures contaminated, but it stings slightly more when it's fungal for me just because we have history. My first experience with fungal contamination was a few years ago while culturing C. elegans. I'm not going to get into GREAT detail, but this fungus was a...um... jerk. Long story short it entered the nematodes through any available orifice and ate them from the inside out. It also messed up their eggs and prevented them from hatching. Needless to say, any experiments I had going on were no longer going on.

Experience number 2 was in my first real lab work as an intern. We did tumor and stem cell work and it was fun and used actual sterile technique. Did that help? It definitely helped select for a fungus that was an absolute nightmare. You could go through the lab with a black light at one point and you could see it growing on things. By the end of it everything had been autoclaved, the hallways leading to our labs smelled like hospital, and all experiments were forced to cease because of the wide spread contamination. It took a month to deal with it, but it was dealt with.

 < Not mine

Experience number 3 and the last experience was very very recent. Right after the lab outing, actually. I came back and 1 of my cultures was definitely filled with fungus and the others were sketchy. What did I do? I bleached the bitches and ethanoled the incubator. Problem solved.

And yes, I know you're not a fungus Mycobacterium, but come on, one of your species cause TB. And yes, I also plan to post about the lab outing soon... a little at a time.