Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Defaulting

I ran into one of my former GSIs today who told me that he was leaving UM in December, three and a half years into his doctorate program. He'll be teaching his last class this upcoming fall term, then leaving for a science-related job in New York. He told me that his labwork hasn't been making much progress, and that he'll be defaulting with a Masters.

A sad story.

He was a great GSI and I'm sure he would have been a excellent scientist; but with the roadblocks in his labwork, it might have taken him longer than his expected two years to finish the thesis. I'm glad he found a job he likes in New York; he'll be doing some science outreach stuff for another university.

The particular department I'm currently rotating in accepts about five or six Masters students each year, but a lot more students graduate with this degree because they default out of their PhD program. Research is a game, but it's also a test of how much you can take.

As Einstein once said "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called Research."

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

"Nobody does biology JUST to do biology."

Next lab rotation is set in place; I'll be working on mouse pituitary development in the med school. In the meantime, I'm still trying to find more zebrafish carriers before the end of the summer.

I'm somewhat surprised at the sheer amount of reagents that this lab uses as compared to my former lab downstairs. It seems like we did much more PCR downstairs, so it could account for why we needed use smaller amounts of everything, especially enzymes, which cost about $100 a tube (not even half a mL). One of the grad students was running through how to set up a PCR involving animal DNA, and I didn't realize that the total reaction volume was 2.5 times larger than those used in my old lab. I'm wondering if it's really necessary to use that large of a reaction; I remember two summers ago when Susana (lab manager #1 downstairs) showed us this booklet sent by one of the supply companies. It called for a reaction volume of 100 microL: 10 times larger than what we used, which means 10 times more than what was necessary.

And then there's Hope (aka lab manager #2 downstairs), who had all sorts of ways to "cut corners" (or "be efficient," as she says). She used three times less then what we were accustomed to when Susana was in lab, and somehow the experiment still worked.

Obviously, everything is about saving money. Which brings me to the next point.

So much modern science research is human-centric. The more relevant it is to human health and prolonging the human lifespan, the more grant money set aside for it (even though there is also greater competition). How long ago did we transform our thinking from "I want to understand how nature works" or "I want to know where this came from" to "I want to study this because it helps people"?

And how many scientists out there are really trying to get a better understanding of something....simply because it's interesting and not because it can be applied to people one day?

The title is a reply from a person I met freshman year. They found out that I was a bio major and NOT pre-med.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Adjustments

Definitely making some progress on the zebrafish project; first two weeks of the lab rotation were all about learning how to take care of fish, and I've spent the rest of this time identifying carriers for the mi40 mutation.

I'm definitely not ready for classes to start; at least in lab I don't have to study...unless analyzing my own data counts.

In the end, I think I might come back to this lab to do my thesis...but first we'll see how the other few rotations work out.