Lab work is isolating. Lab work in an off-campus building is even more so. The medical school itself is isolated from the rest of the university. The isolation of a bio-sciences grad student (that’s me) is multilayered. It is what I shall now refer to as LabSolation.

Two things have made me come to the realization of my professional alone-dom. The first is that half the country is now abuzz with the news of the first ever female president of Harvard. While interesting, exciting, and potentially a big step forward, this development in no way affects me. My lab is at no risk of moving to Allston and I am never even on the main Harvard campus, so basically, I don’t have to care. Grad students at the medical school are a species set apart.

Secondly, a few days ago I noticed that while the lab is a wide open space with people shuttling about constantly (as I previously expounded upon) I can go through an entire day without saying more than a sentence to anyone. I can stick my nose (not literally) into whatever experiments or preps I am working on, completely shut out everyone and everything else, and be shut out in return. An entire week of such shutting is tiring and makes me not a little batty.

Yes, science is at times intensely social – the meetings, the talks, the posters, all aimed at connecting scientists through their work. The physical side of science however, the experimentation, the lab work, is a lonely business. Departmental seminars and talks aim to alleviate that loneliness and do rather nicely, but as I mentioned, my lab is offsite. It takes an hour for me to get to the seminar and back again. It has to be a pretty spectacular seminar for me to bother. And so, LabSolation sets in, only to be counteracted by mandatory beer hour in the conference room at least twice a week.