Something about clearing out one’s lab bench is terribly cathartic. One has to pour out bottles and bottles of complicated solutions, ones with trillions of ingredients that took an hour to measure out and three to dissolve (on a good day). It’s a little like baking every day for a year and holding on to all the delicious cookie results, only to dump them all in the trash. Trying to pawn off one’s solutions on lab mates is useless. “Trust no one” is the motto in most labs – never use a reagent you didn’t make or check in some painfully meticulous way.

It’s sad and wasteful, but also cleansing and refreshing. You have to clean, put away, file and label, so that some poor shmuck grad student can one day go through the reagents, trying to make sense of the legacy you left, either in plasmids, cells, or viruses. Clearing out helped me see the marks, both big and small, that I left on my many assorted labs, and made me feel comfortable with moving on.

I cleaned out my bench for the third time in the last year, packed up my car, and drove down to DC just two short weeks ago. It’s pretty here, if you like men in suits and buildings that look like monuments (and monuments that look like buildings). I have almost settled in to my apartment on Capitol Hill, about 6 blocks away from the building itself. I stare at it every day on my drive home from work and from the roof of my building. I can’t get enough of it. I find it magnetic, somehow, and beautiful.

On the drive home.

Importantly, I love my new job. I never thought I would hear myself say it, but here I am. I love the job. It’s really interesting, challenging, and fun. The work is making my mind flex and bend in ways it has never been asked to before, and I am loving it. I am excited to write about it, as I feel I am now seeing a part of science and applications of science that are rarely discussed and explained, and that’s a shame. More soon!

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This is going to be a short post, isn’t it…

I won’t miss the constant sense of looming failure.
I certainly won’t miss the mice.

I am kind of going to miss the shaming and passive aggressive signs.

Don’t worry, neither Ben nor Jean were seriously injured during their tenure in my lab.

I will miss all the empty boxes.

Shipments come into the lab daily. Some in large boxes, some in tiny ones. Some huge boxes contain nothing but tiny vials, victims of over-packaging, over-protection, and over-charging for shipping. Moving is a breeze with so many boxes around.

Handy, really, since I am moving. After long and painful deliberation, I decided to accept a job as a senior analyst at a science policy consulting firm in DC. I will be moving there at the end of next week, and starting my new job on June 8. I don’t yet know what I will be working on*, but I was told to read up on the front content of the Economist in order to get an idea of the current science policy issues facing the United States. I do know that I will have my very own office, along with my very first set of business cards, and a business laptop. My new apartment in DC has a roof-top deck with a giant grill and a view of the Capitol dome. Taken together, that means I am now just one dog and one washer/dryer unit away from acquiring everything I consider necessary for full adulthood.

As I turn away from lab (yet again) I feel no nostalgia, no longing, no regret. It’s time for me to move away from bench science, back to enjoying science my way – by reading and thinking about it.

Now I have to get back to packing and finishing lab work. It took eight years for me to build a happy life and home here in Boston. It will only take a week to take it all apart and start again, from scratch, in a new city and a new industry. Wish me luck. And air conditioning.

*Another reason I don’t yet know the exact projects I will be working on is that the job requires a government security clearance. Eeek. I hope that security clearance is not as dark and sinister as it sounds.

I have a really strange tendency to read books which perfectly encapsulate (and often aggravate) whatever is going on in my personal life.

While I was writing my thesis, I was completely obsessed with Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. I couldn’t put it down, even when I knew that I was on a deadline and needed to be reading about herpes, not golden compasses. My submersion in the book lent an unreal quality to everything I was doing – keeping odd hours, staring at a computer all day, drawing fictional hypothetical models of herpes transcription during reactivation, eating cheese and beer for a month straight, and rarely leaving the house, unless it was to procure more cheese and beer. It all seemed surreal, tenuous, and not a little mythical.

And then it ended. Both the trilogy and the writing. Reality came back to me, as did the solid ground under my feet. I left graduate school and started an internship at Nature Network. Things were looking up. I loved my job, looked forward to spending the days with my awesome coworkers, and read light, relatively happy, and occasionally motivating books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma (I felt all green and proactive as I was reading it… and not at all different after I finished).

The internship came to an end, I dragged myself back to lab to pass the time and make a semblance of a living. I picked up Our Mutual Friend, and couldn’t be sure what I was doing, what my motivation and purpose were, why I was in lab again and who I really was. I started looking for other work, intensely. Like the irrationally happy ending of the book, I was expecting to find the job of my dreams and move to NY with my partner, a happy ending to a confusing and deceiving time. Alas, that was not to be.

I didn’t get the job(s) I interviewed for and wanted desperately. I started giving up a little bit. I somehow scored an offer for a job in DC, a city my partner flat out refuses to move to for reasons of his own, some valid, some less so. The job is outside of the career path I had hoped to pursue. It’s not perfect, but it’s a job. What better time to pick up The Grapes of Wrath. D’oh. I became convinced that there is no other work to be had, that I will never find anything other than the job in DC, that I am going to shrivel up and die in lab, surrounded by herpetic mice and labby misery, and that I should be grateful to have a job at all at a time when everyone else is bemoaning the lack of opportunities.

None of this outright suffering (allow me the melodrama, please) has been alleviated by A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I have now read about 100 pages of death, longing, love, loneliness, and whimsy, all strongly reminiscent of XKCD and none helping me with my decision. Do I turn down to solid job offer and keep looking for something in a different city and a different industry, or take the job, leave my partner, and start anew, by myself. Which is easier to give up? I don’t know. I don’t know what book to read to tell me, either.

Life in lab isn’t all monotonous pipetting and occasional retrophoresing, at least not in my lab. Every once in a while there is an afternoon – or 15 minutes, as the case may be – of real adventure, of an undertaking requiring the participation of many lab-members in a symphony of cooperation, team work, and only moderate grumblings of time better spent pipetting.

We had a minor adventure in my lab last week, and my lab members were gracious enough to let me record the events for posterity. I did help, mind you, just from the sidelines.

Might need a bit of background for this particular lab adventure. Liquid nitrogen tanks, which are used for long-term storage of cells and viruses, are organized in hanging towers with slots for boxes, which house individual cryotubes (a very space-age name for a plastic tube, isn’t it?). A long shaft is inserted at the top of the tower and holds all the boxes in.

Should one forget to insert this shaft, boxes will fall out and sink to the bottom… of a tank containing about 50 liters of liquid nitrogen at a temperature of approx -200 deg C. And there you have it. A box full of infectious disease at the bottom of a large tank filled with an immeasurably cold liquid. Awesome.

So how does one extract this box full of precious reagents from the bottom of a liquid nitrogen tank?

First you have to dump all the liquid nitrogen into a an intermediate vessel

And fish out all the tubes that have popped out of the fallen (and opened) box, with a surprisingly handy aquarium net.

Then you have to reach in to the immeasurably cold tank and pull out the box itself. Then reinsert all the tubes while keeping them on dry ice – this is tons of fun when you have nothing but latex gloves for temperature protection

And then fill the tank back up again.

Lab is sometimes frustrating, occasionally entertaining, but very rarely is it dull.

I think there is something very wrong. Everywhere, something is wrong and I want to find out what it is. In the last year, three of my closest friends have been diagnosed with cancer, of varying shapes and sizes. They were not “Omg I totally think I might be sick”. No. Diagnosed. With cancer. Surgically treated, waiting for outcomes, hoping for the best.

They are not elderly, they are not immune compromised, they do not smoke, they do not huff asbestos for a living. They come from ethnically, culturally, and geographically diverse backgrounds. They range in age from 29 to 31, they have healthy lifestyles and nothing in their family histories hints at trouble of this magnitude. They have nothing in common, really, beside the fact that they are funny, searingly intelligent, have all lived in Boston at some point, and are my heart and soul – some of the most important people in my life.

So. What’s wrong. Why are they sick? So sick at so young an age. Is cancer being diagnosed more now than ever before? Is there a cancer epidemic afflicting the young and able-bodied that I was not aware of? What are the reasons behind this wave? Am I the only one who thinks that there is something terribly wrong?

Every lab is made up of a cast of characters. Literally. This cast includes, but is not limited to, someone sloppy, someone anal retentive, someone who acts as the regulator/dorm mom, and someone who clearly and demonstratively doesn’t give a hoot what goes on as long as he/she is left alone to the work. It is, therefore, very difficult to get people to act in others’ best interests and to beware of the small things that can make a big difference.

I am not the first one to notice entertaining lab signs, but above being funny or angry, the one in my current lab is plain shaming and manipulative. Wait, I guess that’s funny after all.

And just in case you couldn’t make out the ‘shaming’ part:

I am not ready to divulge which one of the lab characters I most identify with, but I can say that this sign makes me double, no, triple-check that miserable freezer every time I reach in.

Being constantly surrounded by lab implements and constituents, it’s easy to forget how many cool things we work with on a daily basis. A plain old ultracentrifuge? It pulls a vacuum to let the rotor spin faster, without heating. How cool is that?? Tissue culture flasks are perfectly clear, allow gases but not bugs in, and have a special coating that allows cells to adhere? That’s cool. The coolest of all though, is the one ubiquitous lab tool no one gives a second thought – the 1.5mL capped centrifuge tube. Akin to calling all copiers Xeroxes, I have always called these tubes Eppendorfs, or Eppies.

Now Eppies may not look it, but they are a tiny miracle. They seal water tight, but pop open with one finger’s pressure. They can go from liquid nitrogen to the autoclave without disintegrating. They can spin at speeds of up to 25,000 x g. They’re clear, but you can write on them. They are free of DNAses and RNAses. And if that’s not enough, they also make awesome pranks. Pack one with a bit of dry ice, click it shut, and toss it under the desk of someone you dislike. Or someone whose attention you would like to attract. Or someone who needs a shake-up. The sublimating dry ice causes the tube to pop open with a really loud crack. Loud enough to send coffee up people’s noses, and to break up the day.

Lab is full of neat things, I just stop seeing them after a while. If anyone has their own unsung lab hero, let me know. Maybe I can photograph and wax poetic about it.

A new post-doc position comes with its own bag of interesting and unexpected observations and complications.

Firstly, I cannot emphasize enough how ecstatic, relieved, happy and floaty I feel now that I am no longer a graduate student. I can’t say that all pressure is off, but it’s lessened by a couple orders of magnitude. You will not find me in lab 70 hours a week (again) because I don’t want a career in academia and don’t have graduation hanging over my head. I just want to enjoy the science (as much as I am physically capable of enjoying science in the confines of a lab), publish a paper, and skip down the yellow brick road to a career which will keep me as far away as possible from i) mice, ii) herpes, and iii) mice with herpes.

Secondly, I am constantly caught in the crossfire of alternate protocols – things I learned how to do one way in my graduate lab are done differently in my current lab. I fight the urge to object to every protocol modification with “well, in my old lab, we did it like this.” I don’t want to be that person, one unable to let go of past experience. The most obvious response to that person is, “well you aren’t in your old lab, now are you.” I have to relearn things I have been doing the same way for the last 7 years in order to make my work consistent with the rest of the lab’s output.

I know objectively that the modifications aren’t likely to make a difference to the final product, but I find myself fighting to maintain allegiance to my old lab. It will wear off, I know. I have to grow up, move on and adjust to my new environment, play by the new rules. I think the warm fuzzy feeling I get when referred to as a post doc will go a long way in helping that process along. I am not in the desolate Kansas* of graduate school anymore.

*no offense.

Probably time I came clean. This is funny, because I actually feel a little dirty (and not in a fun way).

I wasn’t able to find a job. I went back to lab. To the same herpes lab in which I finished up my grad work. It’s a temporary and ¾ time post-doc, and it’s not what I had in mind for this point in my life. It kind of feels like I moved back into my parents’ house after college.

Now with my crankiness vented, I can say how grateful I am to have a fall-back, a comfortable, familiar environment with people I like and part ownership of a painful, but interesting project. At a point in the economy when the front page of the Wall Street Journal is filled with pictures of 1000 people lined up for 15 jobs, I am grateful to have work. Period.

I am surprised that I can call myself a post-doc now, temporary or not. I love not being a grad student. I love the freedom of being back in a lab and the opportunity to attend great talks whenever I feel like it. I like feeling ‘in’ again, even though I tried so hard to get out.

So I guess NN has another return to lab on their hands. Hope Jenny doesn’t mind a copy cat. I have about a billion impressions to report, now that I am back in the big house lab.

My internship at NN ended about 6 weeks ago. During those weeks, as some may have noticed, I went off the radar. Off the net. Partially off the grid. I have to admit to being a little burned out. I went into the internship right after defending my thesis – without so much as a long weekend away – and I think it caught up with me. I worked and I worked, on things fascinating and challenging, and when I was done, I ran away to Rome for 9 days.

Nine blissful days in the seat of European history. In the middle of all the art and the obscene amounts of food, my traveling companion and I took a day trip to Pompeii, the site of an ancient Roman city wiped out by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The toxic gases and feet upon feet of volcanic ash smothered the city and killed all of its unsuspecting residents almost instantaneously. The ash, reaching 6-7 meters, preserved life in Pompeii, froze it at an ancient moment of activity. Bread remained in the cooling ovens, oils stayed in earthenware jugs, mosaics and frescoes were sealed from centuries worth of elements, and people were preserved exactly as they were at the time of their death.

A beautiful day at Pompeii, with Mount Vesuvius looming in the background.

Yes, it’s completely morbid, but absolutely fascinating. When in the mid-1700s the time came to excavate the massive site (164 acres!), the archeologists took a genius yet painstaking approach to uncovering all that the volcanic ashes held – they felt for depressions in the earth, which suggested to them the presence of decomposed organic material – as in, bodies. They then carefully poured plaster into the voids and after it hardened, pulled out perfect casts of the residents of Pompeii, frozen in time at the time of their deaths, complete with final facial expressions and clothing folds.

Many bodies were left in the same place they were uncovered. I felt too guilty taking pictures of them there – it just seemed somehow… wrong. I did, however, take pictures of a dog in its final death throws, and of the body of a man, both kept in a holding chamber of millions of artifacts yet to be cataloged.

Can you see me reflected in the glass? Total photography pro, I am.

One thing I noticed was that the people were very small. It may be difficult to tell from the picture, but none of the bodies I saw were too far over 5’5” and could not have weighed more than 130 pounds, and that’s the men! Granted, current day Italians are not the largest folk on Earth, but Pompeiians seemed even smaller.

On an even creepier yet more fascinating note, bones and skulls peeked out from under the plaster of a number of the body casts. My to-do list for that mythical period of my life when I have loads time, now includes searching for any studies of those bones. I really want to know what information was collected from those bones, or even if anyone looked. Life expectancy, diet, food consistency (judging by the teeth). I wonder too, not related to the bones, how much Pompeiians knew about the large mountain just outside of their city. Did they know what volcanoes were? Did they know they were sitting on a time bomb? My guess is a resounding no, since hardly anyone got out. Does anyone know?

These finds offered an amazing glimpse into every day Roman life and to 250 years old excavation techniques. Walking around the massive place was absolutely breathtaking, voyeuristic, and wonderfully fun. I would highly recommend taking the trip to anyone, provided they are not too squeamish.