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FORUM
Two Years at the Bench Produces Top 10 Insights
For the past two years, worms have been my focus, my life, my purpose for braving the winds and wilds of the Charlestown Navy Yard through 30-degree Aprils and 70-degree Decembers. Charlestown, the area sparse in grad students but rich in Boston skyline views and waterfalls, a scientific community unto itself and content in its "isolation" (assuming, of course, anything outside Longwood Avenue to be peripheral). Being a technician in a lab has given me a most intense, first-hand immersion into science, and I have acquired an understanding of lab work otherwise impossible to achieve. In light of the fact that I will soon be leaving my lab for graduate school, I have been thinking a good deal about what I have gained from my foray into the world of microbiology. In the tradition of top 10 lists, graduation speeches, poems about kindergarten, I have gathered together my own collection of ideas and hints drawn from my tentative beginnings in the lab. These are things I wish I had known on my first day wielding a Pipetman, and things I will carry with me as I continue my education. Human FactorsFirst, lab work requires the establishment of small, personal, incremental goals. It is important to reward yourself upon achievement of those goals, and to refrain from gazing dejectedly too far into the future. In science, sometimes the ultimate goal is so far away it seems completely unreachable. In order to succeed and feel a sense of accomplishment, baby steps are required.Ask questions and make mistakes. Everyone around you has made the same mistakes you are making, probably repeatedly. The people around you are by far your greatest resource for information, advice, congratulations. Talk to them constantly about your work, their work, the seminar you just heard. Autoclave your water. Otherwise, months can pass without results. This absence would be almost humorous if it hadn't happened to me. Go to all talks, seminars, lectures, and journal clubs. Even if you only stay awake for the introduction, you will still get a great sampling of today's most interesting research (and sometimes free coffee and cookies—don't forget your Tupperware). Wear gloves. Is that thin layer of powder covering everything in the scale room sodium chloride or sodium azide? Put down all your tubes, walk all the way back to your bench, and cover up those hands. Share your equipment and knowledge with those who ask for it. At least in my lab, this sense of community and helpfulness really made me much more comfortable asking for help, talking about my work, and using equipment I might not otherwise have had available to me. Science is about the pursuit of knowledge, and the more congenial an atmosphere you can help generate, the better. Make charts, tables, graphs continually to organize your data and thoughts. Doing this when it is all fresh in your mind is considerably easier than six months after completing the experiment at the threshold of publication. Make lists. Make sure those really are your tubes in the PCR machine before pressing CANCEL. (I was eventually forgiven.) Just Say YesAlways, always say yes to doing something you have never done before, be it going to another lab to learn a new technique, trying out another organism for your experiments, forming a new collaboration. Go outside your comfort zone because your level of expertise will increase exponentially. For me, working in the lab has led to my watching human brain surgery from three feet away, as doctors extracted a tumor from a surprisingly (to me) beating brain; to hearing world-famous doctors and scientists speak about their scientific passions; to traveling to different locales, from the exotic (Madison, Wis.), to the foreign (Cape Cod, Mass.). I have worked on at least three different "black," or secret, projects: if they had worked, the way in which C. elegans research is done may have been significantly altered. None worked, but I would never call my time spent on them a waste because of the excitement I felt at being on the cutting edge of research.Through fires and floods, mites and Y2K, my worm lab has never been dull. I never thought I would be able to appreciate such an apparently simple creature. I can even enjoy a day peering at sinusoidal worm squiggles—yeah, sometimes I even dream about them. They squirm on in their little plated world, unaware of all we learn from them, and all the while, teaching me more about science than any other work I could have devoted myself to. —Rachael Moeller, a research technician in the Anne Hart lab at Massachusetts General Hospital |
