Jun 25, 2008 4:40 pm

Week 1. Avoid starvation.

There was a time when life was simple, and the only cause for malnourishment was the annoyingly early closing time of Swiss grocery stores.

This year, without the excitement of a European summer to motivate me, I’m sliding down a slippery slope of apathy. Going to work, brushing my teeth, eating food — anything is fair game for procrastination. If I die from scurvy or liver failure, Mom, I want you to know that it wasn’t because you didn’t send enough dumplings. I really thought a screwdriver with every meal would be enough vitamin C.

Avoid my fate. Your worst enemy is yourself. Here are my ingredients for a nice summer as a research intern: sleep, procrastination, food, and heart.

Sleep. It’s important. Especially if you’re doing something as physically and intellectually demanding as the pursuit of truth. This is why, when you stumble into lab slightly drunk at 11am, your lab boss will understand your need to catch up on sleep. In fact, you should probably just go home early and take a nap, so you can be refreshed for your next super-productive 4-hour day. Some people say, you can sleep when you’re dead. Actually, you can’t–I’ve tried. So live life to the fullest — catch some shut-eye when you still can.

Procrastination. This is actually a non-ingredient, or a gredient if you will (and you will), for healthy summer living. The best way to avoid procrastination is to put it off by doing other things. For example, if you are someone who plays a lot of minesweeper before experiments, try reading the NYTimes first. Or start a blog. Soon you’ll find that you don’t have time to play minesweeper. Or to do experiments. Problem solved. This is like killing two birds with one stone, only instead of a stone, it’s your laziness, and instead of birds, it’s your scientific career.

Food. If you don’t eat, you’ll die. Sounds harsh, but it’s true–I’ve tried. The trick is to make friends who have microwave ovens. Ask them if you can use it. Once you get to their room, ask them for some food to put in their microwave. It’s not begging, because technically you’re cooking your own food. Offer to buy your friend dinner some time, to be polite, but be vague enough so they don’t take you up on it.

Tip for getting food from biotech companies: Companies like Invitrogen like to set up tables in lab buildings and give out free food, which is a good opportunity to stock up on coffee, donuts, and Splenda. The caveat is that you have to listen to their sales pitch first, which will take a good chunk out of your leisurely 4-hour day. Avoid this by telling them immediately that you only work with bacteria. In the unlikely event that their product is designed to work with bacteria, mumble something about how your protocol is all natural. Then make a gesture of digging up soil from the ground. If they’re really persistent, they might try to make small talk about soil, or mention that their husband is a geologist. This is a good time to finish taking their food and walk away. Make sure to also take a brochure, so you can catch any falling donut crumbs.

Heart. You might think having heart (not a heart, just heart, the non-discrete substance) is only helpful if you’re the underdog team in a Hollywood sports drama featuring angels or pet animals. Heart works in real life too, like in that movie when Will Smith worked really hard so he could sell his soul and become rich and set an example for his cute son. In the lab, showing that you have heart can help you make up for being lazy or not very smart. To do this, bring a lot of bottles or tubes out onto your bench, and then put them back. Repeat this whenever you don’t have anything to do. Alternatively, stay at the lab really late once a week or so, until your lab boss says “Wow, that kid has a lot of heart” or “Was it you who left all the chemicals out on the bench last night?”

Failure to get results also counts as having heart. This is because scientists like to claim that they learn more from failure than success. Use this to your advantage and talk repeatedly about how your experiments failed this morning because of a tiny mistake. Then shrug your shoulders, roll your eyes, and say, “oh, science!” This will bring a round of hearty laughter from all the postdocs in your lab.

This post is the first in a series chronicling my feeble attempts at scientific glory as a summer research intern in a systems biology lab. Each week I will post another series of profound, inane, or profoundly inane insights for your (but mostly my) reading pleasure.

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