Jue's Blog (tag:stories)

I’ll start with the ending: three Mondays ago, after 2 years of work in a lab and several recent months of panic and suffering quiet perseverance, I turned in my thesis. It arrived at the biochem office 51 minutes after the deadline.

This was after I wrote an abstract in 10 minutes (4:30pm), an entire chapter of results in 5 hours (11:00am), made two figures overnight (12:00am-9am) off of data collected from experiments 2 days before. If had gotten to the office 9 minutes later, the doors would have closed and locked away any hope I would have had of graduating with honors. Fortunately I made it in time.

Three years ago, after going on a run with a friend, I said to him, “we are going to run the Boston marathon.” It was a moment of triumphant and wildly inaccurate self-appraisal. What I should have said, of course, was “we are going to squander many months of our youth playing video games and imbibing mind-altering substances.” A certain jogging of the spirit, if you will, but not of the legs. We’re more the cerebral type.

Last week, after so much physical apathy, it was time to turn a new leaf. The metaphorical kind of leaf, the kind that is good for your lungs. The kind that starts with a six mile run along the banks of the Charles.

It was pleasant. Hot, a little humid, but I’m sure Pheidippides probably didn’t have it much better himself. Like him, I was in a race against time. Would Sparta respond to his pleas for help, and save the civilized world as he knew it from destruction? Will I make it back in time for dinner, and save my pocketbook from having to buy yet another mediocre burrito from Boloco?

I did not make it back in time. Instead, I got heatstroke. Well, technically, I got what is known as “uncomfortably hot.” But boy was it uncomfortable. And hot.

Being this dehydrated, there was a good chance I could finish the run looking like Otzi the Iceman. Fortunately, my taut, moisturized complexion was saved by a foolhardy willingness to eat unidentified plants, and what looked like a stretch of pebbly goat shit on the sidewalk. Of course, one man’s goat shit tree is another, less near-sighted man’s mulberry bush, and knowing this, I made like a giraffe and extended my neck toward the heavens, tongue out. Then a shooting pain went through my back and I decided instead to reach out with my hand and pick some berries.

It was delicious.

The moral of this story, like the other stories I tell on this summer research journal, has nothing to do with science, or really anything. It is simple: don’t go running after eating half-prosciutto, half-kielbasa pizza. Unless there are berry trees.

This is week 3’s installment of my journal as a systems biology research intern, a week late and chock full of factual inaccuracies. You’ll be happy to know that last week I actually wrote about science, but not really.

There are two computers in the microscope room at my lab. One is for operating the microscope; the other is for chatting with friends.

Which makes me wonder why it is such a fancy, obviously expensive piece of equipment. Maybe it’s so I can open more gchat windows and tabs on Firefox. Cutting edge delinquency with the latest mathematical analysis software and algorithm libraries. Thank goodness for NSF funding.

If I were Tolstoy I still wouldn’t be able to do justice, with words, to the Sisyphean tedium of operating a microscope in a multipoint, time-lapse experiment. Move stage. Focus. Take picture. Click. Click. Click. Wait. Move stage. Repeat 16 times every 6-12 hours.

Then I discovered macros. If you’ve never worked with microscope software before, macros are a language for writing little programs to tell the scope what to do. If you’ve never programmed before, let me tell you, the feeling of power you get from writing macros is divine.

Not that I’ve put my newfound knowledge to any use. The power is theoretical, pure potentiality. That’s what makes it so powerful. I am the Creator! I can tell that scope to move to the right 5 micrometers and snap a photo in 5 different wavelengths. How powerful is that? Almost like throwing lightning, causing floods, or creating Man. If only that power and intention were also omnipotence. Because you see, in the real world, invariably the 5 micrometers are miscalculated, the shutter stays open too long, Man goes off the moment after creation, the ingrate that he is, and eats some fruit you told him not to touch, builds towers you really rather he not build, makes atom bombs and drops them on each other, and so on.

But do I give up? Did other Creators before me give up? Nein! If anything, that big screen filled with macro code is a perfect disguise for the 4 gchat windows directly under it. Alt-tab. Let there be (600nm fluorescent) light!

This is part two of my weekly summer research intern journal. I work in a systems biology lab at Harvard Medical School, where I try my best to not learn anything about science at all. Last week’s post is here.

Yup, I’m the phone to China again, and nope, I still haven’t talked to either Mom or Dad.

Grandma:
Alright kid, listen up. Three things:

1. Stop traveling. I heard you went to Hong Kong a couple weeks back? Bad idea. It’s a proven fact that young people are constantly being killed all around the world, while traveling. Especially in California — don’t go there, they have earthquakes there! We had one last week — horrible, horrible thing. Hundreds of schoolchildren. And don’t even get me started on the money. Look at your grandfather and me: when we were young we stayed put — now his company pays for us to travel. What do you need to go to all these places for, anyway? America isn’t good enough for you? You could be us! Stop running around all over the place, you hear me?
   
2. Eat more, and stop staying up late to do homework. I know you’ve always been the studious one in the family, but you’re also the skinniest. That’s no good at all. You don’t want to be one of those bony intellectual types. Better to be a strong man, right? Look at your uncles. Even your dad — yeah he’s a little on the short side, but I never mentioned this to your mom, because boy can he work hard. Learn from your dad, don’t think too much, you hear me? Brains are fragile things. You need to take care of your body.
   
3. This is the most important thing, so listen carefully. Now that you’re your age, you’re probably thinking about marriage. You’re at Harvard, so this is a good chance to find a nice girl who will take care of you…but remember, always do what your mom says! I know you think you know something is good for you now, but you’ll change your mind later. Young people love changing their minds. You know who won’t change minds? Your mom. She knows how to find a good wife, so listen to her! Did you hear me? Do what your mom says! Find a good wife! Did you hear me?
   

Yeah I heard ya…in fact, just to show my filial piety I’ve canceled my plans for going anywhere this weekend, stopped studying, and now I’m carefully perusing russianbrides.com. How does everyone feel about Borscht?

After moving in yesterday, I decided today to take a walk with my roommate around the campus. After trying to haggle over the price of 4 trash cans at a Habitat for Humanity charity sale (before realizing that it was a Habitat for Humanity charity sale), we spent the next hour and a half trying to buy new trash cans at a price that would justify our refusal of the used ones. This failed, as could be expected. While we walked home with our new, slightly too expensive trash cans, I began to muse on the deep dilemmas of life.

“Some days, like today, I take a look at the weather outside, and think to myself, ‘God it’s such a nice day. Look at the colors of the brick buildings, the leaves on the trees, the sky, and the Charles river. Look at those shadows and the patterns they make on the ground, and the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind, and, and. Why am I not outside? Why am I not lying naked on the grass, letting the cool breeze caress my sun-soaked body?’ Okay, maybe just ‘Why am I not outside?’ I want to go on a run, but I already went on one this morning, when it wasn’t as nice out. There’s no one to go read on the grass with me, and it’s slightly too cool to just lounge. So then…”

“So then you go back and check your email.” My roommate understands.

“Yeah, and to write on my blog.”

So there you have it. My tale of the proverbial Modern Technology usurping the proverbial Experiences That Matter.