On the grassy shores of this lake live several flocks of Canadian geese. I frequently ventured out into the sun-scorched outdoors in search of these feathered friends. Upon finding them, I’d simply be content to sit and watch as they waddled with the smug sense of security that only geese seem to have. As they waddled, they often ran blades of grass through their beak, searching, I suppose, for insects of the tasty variety. Occasionally, a goose would shatter the silence of this sizzling summer day with a hoarse honk. They felt quite comfortable making their presence known in other ways too of course: they coated the walking paths with generous servings of s***.
I wasn’t just here to watch these feathered fecal factories though, I was here to do Science. It was the summer of 2018, the last summer before I went off to college at Emory University. The previous summer, I’d interned at a location of the EPA’s. Although I didn’t do much in the way of lab work, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. From what I gathered, I had helped develop an assay or test that would determine whether certain chemicals had negative effects on cardiac health. I hadn’t helped in a major way, I’d simply gathered up spreadsheets of data on chemical effects on certain biological processes, but I’d helped nonetheless. You’d figure that I should have taken a break or something, given how I had already gotten into college the previous year. You’re right, I should have. However, I’d already gotten this internship (a paid one no less), so I wasn’t going to pass the opportunity up.
Things were going to get a little bit complicated, but not in the usual way. In lab science, I think it’s pretty accurate to say you can’t rely on the absence of complications. Sometimes, you don’t even know what specific complication arose, just that an experiment just did not turn out the way you expected it to. This happens everywhere, and to everyone, not just scientists, but I suppose the mystery is only compounded by the fact that for the most part, you’re working with organisms and compounds that you can’t see directly.
I’m totally fine with those kinds of complications. They’re occupational nuisances, not even hazards. The sting of failure is lessened by your acknowledgement that some things are out of your control. However, as an individual with a borderline-OCD personality, it’s still very painful for me. At one point, after a glob of purified DNA frustratingly failed to materialize at the bottom of a test tube, I even considered wearing my phone like a body camera of sorts so I could attempt to identify what step I had messed up. But ultimately I moved on. I had to. There were other things to do besides deliberate fruitlessly over a mysteriously failed procedure. As long as a procedure does not fail several consecutive times, it would be more of a waste of time to try to identify the problem, than the reattempt that procedure.
[Pictured below is the "resuspension," or mixing of E. coli previously gathered as a solid pellet into a liquid solution. The first step of DNA purification/isolation.]
So be it. However, the issue this time was not with lab science. It wasn’t with the facilities either. Although not as up-to-date as the labs at UNC, regardless, there were some unique and unequivocal perks to working here. One major one was the fact that you didn’t have to do any autoclaving (a dishwasher on steroids) at all, as all of a lab’s glassware was picked up, autoclaved, then placed in neat rows on shelves, waiting for reuse. It’s a very convenient setup.
There was also the supply store. It’s sort of like a Staples, crammed into a rectangular space a little larger than the average living room. Each month, a lab would be allocated credit that would allow them to get stuff from this store. Before you get too excited though, there weren’t any electronics for sale. It’s just analog stuff: pens, notebooks, sticky notes, and tapes. As someone strangely obsessed with office supplies, it was regardless, an exciting deal. I liked my lab notebook so much that at the end of the summer, I asked my preceptor whether I could purchase using actual money some lab notebooks from this store. I don’t think he understood my fondness of these notebooks, because he laughed and said no.
The cafeteria was excellent too. They made a mean Philly cheese-steak.
Preceptor things
But I digress. The issue wasn't with the facilities, it was really my working relationship with my preceptor, or mentor.
The deal was, I now had accumulated enough experience and knowledge concerning bio lab science that I felt confident in my ability to assess situations and form opinions independently of my preceptor, even if they conflicted with theirs. In hindsight, I was getting ahead of myself slightly, but that's how it was.
So, not surprisingly, we had an argument. It wasn’t anything as dramatic as a yelling match, but I can’t accurately call it something as simple as a “disagreement” either. It was concerning a poster summarizing the work I had done that summer. Everyone in the internship program had to produce and present one.
According to convention, an abstract (a summary of an experiment) is always included on a poster. I tried keeping it short, but my preceptor wanted it to be much more verbose than I felt necessary. I was fine with making the abstract longer, under the condition that I could add highlighting in order to make it more digestible. Even though I was aware that conventionally, highlighting and other means of marking up the written contents of a poster isn’t done, I regardless thought that this was an excusable breach of protocol. It conflicted with the precise word of the law, but not the spirit.
After all, what is the goal of a scientific poster but to communicate the results of a project as best as possible? I felt that by strategically adding a little highlighting, I wouldn’t be detracting from this goal, quite the opposite. My preceptor disagreed, saying that to do that would be to run counter to convention.
In the end, I relented, removing the highlighting, but as the result of this episode, I became aware of a mindset that I do not think is great to have as a scientist, that is, an unreasonable dependence and deference to authority.
Following authority is good and all, but only to a certain extent. It seems my preceptor let the PI dictate his actions to the point where he was nothing more than an extension of her will.
He seemed most alarmed and offended when I did not word-for-word revise my poster’s text according to the PI’s suggestions.
There was one other thing I wasn't quite happy about, though.
His lack of patience was one of them. This wasn't great, as my preceptor was supposed to teach me all the lab techniques required for the project. Fortunately, I had already learned most of the required techniques during my summer at YIP. Even then, while I’d be doing some procedure or another, he’d grunt with impatience and seize whatever scientific instrument I was holding. “Let me, let me” he’d tersely utter. Other than a bruised ego though, not much else arose from this manifestation of my mentor’s impatience.
Concerning broken hypersharp virus-coated needles
However, there were more serious consequences of his impatience. We were doing something called “viral stamping,” a new technique that involves hypersharp glass needles that are coated with virions, or virus particles in order to selectively infect individual cells. As you might imagine, to do so requires a high degree of precision, which we achieved by using a mechanical arm thing. We turned various gears and dials in order to gradually bring the needle into contact with a cell. Of course, we simultaneously used a microscope to visualize our target cell and the progress of our needle.
At first, my preceptor unwisely elected to operate both the microscope and the needle-holding arm at the same time. Watching from his left, I saw the needle slowly descend into the 6-well petri dish of cells. The needle, I noticed, was almost at the bottom. My preceptor didn’t seem to notice. It kept going. Several things happened at once.
I started to back up. "Hey-" I started to say.
SNAP
Too late, the splinter-like needle succumbed to the zeal of my preceptor like the spine of a gangly teen at a world-class sumo match. The hypersharp, virus-coated tip of the needle flew somewhere off into the wild blue yonder. The viruses’ people were calling, I supposed. I wasn’t about to have a second close encounter with yet another sharp, but this time definitely virus-laden, glass object, so I immediately donned some protective glasses. Turning on my phone’s flashlight, I attempted to locate the broken tip of the needle on the floor. My preceptor seemed cheerfully unconcerned about the events that had just transpired. “No, don’t bother,” he said, waving me off as I scuttled around on the floor looking anxiously for the glass fragment.
One day sometime after this, he called in sick. He was out for several days. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had inadvertently managed to infect himself with one of the viruses he was working with and fallen ill.
There was another consequence that could be attributed to impatience, though not a safety-related one. It was a mess up in experimental design, and I can explain what went wrong. Unfortunately, since this post has gone on very long, I’ll have to explain in another post which should be shortly forthcoming.
Thanks for reading!
- BJW
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