So here's the deal...

Okay, alright. Fine. I know. I’ve been hiding for a while now. I’m sorry about it. If it makes anyone feel any better, I have frequently felt extremely guilty about not posting an update – since I know that there are actually one or two parents and a sibling who read this and depend on it as an occasional, much-needed diversion.

The thing is though, there hasn’t been a whole lot that’s happened about which I really know what to say. There have been repeated maternal hints that perhaps the recently acquired boyfriend would be topic of interest, but REALLY people... do you actually expect me to be able to talk about the new boy in any sort of level-headed, non-embarrassing way?

And since I generally try to make this an amusing glimpse into The World of Eva, I can’t exactly delve into the deep dark stinky that is my musings on The Future of My Career as a Scientist.

However, in recent days a few incidents have occurred involving vegetables (or the remnants thereof) that I believe lend themselves to illustrating the state of my planet in a light but accurate way.

First, the tomato seeds on the ceiling.

I think I can safely say, that before I met Itai, I have never thought to include a careful wipe down of the kitchen walls and ceiling as part of my post-dinner clean-up. Not even when I babysat Steven during his younger years, and we had so much fun playing the green pea game, did I have to take a washcloth to surfaces well above my head.

But Itai is an emotional cook. He is also a very, very good cook, and one who has kindly provided me with countless delicacies over these past seven months, but an emotional one nonetheless, if I’m choosing my euphemisms carefully. So the other day, when he suddenly decided to add the innards of some cherry tomatoes to the sauce accompanying some homemade gnocchi, he couldn’t be bothered to chop them neatly on the butcher block to separate juice and seeds form tough skin.

Nope. When the impulse hit, he simply grabbed a handful, gave ‘em a good hard squeeze while holding them over the pot, and didn’t seem to mind (or even notice) when a fair bit of the desired material sprayed directly upwards and to the side, resulting in a sort of Jackson Pollack-goes-vegan effect on all the nearest horizontal and vertical surfaces.

When I came across the wreckage a few hours later during clean-up duty, he showed all the appropriate signs of embarrassment and genuine remorse. But ever focused on the Important Stuff, he just kept saying “but dinner was tasty, right?” as he held the foot ladder steady so I could reach the last seeds above the stove.

So that’s the boy. He’s very nice. He treats me like a queen. And he is teaching this type-A monster that it’s not so bad to mess up the kitchen, to sleep in on Sundays, to be in the bar before noon, and to be okay with it when I get all silly and smiley when my phone rings and the caller ID reads “Itai, cell.” Well, he didn’t really teaching me that last one, but it’s one I’ve definitely had to learn...

And now for the salad on North Frontage Road last Friday night.

So I’m pretty sure it’s not going to work out, but my goal for my lab work this fall is to do everything, at the same time, quickly. I’m pretty good at multi-tasking experiments, and I take full advantage of the fact that my timer can keep track of for time periods simultaneously. Going into my sixth year in Roy Lab, I’m a Legionella researching machine.

I have also tried to apply this level of efficiency to other parts of my existence. For example, I have almost perfected the gas station to bank to grocery store dash that can potentially be completed during the 40 minute dry cycle at the Wash-o-mat.

But I pushed this zeal for time savings a little too far last week. I should have ridden my bike home to get my car to come back and pick up the groceries I’d inherited from Itai before his two week trip home. But no... I couldn’t stand the thought of the 20 minute delay till bed time and so I consolidated the veggies, fruit and bread into one bag, whose handles I then carefully hooked around the left handle bar of Bella Blue.

I then strapped on my helmet, turn on my red blinky light and took off confidently towards home. After traveling a few feet, I noticed the bag bumping lightly against the spokes of my spinning tires. Ever secure in my mean urban biking skills, however, I peddled on towards the first intersection while casually trying to hold the bag away from my front wheel with my pinkie.

I’m not really sure what happened next.

It wasn’t one of those slow-motion, saw-it-coming crashes. It was more, one second I was riding my bike with a bag of produce, the next second, I’m flying over my handle bars into the street with the vague awareness of salad raining down around me.

Fearing the ever-oblivious Connecticut driver, I quickly hauled my self and my bike up off the pavement and back on to the sidewalk to inspect the damage and try to piece together what had happened. Somehow in one fell swoop, the edge of the bag had tangled in the wheel, and was then drawn into the brake assembly. As the plastic shredded and prevented me from braking, the large bag of whole carrots was forced through the spinning spokes, sending evenly slide rounds of carrot flying. At the same time, the bag of baby spinach burst like a balloon, sending little green leaves in every direction.

A bit shaken and a little scratched up, I left veggies in the road and rode home.

I am now making a conscious effort to slow down, both on my bike and in lab. I won’t go into the details of the experimental mishaps that have occurred thanks to my efficiency campaign... like I said, this is supposed to be a funny bit of story telling and it’s hard to make humor out of pathogenic bacteria, spilled liquid nitrogen and the wrong day to wear flip flops. But I’m trying.

Tomorrow is fractionation day, though. And I’m supposed to do tissue culture. And I’ve signed up for the microscope from 1 to 3. That’s at least three timer slots. Maybe at least I’ll remember to wear my clogs.

The Annual A/C Debate, or, what to do when the dewpoint hits 70F.

Purim, 2007
Originally uploaded by littlee.

Long about early May, when Nature is so excited about the thawing soil and warming temperatures that the din of unfurling leaves keeps me awake at night, I begin my own modest preparations for the toastier months of the year.

I dig to the bottom of the shoe pile for flip flops and I wedge wool sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves back into their bin in the closet.

I roll up my down comforter and unfold the thin blanket that will spend most summer nights angrily kicked to the floor at the foot of my bed.

I get out a dish towel and re-mummify my fruit bowl against the inevitable onslaught of fruit flies that will arrive on or inside Stop & Shop produce.

And finally, I take down the small fan that has spent the winter atop a high shelf, prop it against the screen of my now permanently open bedroom window and switch it to the lowest (and quietest) setting. With the exception of a few torrential thunderstorms when the windows must be shut, this little fan will spin steadily until about the 1st of October.

I feel rather pleased with myself after completing this little ritual, like I’ve managed to preemptively defeat the coming Summer Oven of New England with a minimalist tool set worthy of MacGyver. I entertain a certain self righteous satisfaction that, unlike the carbon foot printing monsters up and down the street, I have not run out and bought yet another 40,000 BTU air conditioner unit. And the sturdiness of my moral fiber relative to those Central Air people... well... I think it goes without saying...

Then June happens. At the beginning, I tell myself that this type of sticky discomfort is an aberration, that’ll it’ll cool down again a good bit until August when it’s ‘allowed’ to be really awful. After all, some trees are still flowering and some lawns are still a little fuzzy around the edges where they’ve been reseeded after an encounter with an errant snowplow.

But around mid-June though, I start eyeing my little fan with a heavy heart. This fan is my friend. It has cooled me summer after steamy summer, in 5th floor Manhattan walk-ups and 3rd floor attics. I have proudly extolled its virtues to others whose mouths hang agape when I tell them I don’t have A/C.

“No really, all I need is my little fan – just gotta keep the air circulating and everything’s great. What’s REALLY uncomfortable is going from an air-conditioned bedroom to a hot living room... It’s really BAD for you actually. Best to just deal with summer and drink ice water, if you ask me.”

But... but maybe just for the really hot nights. Like the one last summer when I came close to a psychotic break and I went into lab at 2:30 a.m., just to get out of the heat. Maybe just for those nights I could flip on a modest, say 10,000 BTU, window mounted A/C. Just so I could get some sleep...

Ack! No! I can’t desert my little fan. I already hear pleading, pitiful voices from Isabelle, my old iPod that’s been relegated to a box of electrical miscellanea next to my stereo. But oh, Ruby (my new iPod) is so small and light... and the battery lasts so long... and it doesn’t skip when I run up hills and leave me stranded for inspiration just when I need them most.

Maybe just a 5,000 BTU...

No!! I only have one more summer left, I can tough it out, even if the dripping condensation from my glass of ice water does ultimately ruin my wooden nightstand. Yes, one more summer than I’ll be tucked back under the cool summer blanket of Bay Area fog. (Or at least that’s the plan...I can hear your grumbling, So. Quit it.)

I’ll just go to lab - where it’s 72 degrees, 365 days of the year. I have enough research to do to last me for many hot nights, and it’s really bad, there’s always the cold room. Mmm... nothing like a few minutes at 40F in a t-shirt to cool down the core body temperature.

Lab is probably where I belong, anyhow, now that the wild and wacky days of thesis writing, thesis editing, thesis printing and thesis defending or behind me. Back in March, at Shira and Uri’s 3rd Annual, epic Purim extravaganza, I could not imagine what this moment would feel like. I was so deep in the thesis cave, I was certain that I’d be working on Figure 64 and formatting the literature references well into the ’08 presidential race.

So in keeping with the Purim party decree – to come dressed as something you are not, and to drink until you can’t tell good from evil – I donned a hand-made ‘thought bubble’ that read, simply, ‘MY THESIS.’ It was a little abstract, I’ll grant you. Most people define themselves as not being some noun or adjective. Per usual, I zigged when everyone else zagged and I chose to not be a verb, (“I am NOT thinking about MY THESIS.”).

However, as the night progressed and my fellow diligent Purim partygoers started to have difficulty with subtle costumes, I also came to appreciate a more literal interpretation of my get-up:

“Ha ha!! I get it! YOU ARE NOT YOUR THESIS! Like, you’re a PERSON... not some document... Oh that’s sooooo jaded 6th year grad student of you! I HAVE to take a picture of you for a friend of mine who’s, like, in his 12th year at Penn...”

A 12th year of grad school. Yikes. That’s even scarier than a summer without A/C.

Greetings from The Cave

cave flora
Originally uploaded by littlee.

The coolest thing about my thesis cave on the second floor of 79 Mansfield Street is that it is directly adjacent to a frenzied, mid-February roof replacement project at 84 Mansfield Street. Other perks include a totally average (read: shockingly noisy) toddler living downstairs, and a law student living upstairs who evidently pumps herself up for Constitutional Law lectures by pacing back and forth wearing tap shoes.

Did I mention the toddler has access to a piano?

I don’t think I really noticed these things when I began living in my cave back in the first week of January. Way back then, when rocks were soft and dirt was young, the pages were flying and figures were materializing out of nowhere thanks to the existence of two previously-polished manuscripts that served as willing sacrifices to the Gods of Chapters One and Two.

It was sometime in late January, when the aligned thesis writing planets started to droop lazily out of orbit, that I started to hear things. Like little Caleb whaling on the piano in the high octaves. (Always the high octaves!!) And now the Gods of Chapters Three and Four are angry. Chapter Five God, the Great Conclusion God, won’t even enter the cave now that he’s heard the tap shoes pacing upstairs.

And don’t even get Chapter Six God (Supreme God of Methods, Materials and Endless Tedium) started about the fact that I have accepted a position to TA another two sections for Sex Class this spring. But honestly, how do you pass up another chance to explain ambiguously-gendered people and fish species that change sex twice a day to the Yale football team? You don’t. You take the job and the large pile of cash and you tell yourself that sleep isn’t necessary if you do enough yoga and eat enough cruciferous vegetables.

Whenever I’m feeling extremely sorry for myself (which is often) for being trapped in this 12-week state of suspended dissertation-writing animation, I try to remember that life in the thesis cave does have some genuinely positive features. For example, even though lab life may have nice things like human contact and fancy laser microscopes, the thesis cave has hot water bottles and ton of mini chocolate chip cookies from Trader Joe’s.

I have also created an incentive-based system for myself on days that I do not leave the cave at all, taking full advantage of my ready access to tea, duvets, and streaming internet classical radio, all things that are pretty much nonexistent over at the laboratory. If I’m up by 7 and writing by 8, I get to stop for snack at 10:30. Lunch starts at 12:45, giving me just enough time to collect food on a tray and set myself up on the couch for the 1 p.m. episode of Matlock on the Hallmark channel.

Yep, you heard me. Andy Griffith is my carrot. I’ll admit that Matlock isn’t the best show in the world. The plot lines are about as predictable as they come and Ben’s adorable love of hotdogs has just gotten kind of gross over time, but compared to figuring out how to make a lower case ‘gamma’ in Adobe Illustrator for figure legend 17, Matlock is pure heaven.

At 2 p.m., after the bad guy confesses on the stand under Matlock’s withering cross-examination and the wrongly accused good guy gets off the hook, it’s back to work. I’ve deduced from screaming and crib-door rattling that 2 p.m. is also naptime downstairs. I try not to think uncharitably of little Caleb and I know that at 2 years old, it is difficult for him to understand the beauty of being told to sleep during the day. But if we could swap, just for one day, and he could sit and try to think up another synonym for ‘suggests,’ ‘indicates’ and ‘is consistent with’ while I sack out on the couch, I’m sure he’d be inclined to cut out the hysterics and just pass out like a good boy.

Regardless of intentions or incentives, I’m usually blotto by 5. Crazy hard yoga, teaching 40 19 year olds where sperm goes if a man has a vasectomy... I’ll do ANYTHING to get away from that cursed Microsoft Word file simply called ‘MyThesis.doc.’

It’s all over in less than two months though. Another couple chapters, some comments from my committee and an hour or so with my laser pointer and a PowerPoint talk in Brady Auditorium on April 2nd and voila!

I’m Dr. Campodonico.

Here in New England we have decided to skip winter

little e meets her match
Originally uploaded by littlee.

Unlike the folks I have overheard at the café/bus stop/grocery check-out/Laundromat, I do not believe that the balmy winter we are enjoying here in New England is proof that global warming is going to fry us all to a crisp by March. I do believe that our planet is getting toastier faster than is should, but this winter I'm givin' global warming credit for one degree, tops. The remaining 19 degrees above average is thanks to what they say is a mild El Nino. Mild, my foot.

Despite my confidence in that we will not all evaporate by early spring, I still find myself slightly unnerved by the warm sun beaming through my window. And without realizing it, I seem to have compiled a mental list of things that are really surreal and really scary to see in January in Connecticut:

1. Tulip bulbs poking up above bright green ivy at the Medical School.

2. Runners in shorts and tank tops. At 6:30 in the morning.

3. A line out the door at Ciao Bella, our local gelato happy place.

4. A traffic jam on I-95N at the Hammonaset State Park exit. That the exit for the beach.

5. Morbidly obese squirrels gorging themselves on an ample supply of acorns left uncovered by the absence of snow and ice.

6. Me, wearing flip flops, sitting outside at a picnic bench at Paul’s Hamburgers enjoying a milkshake. (Well, this is more surreal/yummy than surreal/scary.)

Now for the Californians in the audience, I should explain that it isn’t, like, 85 degrees outside. The mercury topped out at 65F on Saturday. Most days are in the mid-50’s, nights in the mid-30’s – temperatures that have Bay Area residents running for their capilene. But this is New England! This is the time of slush-clogged gutters, black ice on the sidewalks and $200 gas bills. Oh yeah:

7. December bill from Southern Connecticut Gas: $65.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!


In other news...

I am finding it very difficult not to clean everything in my apartment. This is probably not the worst vice to wrestle with, I could be caught up by internet gambling or compulsive hand washing, but as a time sucking distraction from The Task At Hand, it is just as effective.

My bedroom is immaculate, my laundry is done and two large bags of clothes have been dropped at Goodwill. After a year of furtive glances at its teetering height, I have finally recycled the towering stack of graded but never retrieved term papers and lab reports saved from four semesters of teaching. I was saving them ‘just in case.’ In case of what? In case that pre-med finally materializes who sent me three panicked e-mails asking when she could get her paper back? The one who stopped caring entirely and never came by paper pick-up office hours once she found out she’d gotten an A in the class? Well I’ll show her!!

In addition to tackling long-delayed clutter reduction campaigns, I have become a master bucket food chef, with glorious tuppers of chicken curry, spicy corn chowder and porcini risotto making the menu since I returned from winter break.

I am clean, organized and well-fed. Now I just need to turn off NPR, stop staring out the window at the fat squirrels on my porch, and write. My Thesis, that is. In Capitals. Like in Winnie the Pooh.

So as to avoid being overly self-critical, an accusation frequently leveled at me by just about everyone, I should mention some moderate successes. I have managed to write the outline for My Thesis and I grudgingly held a meeting with my advisor to discuss (read: listen to him hold forth about) this outline. And as of noon today I have secured approval of the content and structure of this outline from two thirds of my thesis committee members . The last third is gallivanting about in Europe giving speeches on Salmonella and is ignoring me.

I have also managed to bang out ten whole pages of my introduction in the past day or so. But since I cannot put off self-critical shmoo-ishness forever, I will nowdowngrade that feat since those ten pages are simply a clever reworking of a book chapter I wrote and my dissertation prospectus.

‘Hmph,’ said Eor.

Proud or not of these small victories, I awoke this morning completely tuckered out and I decided to take a Wednesturday. (Which is when you pretend that Wednesday is Saturday, for those unfamiliar with the concept of Wednesturday.) I haven’t had a Wednesturday in over a year and so I thought I’d really go all out. The usual full afternoon in lab was reduced to an efficient hour and the rest of the day was spent under my covers watching Netflix with a short break to go to IKEA for the 10 meatball lunch special.

The only drawback of Wednesturday is that it always manages to be followed by Thursday, my least favorite day. Maybe as a little present to myself, to soften blow, I’ll let myself clean out the linen closet before I start writing...

Turkey Daze

Ready? Set? Moo!
Originally uploaded by littlee.

It’s a grey Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, and lab is still crammed full of people working away. No one has taken advantage of The Boss’ week-long absence to catch a matinee of James Bond or to get a head start on the glacial creep that is holiday travel along the I-95 corridor. In fact, there is no evidence of any kind that we are roughly 24 hours from the biggest, tastiest, nostalgia-inducing meal of the year. Gels are being run, supernatants are being decanted, macrophages are being lifted and replated.

And no one is saying the word. The total lack of voices accentuates the whirring and rattling of the dozens of machines in lab. As I sit at my desk, trying to reconstuct the last six weeks of experiments for entry into my lab notebook, I am starting to get the sensation that I have developed bat-like auditory abilities. I can hear pipet tips being ejected into waste buckets two rooms away. A soft ‘whump’ from down the hall tells me that someone has yet again failed to close the tissue culture incubator all the way, leaving it to leak a constant stream of carbon dioxide. If I strain, I might be able to catch the foul-mouthed mutterings of the person who discovers the neglected incubator, followed by a ‘click’ as they push the door all the way shut. At least I hope I’ll be able to hear this. If not, the guilt of knowing but doing nothing will force me out of my comfy chair and down the hall to close the stupid door myself.

One could attribute the deep silence of my labmates to some sort of steely focus on scientific discovery or a stern resolve to work dutifully while Craig is away. But I know better. This is not about virtuous concentration or polite regard for the needs of others. No, I believe that my labmates and I are in the grip pre-Thanksgiving starvation.

Evidence in support of this hypothesis is as follows. For several days now I have noticed that my coworkers are arriving at the lunch table carrying brown bagged meals that are both decreasing in size and increasing in peculiarity. Though no one will admit it, it is clear that the bonanza that is Thanksgiving dinner, with its overabundance of pie and refrigerator-busting leftovers, has my lab mates in a state of food storage terror. All cooking has ceased. Trips to the supermarket have been halted in an attempt to make room for the onslaught of tuppers sure to arrive on Thursday night.

Tragically, however, it seems that most have overestimated the amount of time it would take them to empty there pantries. With most edible goods gone in a couple of days, folks are now resorting to packets of oatmeal scrounged from the filing cabinet by the water cooler and stale Carr’s water crackers from last months happy hour. Dry cereal, long-expired yogurt and a pickle? Sounds like lunch to me! (Don't laugh - that was yesterday’s offering. Today I had a bagel, pesto and cheese sandwich. It was actually pretty good.)

Now, after a few days of this impromptu fasting, we are all floating around lab like zombies. This morning, attempts to talk about non-Thanksgiving meal-related topics left us discussing the awful weather forecast for tomorrow and the chemical plant explosion up in Massachusetts. Inevitably though, the conversation drifted back and someone asked if anyone had read the New York Times article about all the different ways to make pie crust. The room has been silent ever since as many of us contemplate using our last remaining blood sugar to trap and lock this person in the -80C freezer.

(Several days later…)

I am happy to report that since that bleak Wednesday, things have taken a decided turn for the better.

On Thursday morning I ran in a Turkey Trot through pouring rain, got soaked to the bone and had a fabulous time sploshing through puddles. Two days later was the Cow Chip Cross Country 5K, with clear skies, freakish 55F temperatures and the muddiest trails I’ve ever seen. Amy and I put in a bit of extra effort for our third running of the CCCC5K and fashioned ourselves some sporty Holstein outfits. Much appreciative moo-ing was heard from the crowd lining the trail.

Thanksgiving Day itself was witness to Eva's first encounter with a Jell-O mold. It was accompanied by a 20 lb turkey, dressing, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, acorn squash, mashed potatoes and rolls.

There were also two bottles of red wine, one bottle of white wine and one of champagne.

There were three of us around the table.

Needless to say, the gnawing hunger of Wednesday is but a distant memory.


It is now Monday night, the week after Thanksgiving and I have just eaten my last of four meals of leftovers. The din of lab has returned to normal, with people yapping away while they transfer tiny amounts of expensive, clear liquid from one place to the next. (That's really all molecular biology is, but the way.) Sadly, I know I only have a few weeks of this jolly comradarie. By the middle of December, the Great Christmas Vacation Fridge Emptying will begin and the silence will decend once again.

…this is your brain on grad school, year six.

This is my friend Uluis. Ulius, wisely, did not go to grad school.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

I’m freakin’ out. Big time. No other way to put it, no fancy words or metaphors to gussy it up into something complicated or unique or even understandable.

Starting about six months ago, in conversations with my non-grad school folk (eg. parents, college friends, running buddies) I calmly predicted this storm with naïvely confident statements like, “You know, this last year is going to be pretty tough. Gotta find a job, finish a paper, finish my research and defend my work in the spring. It’s going to be stressful, but when else is it going to be more stressful than in my last year of Ph.D. research? I’ve just got to stay focused and get to work, there’s no point in complaining…”

To myself, circa six months ago, I now say:

Ha!

Ha ha haaaa!

Hee heeeeee heee ho ho ho.

Hee hee.

Heh.

Right. Stay focused and get to work, my left toe. That’s a load of meadow muffins. Over the last few weeks, this façade of calm resolve as deteriorated as the pile of ‘must-do-but-never-done-before’ tasks mounts into a teetering column over my head.

TIM-BERRRRRRR!

I think it started with my committee meeting on July 12th. It was supposed to be another meeting like those I’d held in years three and four. I’d stand up at the front of the small conference room with my laser pointer and 15 PowerPoint slides of data and my committee members, Craig, Walther, Jorge and Susan, would sit around the table quietly munching on the strawberries and ginger snaps I’d supplied per tradition. At the end of the meeting, Walther would mumble something I wouldn’t quite make out, Jorge would rap the table once with his knuckles and declare “Good!” and Susan would slip out quickly, probably still wondering why she was even on my committee since I don’t work on membrane trafficking in yeast.

But this year was different. Walther began mumbling early - I had foolishly presented a piece of data that should have been kept under wraps. It was meant only as a lead-in to another point but Walther latched onto it like a bloodhound. After interrupting me for the fifth time with some tangential comment, Walther was shushed by Jorge, and the battle to keep Walther under control and my meeting on track began to take shape.

About an hour later, sweaty and exhausted, I found myself making a rather lame effort to bring the meeting to a close. I knew my advisor wanted me to finish up by asking if I could stop my work later this fall and start to write without another meeting. This is the ‘write-up’ meeting, the Holy Grail of thesis committee meetings for every grad student. But Walther’s plentiful suggestions made that sort of finale seem dismissive of his comments and disrespectful. The five of us stared at each other in silence for a few minutes while I searched for a way out before Craig grudgingly took charge and the meeting came to an end with an indecisive whimper.

Since then, each well-planned week has devolved into a mess of half-finished experiments and three more ‘must-do’s’ that aren’t even close to done despite the long list of tasks accomplished. Abstracts have been written and conferences registered for, papers have been reviewed and comments written up (‘reject! reject!’), Friday department meeting was given (and yet another spat between Jorge and Walther overcome).

But somehow along the way, I also found myself writing a chapter on Legionella cell biology for a book that’s due “as soon as you can get it done.” And since someone upstairs clearly wants me to suffer for my sins, I have also chosen this moment to cave to the pressure of advisor and colleagues, to overcome silly but still semi-paralyzing insecurity about my future, and to start sending out cover letters and CVs in search of postdoctoral positions.

And then, today at 11 a.m. when I’d almost completed my first actual scientific experiment in weeks, the phone rang and was handed to me, the caller asking to speak to “Eva Marie.”

“That’s odd,” I commented to no one in particular. “The only place my full name shows up these days is on my CV.”

As I took the receiver, I glanced at the caller ID on the lab phone.

Area code 650.

Could it be? Seriously? Please NO!!

It had been less than 24 hours since I’d e-mailed John Boothroyd, professor and venerable mucky muck at Stanford University. Dr. Toxoplasma himself. It had taken me a full hour to compose a brief, three paragraph e-mail stating my name, research history and general reasons for interest in his very cool, very important lab. After clicking the send button, I proceeded to totally spaz out in the Medical School library stacks. Quietly, of course.

So was he actually CALLING me? What happened to the blissful detachment of e-mail? I mean, I’d heard he was into formality and rules and all, but I wasn’t even close to prepared to dish science with this guy.

Me: “Hello.”

Area 650: “Hi Eva, this is Steve Shak calling.”

Me: “Oh. Yes.”

(Mental hard drive scans and scans, searching frantically for the file explaining this man’s existence.)

Me: “OH! Hi! Uh… yes. Thanks so much for calling.”

Right. Not Dr. Boothroyd. This is Dr. Shak. I’d almost forgotten about this must-do I’d ticked off earlier in the week:

‘Send Bim stuff for connection at Genomic Health in Redwood City.’

I’d sent my little CV off, sure that some H.R. plebe at Genomic Health would put it in a file along with those of other almost Ph.D.’s they might consider contacting as a last resort. I didn’t actually think that Dr. Shak, former Chief Medical Officer of Genentech and founder of Genomic Health, would call me personally to discuss career options. (In case you’ve never heard of it, Genentech is like the Coca-Cola of modern era biotech. The very idea of Genentech is intimidating to me, let alone conversation with a former bigwig of said company.)

Me: “Right. Okay, so yeah…”

At which point, Dr. Shak took pity on an obviously startled grad student and proceeded to gently walk me through several well-illustrated points of advice he had for me about choosing and developing a career in 21st century biomedical science. If memory serves, my responses and questions were at some points coherent and at others, much like the unintelligible drivel I’d produced when the phone call began. Whatever information I managed to convey, I was deeply grateful when the phone call was over. Tattered nerves rendered fragile by ordeal of sending out CV now utterly blown to bits by reality of actually talking to someone from out there in The Big World After of Grad School.

I’ve recovered a little since then. Strategies to regain composure have included taking a long lunch and hiding under my iPod for the remainder of the day. I feel pretty silly, actually. Every year, thousands of grad students around the country face this process of leaving the protective bubble of their pre-doctoral labs. Write-up thesis committee meetings are held, last experiments are completed and CVs are formatted and attached to any number of awkward cover letters.

When attempting something potentially tricky, like running a half marathon or getting a Ph.D., I have usually derived a fair amount of relief from knowing that so many of come before me and have succeeded with flying colors. But now I think, I can no longer cheat and attain inner peace by relative association. I think I may have to amend my talking points when chatting with my non-grad school pals:

“Yeah, uh, this year is pretty much the year to lose it. To fly apart at the seams and see what shape I take when I pull myself together again to pack up Etta and drive across country when it’s all over. I’ll probably get some stuff done, but I bet there’ll be more that slips away. I’ll probably make a complete ass of myself at least twice. Should be kinda cool though, when it’s over, and somebody actually calls me Dr. Campodonico.”

What happens in White River Junction, stays in White River Junction.

Little Joey and 'Auntie Eva'.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

After performing some complex calculations on my TI-82 graphing calculator, I have determined that it has been only (and exactly) three weeks since I took Etta the Jetta for a quick trip up I-91 to see no-longer-at-all-little cousin Joey play his heart out (and his shoulder off) to win the national rugby championship.

Three weeks? That’s it? Granted, given my vivid recollection of most of that weekend’s hijinx, it makes sense that only a short period of time had passed. But otherwise, I cannot make sense of it. Three weeks doesn’t seem nearly long enough to contain all the madness that has ensued…

Computer hard drives have spontaneously combusted and have been rebuilt, intracellular growth deficiency phenotypes – four years in the making – have finally been quantified and graphed in Excel. Jenn has married her fantastic girlfriend, Megan, graduated from the University of Massachusetts Medical School to become Jennifer E. Cyrkler, MD and movied to Oakland. Jon’s new Weber grill has been christened at a Memorial Day BBQ on the front steps of 79 Mansfield Street and the first official ‘Shira and Uri’s Porch’ of the season has been held at 73 Livingston last Friday evening despite the unrelenting rain. Half marathons have been run.

And somewhere in there, there was time for moths to take over my apartment, for my cell phone to go completely missing and for my advisor to strongly recommend that I use a protocol for EM staining that requires the use of depleted uranium derivative.

Now I recognized that many of these events can easily overlap – the moths, for example, had been staging a preliminary offensive for most of the period that I trained for the half marathon. And losing ones cell phone takes no time at all. But regardless, I now find myself sitting in lab on another grey Friday afternoon, staring sans comprehension at my notes from this morning’s meeting with Craig and wondering what the hell just hit me. And why all of it had to hit me all at once.

One thing that hit me for sure was about 48 hours spent in White River Junction, VT and Hanover, NH with a menagerie of parents, siblings and friends associated with to the Jesuit High School rugby team. I will not bother to try to describe what it is like to witness the convergence of rugby moms and dads from the California central valley with the quiet, reserved citizens of rural Vermont and New Hampshire. But it was fascinating and it made me deeply homesick for Vermont and California in a confusing, simultaneous way.

In addition to the tall order of capturing the moment in prose, I also did promise Auntie Lisa that I wouldn’t tell anyone what went on that weekend. But without really saying much, I will suggest that the folks at that steakhouse will not soon forget the women who took over the open mike piano and then stole a patron’s crutches. And the general manager at the Comfort Inn may type up a new policy about guests holding cocktail hour in the front lobby.

I’m hoping for karma’s sake, that all the naughtiness of the parents was redeemed by the astounding effort put in by their sons. When we weren’t terrorizing quiet dining establishments, we were watching the Jesuit High School Marauders ruck, scrum and line-out their way to victory over Highland on some of the muddiest, sloppiest fields I’ve seen in the New England. Go Jesuit! Congratulations Joey!

My own small feat of athletic prowess was accomplished this past Sunday during a brief two hour pause in the endless rain of April, May and now June. For months now, I have glanced nervously at the note on my iCal calendar, ‘Iron Horse Half, Simsbury, 8 a.m.’ and during my long training runs, I have had plenty of time to contemplate why for the love of Pete I decided to run 13.1 miles all at once. The endorphins that kick in at mile 8 are nice. Then there’s the self-righteous zeal with which I consume giant meals. The trails I run are very picturesque, sometimes there are pretty birds and a few weeks ago I saw bunnies. I suppose I could rationalize 13.1 if I get to see bunnies.

In the end, all the long Sunday afternoons of endorphin production, overeating and bunny gazing paid off. My race went very well. My time was far speedier than I had thought it would be. So speedy, in fact, that my inner Eor is already convinced that the freakish confluence of just-right training, flat course, cool cloudy weather and naïvete will never occur again. My inner Eor has drooped his head: I have set my personal record on the first go and I’ll never better it.


Time to stop all this recounting and get back to work. I suspect that these three week blitzes are only just getting started as I head into my sixth and final (*gulp*) year of graduate academic bliss. After all, now that my computer is fixed, I can get back to writing that cover letter e-mail to the labs at UC Berkeley and UCSF where I want to do my post-doc. Then there’ll be the interviewing and the thesis writing and at some point I need to figure out what to do with 1% uranyl acetate waste - that’s the depleted uranium stuff.

I’ll keep you posted.