AiE: Lab Rat

It's still a little astonishing to me, twenty-some years later, how this one came about.

I had applied the previous spring for an undergraduate research position and did not get it. Life moved on, I got through the summer at camp, started my (incredibly demanding) junior year at school, and then learned of an opportunity to go to Russia the following summer to spend a month teaching English. There was, of course, one big catch here: you can't disappear for a month in the summer and expect to get a job of any note. Still, I couldn't pass it up. I'd do what I could to make money that summer but Russia was not something I wanted to pass up.

Only about two weeks after I told my parents my intention, I got an unexpected email.

It was from a biology professor I had never met; she wanted me on her research team that year. "I read your application from last year and I was hoping you'd be interested this summer." I was thrilled but had to tell her that I intended to spend a month away. "That's okay, we can just start you in March or so. Are you interested?"

Heck. Yes.

After meeting my new boss — Dr. B, a small, very friendly Korean woman that struck terror if you slacked off — I was completely on board. And as it happened, I could start even sooner, which was good because there was a lot to learn.

Immediately, I found I enjoyed the heck out of our little group. Dr. B had four undergraduates working for her and we got along surprisingly well, sharing the strange setup in the basement of the math building with our desks wedged between cabinets and scattered between rooms. And, like many situations I found myself in at Mines, it was a like-minded group. There were reasons each of us ended up in the biology department labs, including that none of us hesitated with the grunt work.

The job itself was fascinating and, unlike other undergraduate projects, I could actually see where it would be useful. Dr. B was investigating the use of calcite-precipitating bacteria in industrial applications — think things like concrete repair — and she wanted an engineering student to look into application feasibility.

[It is amusing how years of corporate experience change the ways I explain things.]

The first few weeks started with a lot of reading, then learning how to get a lyophilizer (freeze dryer) fixed and running. With the background work in a good spot, I got to take a step forward and start designing my experiment. By the time the summer started, I'd found my pattern: Monday, specimen prep. Tuesday, growth (and data analysis from the prior week). Wednesday, bead prep. Then Thursday started the tests, which put me in the lab from 8AM till midnight. Back on Friday to run the last test at the 24-hour mark, clean up, get all my notes compiled, and off for the weekend. In any experiment downtime, there was that grunt work; we did a lot of the prep for the general biology and microbiology labs, churning out blank agar plates and slides to be used in classes — and of course, there were never-ending dishes to do.

Most of all, though, I loved my Thursdays. They were long but after about 4:00 I was alone in the basement of McLaury with my test tubes and the incubators. It was the kind of thing I'd imagined myself doing when I was thinking about what I wanted to study and I was in heaven.

That probably says more of my personality than anything.

When my trip to Russia approached, we talked about the rest of the year. Dr. B asked if I'd come back — there were more things to investigate and I could get a semester of credit alongside my paycheck. I was, of course, absolutely up for this, even with the demands of senior year in front of me.

And so I spent my first senior semester continuing rather happily in the lab. By the end of the year my piece of the work was done and I moved on with some regret to be done, a paper to my name, and new doubt as to what I really wanted to do after graduation. In the best possible way.