My birthday, and continued craziness

Today, I finished the 3rd day of the job. So far, I have been at the lab for 10-12 hours each day. Today was our most intense "harvesting" day, which means that we butcher each little baby plant and record essentially every aspect of it. The last step is to do a root tracing of the root system. The tracings end up being really beautiful, and we hang them up to dry along the windows. There were approximately 3 freakout sessions, all of which were indirectly traceable to me....First, I completely misplaced a root. One second it was there, waiting to be traced along with all of its friends, and the next it had vanished. Do you ever have those moments where you loose something, but can absolutely not understand where it could possibly have gone? This happens to me a lot. I think I may be a superhero whose secret power is the ability to loose things. Thats how good I am at it.

The general idea of the project is to look at plasticity in the current and older versions of three weed populations to see whether the weeds expanding their range have evolved increased plasticity. Weeds are actually really interesting to look at because they are one of the most successful types of species in human-altered environments. They tend to have high genetic variation, and rapid evolution under strong selection pressures. We humans try and try to outsmart weeds, but they always get us in the end. In fact - crop weeds are one of the most pernicious types of weeds and often outsmart humans by evolving to imitate crop species. Back in evolutionary time, Rye was a weed which so successfully imitated crop species that it became edible. Evolution is pretty incredible. And yes, that rythmed. Ha!

Wow. I am so tired, just finished a delicious (and free) dinner with my housemates. Pasta, more pasta and baby bok choi (sp?). Yum. The best part of the the summer so far has been hanging out with my smart, talented and funny housemates. Right now it is just me and 4 guys, a ratio that I fully approve of. We all get together, hang out on the porch drinking beer (yesterday was my 21st b-day, so I now consider it appropriate to mention alcohol consumption on this blog...) and talk about science. The amount of inter-lab gossip that goes on here is incredible, we all know which grad students are dating, whcih professors are likely to get tenure, who is publishing, ect. The type of community that develops around science is very interesting. In my personal lab, there are 4 girls, so we literally talk about love, boys, tampons - the whole girly nine yards while dissecting seedlings.

Time to feed the lil turtles and take a shower.

- Emily

The Lab-or-atory

I always forget what the real world is like. You mean, people actually work from 9 to 5, all cramped up in little cubicals? Plastic wrapped sandwiches, salad with soggy leaves, prepacked cookie treats. Dear lord. Well, research is renowned for being the opposite of the standard desk job - meaning that you get to think creatively, set your own hours and really interact with your coworkers to design experiments. However, so far, my experiences in the lab have been mixed. A phone call at 9am woke me up this morning to ask me to come in to the lab. I was slightly disconcerted by the fact that the person on the other end of the phone did not seem to even consider the idea that I might have been sleeping. However, I put on my shorts and tee shirt (casual clothing is another plus of the research world) and headed over there. We began the morning by watering the baby plants. There are two treatments of seedlings - dry and wet. The dry ones are particularly important because we are basically holding them at the very edge of their ability to survive. If we missed more than one watering, they might die. (I found this out after I mistakenly missed one, and was appropriately reprimanded.) The rest of the day passed slowly as I washed dishes, watered more baby plants, and labeled tiny paper envelopes. I managed to escape for about an hour at lunch time to get a bit of grocery shopping in. However, the A&P didn't have my favorite salad dressing - Goddess, which thre my entire day off.

I have a confession for you all. When it comes to a summer job I have two sets of priorities. First, I want to learn something, develop useful skills, meet interesting people and think interesting thoughts. And Don't get me wrong, these objectives are very important to me. However, I also want to have time to drive up to Vermont with my boyfriend and go kayaking, or down to DC to see my little sister graduate from high school. I love cooking, and had bought a brand new cook book in order to try some new recipes. So you can imagine my alarm when the lab assistent tells me that my hours are 8am-6pm every day. Including weekends. It can also, she warns me, be much longer depending what is happening in the lab that day. This means that the cozy deal I thought I had gotten for the summer ($3700 for june-early august) is in fact, not nearly as cozy as it originally appeared. They want to make me earn as close to minimum wage as humanly possible.

Okay, okay. Things aren't that bad. The people in the lab are incredibly nice, and I don't have the nightmerish desk job scenario. A different grocery story will probably stock my favored brand of salad dressing. Plus, the first day back is always a little disconcerting. Still, makes me dread graduating next year. What in the world will I find to do that is the perfect mix of creativity, freedom and responsibility. Now, yours truly has got to get in bed. Getting up at 7:30am means going to bed muuuuuch earlier. I hope that everyone's summer has gotten off to a tremendous start.

- Emily

The Magical Disappearing Act

SO!
When in my last post (one month ago) I said that I was coming back in a week, it was a lie. Apparently there was a typo in my contract, and (more logically) my new summer blog starts right now. Luckily for you all, I was too lazy to send in a new, legitimate photograph of myself. Therefore, the one of me with a fork stuck in my mouth and a maniacal gleam in my eye is still there. Let me tell you, my faithful readers, there is nothing like the sugar rush caused from eating an entire batch of fat-free fudgy brownies. No siree.
Anyways, the summer blog will be different from my previous posts in that I will post more frequently - 4x a week at least. Since I am posting more frequently, expect to hear more about the specific research I am doing at Wesleyan. I also plan to follow climate and energy policy news fairly closely, as well as any general science news that strikes me as interesting and relevant. You will also hear some career advice - summer jobs can be important for a variety of reasons - such as references and experience. Finally, I will probably pontificate re: tasty dessert items, my new Moosewood cooking book, my tiny house filled with 6 undergraduates, my two pet turtles and any books I am currently reading. The most important part is that it would be so great if people reading this would respond with their own ideas and comments. Sci-Fi reading suggestings (I adore good sci-fi), chocolate recipes, new science articles that I managed to overlook, career ideas, stories to share. C'mon guys, summer jobs often leave pleennnty of time to post random thoughts on blogs such as this one. What does our generation think about nuclear energy? What about ethanol? How ridiculously cool are microbial fuel cells? What are the environmental records of the political candidates like?



Goble, D., Hirt, P, and S. Kilgore. "Environmental Cartoons." Environmental History. 2005. 10(4).

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/10.4/goble.html

The above cartoon is a hint of things to come...Plus the article I linked below it (where I got the cartoon) is a very interesting history of political environmental cartoons since the early 20th century.
Anyways I hope that everyone is enjoying the inbetween time of school and summer work. I am currently up in maine, but am taking a greyhound back down to school tomorrow.

- Emily