Would you freak out if I said I liked you?
Life is pretty splendid, as per usual, because I lead a charmed existence. And when I pause to think about just how lucky I am, it's actually a little terrifying.
Approximately three weeks into my employment and after much arm-twisting and hunting-down (I mean, emailing) of the necessary people, I finally got enough training under my belt for animal facility access! Armed as I am now with my two snazzy work ID's -- one for Brigham & Women's, one for Harvard Medical School -- I have security clearance for any of the BWH and Harvard buildings on the Longwood campus, which is quite exciting. I haven't yet worked up the nerve (or found the time) to take advantage of this power and go a-exploring, but perhaps one day.
So now I have, like, duties and stuff. The first thing every day is to venture deep into the bowels of Harvard Medical School to put approximately 60 diabetic mice through some discomfort (i.e., monitoring their blood glucose levels, giving them dextrose injections as necessary), checking up on the mice strains being maintained for the various transplantation studies, and genotyping the newly-weaned mice as necessary. My genotyping gels have come out very pretty so far, and that's encouraging. If I never get into med school (knock on wood), at least I have many and varied marketable skills as far as research labs go.
This lab is technically part of the Transplantation Research Center, so about half the work that goes on here has to do with rejection of transplanted organs. The other half of the work is researching the mechanisms of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), which is an autoimmune condition, so it fits in with the whole theme of autoimmunology. Before I was hired, there were two techs who did most of the mouse gruntwork for our lab, one for the transplant mice and the other for the diabetic mice. I got a bunch of the mouse duties from both of them, so I get to dabble in both areas, which is pretty cool. My involvement with the transplant research is pretty minimal, though, I think. It's mostly playing God -- weaning and genotyping the pups, deciding which mice to keep and which to "sac" (short for "sacrifice"), which ones to breed, etc., etc. -- despite the (crazy and disorganized) meddling of certain post-docs who have a tendency to move the mice around without changing the labels or telling me.
For instance, on Friday I found a cage that, according to its label, contained five adult male mice. In actuality, there were three adults -- one male, two females -- and a new-born litter. Seriously. At least it keeps the job interesting.
In other news, I'm still waiting for the FBI criminal background check to clear (who knows, maybe I'm so secretly a criminal that even I was unaware of the fact!) so that I can get the cell irradiator training. Once that goes through, I can start doing more in vitro work, too, which means that I'll be working more closely with the diabetes group, and learning some science! Wooo!
And having put myself through the self-guided tutorial for putting in lab orders through PeopleSoft -- which some of you Williams types may remember fondly -- I also get to spend thousands of dollars that are not mine, twice a week! I thought it was bad trying to sign up for classes on PeopleSoft, but managing my paychecks and insurance information and all that using this lovely piece of software is several times worse. And ordering reagents, antibodies, and sundry lab supplies from different companies, whose items may or may not be included in the online catalog? (Seriously, what's the point of having the catalog if two-thirds of the items we order regularly are not included in it?) It's not something I would wish on even my worst enemies. But it's okay! I'm learning a lot this way, too, about the kinds of things we have around the lab, and it's fun to guess the kinds of projects various people are working on based on their orders.
So... yeah, the job is great, and the people at the lab are fantastic. Living with Anna is all kinds of awesome, and now I'm running out of adjectives.
Approximately three weeks into my employment and after much arm-twisting and hunting-down (I mean, emailing) of the necessary people, I finally got enough training under my belt for animal facility access! Armed as I am now with my two snazzy work ID's -- one for Brigham & Women's, one for Harvard Medical School -- I have security clearance for any of the BWH and Harvard buildings on the Longwood campus, which is quite exciting. I haven't yet worked up the nerve (or found the time) to take advantage of this power and go a-exploring, but perhaps one day.
So now I have, like, duties and stuff. The first thing every day is to venture deep into the bowels of Harvard Medical School to put approximately 60 diabetic mice through some discomfort (i.e., monitoring their blood glucose levels, giving them dextrose injections as necessary), checking up on the mice strains being maintained for the various transplantation studies, and genotyping the newly-weaned mice as necessary. My genotyping gels have come out very pretty so far, and that's encouraging. If I never get into med school (knock on wood), at least I have many and varied marketable skills as far as research labs go.
This lab is technically part of the Transplantation Research Center, so about half the work that goes on here has to do with rejection of transplanted organs. The other half of the work is researching the mechanisms of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), which is an autoimmune condition, so it fits in with the whole theme of autoimmunology. Before I was hired, there were two techs who did most of the mouse gruntwork for our lab, one for the transplant mice and the other for the diabetic mice. I got a bunch of the mouse duties from both of them, so I get to dabble in both areas, which is pretty cool. My involvement with the transplant research is pretty minimal, though, I think. It's mostly playing God -- weaning and genotyping the pups, deciding which mice to keep and which to "sac" (short for "sacrifice"), which ones to breed, etc., etc. -- despite the (crazy and disorganized) meddling of certain post-docs who have a tendency to move the mice around without changing the labels or telling me.
For instance, on Friday I found a cage that, according to its label, contained five adult male mice. In actuality, there were three adults -- one male, two females -- and a new-born litter. Seriously. At least it keeps the job interesting.
In other news, I'm still waiting for the FBI criminal background check to clear (who knows, maybe I'm so secretly a criminal that even I was unaware of the fact!) so that I can get the cell irradiator training. Once that goes through, I can start doing more in vitro work, too, which means that I'll be working more closely with the diabetes group, and learning some science! Wooo!
And having put myself through the self-guided tutorial for putting in lab orders through PeopleSoft -- which some of you Williams types may remember fondly -- I also get to spend thousands of dollars that are not mine, twice a week! I thought it was bad trying to sign up for classes on PeopleSoft, but managing my paychecks and insurance information and all that using this lovely piece of software is several times worse. And ordering reagents, antibodies, and sundry lab supplies from different companies, whose items may or may not be included in the online catalog? (Seriously, what's the point of having the catalog if two-thirds of the items we order regularly are not included in it?) It's not something I would wish on even my worst enemies. But it's okay! I'm learning a lot this way, too, about the kinds of things we have around the lab, and it's fun to guess the kinds of projects various people are working on based on their orders.
So... yeah, the job is great, and the people at the lab are fantastic. Living with Anna is all kinds of awesome, and now I'm running out of adjectives.