PhD Ponderings

Ponderings #8.5 - May

Is it summer or what?

I don't know how people can stand it here. I sure can't. Today it's bright and sunny outside with the grass green and no clouds. It's like east L.A., man! I step outside in my shorts, ready to tackle the day, and guess what? It's friggin' cold! My hair (what remains) leaves tiny scratch marks on my cheeks and people will soon stare at me wondering what's going on at home, and in this bright sunny weather, I am now wearing 3 layers. But I refuse to take off my sandals!!!

Sandals are the one thing you're not supposed to wear to lab. This is because you might spill something on your toes, and we all know that your toes are the most available for spilling. I mean, hey, you douse yourself with phenol or hydrochloric acid, and it eats through your jeans and your whole body has third degree burns but guess what? Your toes are okay!

I wonder who thought of all these safety precautions. Probably some guy who perpetually poked himself in the eye with sharp objects and ran around with scissors in his hand. I hear that in the old days (you know, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth) our current profs used to pipet by mouth. This means that they would actually wrap their lips around tubes of glass to suck up significant quantities of body-mutating liquids. And now they wonder why they never got the Nobel.

There are a few simple rules for safety, that's all you need around the lab. If anything happens beyond this, hey, tough luck.

1) Wear clothes. You're likely to spill something on yourself otherwise, and certain parts of you would NOT like that. Plus, we don't want to have to see that. Ever hear of a lab studying nudity?

2) Don't leave sharp objects pointing outward. You go up to your desk and say, hmm, now where did I leave that razor blade? Aaaah!!!!!!!!! I found it!!!!

3) Clean up what you spill. Otherwise you might end up soaring through the fiberglass window into the lab across the street with all the cuties. And you don't want to show up there with a damp pantseat.

4) Avoid radioactivity. Some people love to pour that stuff on themselves. 50 years later, they have cancer and are suing the university. Let's see, you have cancer and you want us poor grad students to pay for it? I don't think so.

5) Don't shake hands at random times. Hi there Bob! Nice to meet you. I have radioactive stuff on my hands and you've been working with Ebola. Let's take off our gloves, shake hands and be one happy family!

After following these rules, you may wonder why you never got sick before you started observing these vital principles. My theory is that because you passed out when you last had your seizure you didn't notice when the doctors had to remove your kidney and give you plastic surgery.

And while you're passed out, you may (or may not) consider some options for your final decision: what is your thesis going to be on?

This is an interesting question. What is a thesis after all? Let's get philosophical.

thesis - turns out this is from Greek, meaning to lay down. So you must be thinking, great, i can just lie down!

But it's not that simple. It's not LIE down, it's LAY down. You have to LAY something down, other than yourself. The idea is that you lay down what you plan to do in the next 15 years of your PhD studies. That should be simple enough: decide on a project, chat with advisor, send email.

Unfortunately, you are expected to be a bit more precise. You must submit a proposal for what you intend to do as a project. This means taking the time to sit down and write.

But the bright side is that if you get a good advisor (this is all hypothetical) they'll pick one for you, hand you a few papers, and you can just copy all the introductions from those and turn em in, along with the experiments your advisor suggested. Easy! When it comes time to defend, be well dressed with good breath.

Now run along and fix yourself a dentist appointment. And warn the dentist to wear some gloves.