Friday night may have been the official anti-Valentine's day party, but last night was the actual one for me. Yep, me and two of my single guy friends stayed in, smoked pot, and played video games (on an LCD projector that was conveniently "borrowed" from my prestigious university.) Truly the most anti-Valentine's day activity I can think of. But hey, it's a big money saver, I've got to say.
Today I was a good boy. This doesn't happen very often, so I'm making special note of it. I woke up at my friend's place and briefly flirted with the notion of staying there and playing video games/watching movies for the rest of the day. It sounded awfully appealing. However, I didn't, and in fact I motivated myself to go to the lab and work all day. I cut 12 micron thick sections of frozen mouse brains all day long. I can't tell you how exciting that is. Ooh... and they were parasagittal sections as opposed to coronal! I'll bet your pulses were accelerating as you read that last bit. But, it needed to be done, and I've been feeling slightly guilty as of late for not working hard enough. A vacation here, another part-time job there, and before you know it I'll be a sixth-year PhD student (I'm a 3rd year right now) not even close to finishing up. Which I don't want. So I figured I'd buckle down and get to work for a day, and I'm glad that I did.
Unfortunately that doesn't make for the most interesting journal entry. So here's a dilemma that's been bugging me and several of my friends for a while. Everywhere you look on TV there are doctor shows, hospital shows, even freaking alternative medicine shows. But nothing about scientists. I think it would be great for science in general, and scientists specifically to have some kind of mass media show that showed what science is really like - so people don't think we're all either spineless wimps controlled by the military-industrial complex or evil geniuses making 5-assed monkeys. The NIH apparently agrees, and a while back was offering some funding for people to develop this concept into something that could eventually generate a pilot and go on TV. The problem is - none of us can figure out a way to make lab work consistently interesting. At least in a hospital show you have this non-stop life and death stuff that interrupts every conversation, making the writer's job pretty easy. I'm not entirely sure how someone could make mitochondrial protein export in yeast all that exciting of a concept for the viewship. Any ideas?
Today I was a good boy. This doesn't happen very often, so I'm making special note of it. I woke up at my friend's place and briefly flirted with the notion of staying there and playing video games/watching movies for the rest of the day. It sounded awfully appealing. However, I didn't, and in fact I motivated myself to go to the lab and work all day. I cut 12 micron thick sections of frozen mouse brains all day long. I can't tell you how exciting that is. Ooh... and they were parasagittal sections as opposed to coronal! I'll bet your pulses were accelerating as you read that last bit. But, it needed to be done, and I've been feeling slightly guilty as of late for not working hard enough. A vacation here, another part-time job there, and before you know it I'll be a sixth-year PhD student (I'm a 3rd year right now) not even close to finishing up. Which I don't want. So I figured I'd buckle down and get to work for a day, and I'm glad that I did.
Unfortunately that doesn't make for the most interesting journal entry. So here's a dilemma that's been bugging me and several of my friends for a while. Everywhere you look on TV there are doctor shows, hospital shows, even freaking alternative medicine shows. But nothing about scientists. I think it would be great for science in general, and scientists specifically to have some kind of mass media show that showed what science is really like - so people don't think we're all either spineless wimps controlled by the military-industrial complex or evil geniuses making 5-assed monkeys. The NIH apparently agrees, and a while back was offering some funding for people to develop this concept into something that could eventually generate a pilot and go on TV. The problem is - none of us can figure out a way to make lab work consistently interesting. At least in a hospital show you have this non-stop life and death stuff that interrupts every conversation, making the writer's job pretty easy. I'm not entirely sure how someone could make mitochondrial protein export in yeast all that exciting of a concept for the viewship. Any ideas?
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
vyeseleph:
HAHAHA. Its THE BEST birthday ever 
hati:
Hello? Dr. Bruce Banner, scientist extraordinare? My friend has a super-bright (the technical term, not just an exaggeration) TV projector with a Gamecube attatched. He and my roomate once played over six hours of the new Mario Kart game. It's fucking sick.