The devil is in the details

Gettin' a little on the side...

but not in a good way. If only that were the case.

Common advice to graduate students (at least in the biomedical sciences) is that you should not put all your eggs in one basket, and you should instead start/work on multiple projects so that when one crashes and burns, you still have a thesis project and graduate in a reasonable amount of time. I, of course, did not follow this advice. Lucky for me, I managed to stumble over an interesting observation early on in my experimenting and I am making what I consider quite good progress for a third-year graduate student.

While I was getting my act together project-wise, a couple other things happened. One is that I taught undergrad immunology twice and I learned a lot of immunology that everyone always assumed that I knew. My foundation is now pretty strong. The second thing that happened is that I settled down, got much less nervous around the people I work with and became much, much more confident. The result of these two things was that my boss and my co-workers somehow got the impression that I am much smarter and more useful than I actually am, and they now defer to me in conversations or ask my opinions about things. My boss, in particular, is rather impressed with me. While this is all very flattering, it is also rather silly. I laugh every time someone comes breathlessly to my desk to get advice, which generally involves some combination of me spitting out the basic knowledge that I have and talking out of my ass. Anyway, I guess it's nice to know that I still have the ability to pull a fast one and make people think I know lots. But I digress...

First (a few weeks ago; I wrote about it here) an Associate Professor (better known as the Ass Prof) decided that he and I needed to chat about some random ideas that he had. I ended up with a whole crapload of extra reading to do about things that aren't necessarily important that he thought I ought to do some experiments on etc. etc. Since the original panic session, I have thought about this almost not at all, except for when he asks me about it. I probably ought to order some reagents and do a couple of experiments to make him happy, but I haven't. The point of the story is that all of a sudden he came up with this little side-project that I ought to be working on just because he thought I knew things.

Then I went to Banff. Iceland (another grad student in the lab) and I took lots of notes and we devoted a whole grad student meeting to updating everyone (as in the other grad students in our lab) on things that we had learned that we thought were relevant to their projects. Go us for trying to be all helpful. We had a lot of notes for one person in particular and we were very excited about some of the theories that we had come up with to explain his data and experiments he could do. What does the boss say? Basically, he agrees that it is really exciting, and decides that I should do the experiment. If I don't do it, then Iceland has to. Now I understand that I am sort of teacher's pet (whether I like it or not) but THIS IS NOT AT ALL RELATED TO MY PROJECT, while is it DIRECTLY related to someone else's. Oh well. I'm still excited about the idea and the experiment is easy, so Iceland and I have decided that we will do a whole set of experiments by ourselves just because we can and then we'll come back to the boss when we have the answer that the field is waiting for. So there's side project #2, but at least I am excited about this one.

Okay, now fast-forward to yesterday. We were in grad student meeting and there is this new guy, A. there. He is friends with Iceland and is trying to design a project to work on once he starts here, but he has no background in immunology or vaccine research. After the meeting, A., Iceland and I were walking down the hall and A. pulls us aside to ask us some of the basics of what the lab works on/papers he's read. Basically little background things that he didn't understand. He then segues into talking about his ideas (which apparently Iceland has already heard) and proceeds to explain his grand vision to me for my feedback. (Iceland leaves during this conversation, but tells A. to keep explaining to me because I will shoot it down, which he only says because the boss has been setting Ice and I up to argue opposing viewpoints on everything lately, so he thinks I'm contrary.) My opinion on A.'s master plan? It is super naive, and he has no grip on the reality of DOING any of the experiments that he is talking about, but we discuss back and forth for a long time. In the end, he asks me to come to a meeting with he, Iceland and another HMS professor about the whole idea at 10 this morning. I agree to come, but I'm not excited and I am perfectly happy when I later realize that my experiment today conflicts with my going to the meeting. (A side note: Why do I keep talking to A. when it is evident that his ideas are not formed completely? Because he is moderately attractive. Not super cute, but not disfigured either.)

Then at 11:30 or so this morning I am sitting at my desk while my cells are incubating, and my cell phone rings. It's Iceland, asking if I can come join them for this meeting to "explain immunology to everyone." I figure I'll go since I have nothing better to do (tech finishes my experiment) and I end up in this meeting with Iceland, A., and this world-famous professor, discussing A.'s cockamamie schemes for an hour. Oh, and then I end up eating lunch with A. and Iceland, where we talk about this. In the end, I have now been roped in to being one of the co-creators of this huge project simply by virtue of being in the wrong place in the hallway yesterday and my usual willingness to answer questions. I am supposed to be looking up all this stuff, proof-reading A.'s proposal for the project, going to more meetings, and helping to sell this to the boss. (Direct quote from Iceland: "We have to make sure all three of us go to talk to him, because he likes Bree and always listens to things she says. If she's involved he'll go for it.) Did anyone ever ask if I was interested? No. Did anyone ever ask if I was excited by the project? No. The more I talk to them, the more I think that they only want to do the experiment because it is an excuse to use cool technology and not because it will actually be at all useful. Do they actually realize that every bit of advice that I have given them on this has been totally me making stuff up?

*Sigh* So now it looks like I am picking up another side project to work on. Add to that all of the random helping people out that I do (not that I mind helping you E., don't freak out, I'm definitely cool with helping you start up your project...) Do I look like I am a slacker and don't have enough to do (don't answer that.)? Just based on how swamped I've been this week, I would hope they don't have that impression. Grrrr. Oh well, at least it means my CV will get very long very quickly.

posted by Immunegirl @ 1:58 PM