I first learned of GPCR's from a publication in which they were called "G-coupled protein receptors". Guess what? No one says that. So now I stumble on the name all the time like a backwards child. I even mess up the acronym.
Today I feel like the stupidest person in the world, but for more substantial reasons.
Back to work.
(P.S. Thank you for your comments. I love comments. If I have not replied to your comments or emails, it is because I have exams to take and a time management/downheartedness problem to solve.)
6 comments:
Thank you for your comments. I love comments.
Glad to oblige any time.
We now return you to your scheduled academic activities.
I couldn't remember the name of my fellow lab mate today...we all have brain farts, some of us more frequently. its not stupidity, its indigestion :))
D.C.: "Scheduled academic activities"-- yeah, well, this is my current theme song. It is new to me, because I'm a nerd who doesn't even own a TV and who rarely listens to commercial radio. And Lady GaGa really understands science. And grad school. LOL.
SM: I wish it were indigestion. I do eat an ungodly amount of peanut butter . . . Okay. I really have to return to studying now.
Remembering names?
NAMES?
Ladies, do you mean to tell me that you're blowing the whole geek cover story about names and actually admitting that you remember some of them?
Crap. We're screwed.
Okay- I will attempt to cheer you up with one of my own Science Baby foibles:
I switched from the arts to the sciences much like yourself, and I jumped head first into research during my first semester of science classes -- this being eight years removed from even the first mention of most science-type things, never mind my having never encountered the entirely separate technical term for what seemed like literally every word. So, I showed up like a sad little homeless puppy to my school's biology department, offering myself as slave labor to any mentor willing to exploit my naivety. An incredibly generous Micro professor who'd happened to be walking by took pity on me. After meeting a few times, we had what I interpreted to be a kind of unspoken understanding: I was an enormous dumb-o but I appeared enterprising enough to take a chance on- a decision likely helped along by what might have rightly been perceived as a disproportionate motivation to be just ORDERING GLASSWARE FROM A DISTRIBUTOR, OMGSCIENCE. So, yeah, I set to work cramming like years worth of microbiology stuff, the biochemistry necessary to understand what the microbiology does, journal articles on the particular pathogen we'd be working with, names of all the flasks and shit that I'd entirely forgotten, protocols, you name it- into my ill-prepared head in an amount of time that in retrospect was preeeetty damn impressive.
I was careful at every step of designing my experiment not to step into some of the areas I still felt I had a fuzzy conception of-despite my almost professional grasp of some others. I had my science-saavy boyfriend check it over before I met with my advisor. I thought I was in good shape. I was proud of my mathy-ness, most of all- having found my greatest struggle in this area as an adolescent. So, with alllll of that said, guess what my ultimate fail turned out to be? My then-pathogen cannot metabolize sucrose alone, which was the driving force behind my design.
I was mortified.
And now I am studying engineering, because fuck all that shit (kidding, of course. I just turned out not to be a biologist).
You know what might help- PCR for Polymerase Chain Reaction. You don't want CPR, you want PCR.
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