A different kind of stupid

This article was originally published for Cambio Ltd. on 20-09-2012. Access it here.

Take one reasonably intelligent person. Persuade them to do an undergraduate degree in a subject they declared as a child to be boring. On completion let them out into the real world to realise that a job isn’t much cop, and that their intellect is rotting in an office environment. Guide them to decide to return to university and spend £6K on a master’s degree rather than accept a manager’s job paying £30K. Three months into this course, get them to apply for a PhD in a subject area loosely connected to their university training. Conspire with fate for this person to be accepted for both the course, and the funding grant before they know what’s happened. Stand back.

Whoever decided this little scenario for me, I don’t know if I want to hurt or hug them. True, I was going stir-crazy working in an office, but I felt stupid because I was bored rather than because I had to regularly confess I didn’t understand basic biochemical concepts/ anyone else’s research project/ my own research project/ what possessed me to undertake a PhD. Also, my day-to-day tasks generally gave me the outcome I anticipated rather than a completely different one. When I went to a meeting I generally spoke to other people about a pre-arranged topic rather than, for example, turning up to discover that I was actually due to give a talk to members of the Royal Society on string theory (I know nothing about string theory). This latter scenario is how scientific research feels to me.

This week has not gone well. After spending the best part of 6 months getting my PCRs working reliably, they have now stopped doing what they should. I put in my standard mixture, and out comes something new and surprising. Unlike what I read at A-level, my experiments do not generally work, and they do not give me results that I can easily interpret. My gels go wobbly. Bands disappear inexplicably. I have to re-run my samples changing one of my 6 ingredients each time, then alter the PCR programme, the gel concentration, the voltage I run the gel at. This easily eats up a week. Then I discover that the PCR machine is running strangely, that the lids of my tubes are inexplicably popping open (despite my cramming them on with force not that short of hitting them with a hammer) – resulting in my samples evaporating. Then I find that someone used the last of my PCR strips and didn’t re-order any. With my lack of a biochemical background, I am generally forced to bug my lab mates for help and advice, or face the disparaging gaze of my supervisor. I feel stupid about 90% of the time.

Why did nobody warn me about this?!

I recently read a very good article entitled “The importance of stupidity in scientific research” (accessible here – or Google it) which was published in The Journal of Cell Science. At the start, the author describes meeting up with a PhD friend many years later, only to discover that she didn’t complete her course. Why? Because she was fed up with feeling stupid all the time. I feel her pain. But this is what scientific research is all about –after all, the reason you’re doing it is because no-one knows the answer. I’ve found this especially hard as I’m a super trendy inter-disciplinary student. So not only do I have the fun of diving into the unknown, I also have my arms and legs being pulled in 3 different directions. Deal with that Tom Daley!

But for all of this, there is no way you could drag me back to that office. My PhD winds me up, it makes me cry, it makes me question my sanity – and it makes me feel very, very stupid. But there’s a strange kind of freedom in the challenge, in knowing that realistically there are very few people who could do what I’m doing. In the end, no-one else will understand my subject as thoroughly as I do.

It beats working in an office any day.

Goodbye granny

 On the 2^nd September 2012 my granny passed away following a long battle with dementia. The trickle of brain cells that were switching off finally resulted in her losing the reflex to swallow, and she eventually died peacefully in her sleep.

I wanted to write something about this wonderful lady and the impact she’s had on my life. Now that she’s gone I finally feel I’m allowed to remember her as she was, rather than the shadow of herself residing in a nursing home who I would always feel guilty for not wanting to visit when I went home. 

My granny was the most wonderful grandmother anyone could ever hope for. As a child my brother and I would go to their house after school until my mum would collect us after work. Dinner (always at 5pm) would invariably be alphabites, turkey drummers and peas followed by one of those 10 for £1 ice creams in a plastic tub – or a variant on this formula. She would help us spell things out with the alphabites, and if the right letters weren’t available she’d get a knife and turn E’s into C’s, L’s into I’s or X’s into V’s. Her attention to and interest in people was phenomenal, and I only realise it now. If she was busy she'd tell me I'd have to wait for her attention, but it was always worth it when I got it as it would be undivided, and full of praise for my mediocre achievements. As kids we must have been a right handful but I don’t ever remember being seriously told off by her – she managed us so well. 

I won’t list all the memories I have, as the list of things I did with her is so long: painting, sewing, gardening, cooking, icing the Christmas cake… thinking about it now she gave so much time to me. It gave me confidence I didn’t get from anywhere else. And it gave me green fingers, for which I can only thank her profusely.

Yesterday I helped clear out her wardrobe and drawers. In some ways it was very sad because so many of her possessions had been lost or damaged as a result of her decline with the disease (clothes and books ‘altered’, items discarded for reasons I imagine she neither processed at the time nor remembered afterwards). Some of the things I most closely associated with her, and really wanted (her pot of face powder with its ‘grown up’ smell – bewitching as a child) were nowhere to be found. 

It was however massively rewarding though, as the main item I have salvaged was a badge I made her when I was about 7: it is 1 inch in diameter with a yellow background, and the word SUNDAY and some stars across the middle in those black transfer letters I struggled so hard to use when I was small. Whilst I don’t remember giving it to her, I do distinctly remember her wearing it the next Sunday at church and me being really, really proud. On being reunited with it I was struck by not only how it had survived, but also how utterly DREADFUL it is. At the time I obviously thought I’d done a good job at transferring the letters (I hadn’t – there are corners missing everywhere) and decorating it with the stars (I hadn’t – there’s about 3 randomly flung around the place). It is naff. It really looks like a child made it. But because I was so proud of it she wore it with pride, and that only bolstered my confidence. 

Dementia is a vile disease, and I really hope that by the time I get to that age developments have been made that will make it an easier journey for me and my family around me, assuming I get the genetic short straw. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents around the time my granny was first diagnosed, and in recent years I have occasionally wondered where my career would be had I decided to go for a job in London after graduation rather than stay in my home town working in a less than ideal job so I could visit my grandparents several times each week. Maybe I’d have completed a PhD and be doing work ‘proper’ by now… who knows? But I wouldn’t change it for anything. 

My mum worried years ago that by having such a close relationship with my granny it would be harder for me when she did finally die, but she’s so completely wrong. Yes, it aches like hell, but I have absolutely no regrets now she has gone – just lots of wonderful memories. Everyone has to go sometime, and I’m just glad I got so much out of the relationship when I had the chance.

When I was 6 she obligingly wrote in my autograph book (from when I was meeting just SO many celebrities!), and what she wrote will stay with me forever:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birth for mirth,

One is nearer to God in the garden,

Than anywhere else on earth.

…So get weeding!

I promise I will. I miss you granny.