Late Night Concluding Thoughts
Wow! It seems just like yesterday that I arrived back at Duke to start my fellowship. Going in, I had never had any experience in a lab before, and despite gauging the experiences of some of my peers, I had no idea what to expect. Immediately I learned how the dynamics of labs (at least mine, and from talking to many other fellows, other labs at Duke as well) function. The P.I. often does not actually do a lot of the nitty gritty lab work. I always imagined the P.I. being kind of a leader that all the graduate students followed. I was surprised too that most of the papers that came out of the lab were not first-authored by the P.I. However, I soon learned the realities of running a lab that are funding and being involved in everyone’s projects, which are different. Lixian told me that Dr. Tracey is really good at getting grants. It’s interesting that perhaps of all the most necessary skills of P.I.’s writing can be the most valuable. The system is pretty cost inefficient when the P.I. has to spend so much looking for funding, but that’s how science is. I thought research would generally be a more collaborative field, with labs from different universities working together. I have certainly witnessed this, seeing drosophila sent to us from places like Princeton, but the field seems to run on competition more than cooperation. It would be really cool to look at science from a macroeconomics standpoint, and analyze it. Unfortunately, I have a pretty limited background in econ, and probably won’t take a lot of it in my next three years, but I think it would be interesting to look at all the economics that make the system how labs operate in the U.S. and what seems like the rest of the world. If I had to make an analogy to economic systems, it would seem to me that research labs are run under cold hard capitalism, as to get funding each lab must have a strong reputation, and to do this, it must produce quality research. At first glance this seems like a good model, however, as we saw with our look at scientific ethics, it can cause scientists to conduct research that might not be in the best interest of the field. Personally, I am surprised cooperation is not utilized more, just because everyone in the field seems genuinely interested in their work. Anyone smart enough to be in a lab could probably be making a lot more money and working a lot less hours in another profession, and graduate students and post-docs seem to have a good level of choice in their selection of labs to join. Coming in, I thought grad students in labs had it easy…work 9-5 five days and week and take nights and weekends without homework and impending exams. Over the course of the summer, I gradually started coming into lab later, from about 9 o’clock to 10, but I ended up staying into the night most nights, often into the a.m., and if I got out “early” at about 5, I usually would need to come back later. I also had to work on the weekends, because I needed to do all sorts of stuff to the flies at different stages of their life cycles and often collect virgins many times if they were low in supply. Usually this wouldn’t be as long, as I tried to get all the plate-making and miscellaneous stuff done during the week so I would only have to do the necessary daily tasks during the weekend, but I was in lab enough everyday that I often found myself losing track of the day of the week.
This will serve as a segue into a topic I meant to discuss in this blog, my future aspirations. I think in my last blog I mentioned that if we unfortunately hadn’t advanced so much over the past couple thousand years, I might wish I could be someone like Aristotle, and study just about everything. Back then, science and philosophy were largely the same thing. Now, both fields have subfields that are increasingly specialized, and the two fields seem just about as far apart as you can get. So I will try to be a little more realistic.
Right now, I am planning on double-majoring in both neuroscience and philosophy here at Duke. More than anything else, the mind truly amazes me, and I don’t think I would do it justice by only studying it from one point of view. Neuroscience is also such an expanding field; it seems like we know basically nothing about the brain. I have read books and articles about cognitive neuroscience, from both neuroscientists and philosophers, and they often seem to be worlds apart in their views (often neuroscientists being more sure and discounting things while philosophers coming up with thought experiments [of course, what else would they do] advocating paradigm shifts. I wanted to do more reading on these subject this summer but I’ve been more busy this summer than I ever imagined (see above).
One option I am considering after I graduate from Duke is an MD/PhD. Like many others, I am attracted to it because its brings the best of both worlds, research and medicine, into a program in which, even better, you get paid. Who wouldn’t want to be one? On the other hand, MD/PhDs are extremely difficult to obtain, and take a large chunk of your life away. For example, Richard, the MD/PhD in our lab just successfully defended his thesis, but has one more year of med school to go, while his wife has already finished her residency (I think…) and is beginning her career as a doctor, even though I think they entered at about the same year. These days, medicine requires residencies and academia requires post-docs, so either of these would extend my education quite for a long time. While I love learning (when I am interested in the material) and seem to enjoy going to school, I’m not sure if I will begin to feel like I will want to settle down more and find a job earlier in life. Perhaps it might be more attractive to be an expert in one area, then two different things well? Although from what I understand MD/PhD’s often seem to pick a focus between medicine or research. An MD/PhD still kind of stands as a goal focused a long way in the distance, and if I change my mind, it probably won’t largely affect my undergraduate education.
Philosophically, I am drawn very strongly to research and the quest for knowledge. One of the goals I had earlier in life was to question everything I thought I knew and try to push the boundaries of my knowledge. Research seems to be the path to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. It is very exciting. If I went to grad school, I would probably enter as a student in neuroscience or neurobiology. Ideally, my program might also include a cognitive neuroscience focus, bringing in more larger ideas. Although when I was younger, I think, in terms of philosophy, I was primarily drawn to ethics, recently I have also been especially intrigued in philosophy of mind. I’m probably not going to go to straight-up philosophy grad school, although I’m not ruling this out. I think philosophy is something I will always try to learn through life, and since it is so broad it pertains to just about any field. I think doing an undergraduate degree in philosophy will give me a good base for this continual learning, but I am leaning on focusing more on science and medicine post-graduation from Duke as opposed to only philosophy. I know there is a new, rapidly expanding field called neurophilosophy, which might for all I know be a fancy name for research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but I might be interested in graduate programs tailored in this area if they exist. I haven’t put in a whole lot of time searching around yet as I’m not completely certain with my life goals. In terms of the great competition of science though, I think having a solid philosophical background gives me a great advantage. It’s hard to describe, but I think exposure to many branches of philosophy instills an ability to critically think and synthesize knowledge from different areas to create. This after all, seems to be what research is all about. On the other hand, I find the basic ideas of genetics so amazing, I might be more drawn to that as I begin to do more genetic testing in my lab work. Medicine has the advantage of having a more direct human aspect, and this is appealing, as your ability to help others is more directly apparent, and oftentimes you can probably see results of your work more quickly and probably more successfully.
Anyway, I plan to continue in the Tracey lab next semester, probably either as work-study or independent study. Actually, I have decided just to stay here at Duke for the 2 weeks after HH ended until FAC-training camp begins. This is actually kind of an important time because it will be much more difficult to do this experimental protocol during the year, as I think I’ve said on just about every entry. I’m also playing a lot of basketball and trying to work off some of the Vermonster I consumed the past Friday night. I really haven’t had a whole lot of time to do anything else besides these two things and eat and sleep. Actually, I am kind of low on time. So I guess previous worries of being bored, like before, won’t come to fruition. We actually may have found something interesting today, that we may build on if our results seem to suggest it plays an important role in the flies’ decision making.
It’s kind of late so I better go to bed. Not really tired tonight, but I’ll have to get up tomorrow. But I just want to say this has been an awesome summer! I don’t see going in to lab every day as work so as much as a great educational opportunity, with a nice stipend. I’ve learned so much about drosophila and gotten so much better handling the flies from when I started. I remember the first days when I would turn the microscope on the highest settings and debate whether the fly I was looking at was a male or female. Now I can quickly separate them by naked eye. I’ve also significantly decreased beheadings…although the food in many of my vials is often too wet. There is still so much to learn and improve on. I feel like I’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of knowledge held by others in the lab. Hopefully in the future I will learn new techniques; I think we might use some genetic mutants in the future to test a few things with our experiment. I want to thank Dr. Tracey for hosting in his lab, and providing me with so many great ideas. He is truly an innovator, and I’ve learned how important having an open mind is when doing work because you could otherwise miss over potentially interesting findings. He provided many ideas and the basis for the work I’ve done this summer. I also would like to thank Lixian, my mentor, who still patiently even now will help check flies if I’m not completely sure that there may be a few more virgins left in the bottle. She has been instrumental in helping me run the experiment and teaching me all of the fly and lab techniques. I’ve also learned a ton about China and graduate life from her. Everyone else in the lab has been great too, always providing ideas and assistance usually before I have the chance to ask.
Also, a thanks to the coordinators of the program. Dean Nijhout remained very involved throughout the program, coming to all of the chalk talks and some of the speakers, and was very supportive, knowledgeable, and encouraging about my research. Alex and Suzanne were both also very enthusiastic and always responded to emails and went out of their way to do everything they could to help provide us the best experiences. The program also got us a really nice breakfast, some really good cakes, cool bags, and all sorts of stuff I can’t really remember now. I hope they know their kindness and effort is greatly appreciated. I am also thankful that all of the speakers came in and gave interesting, great talks. Nobody B.S.’d their presentation even the slightest bit, which surprised me a little because I know professors (and many the program had were important faculty) have a very tight time schedule and many people demanding their time. They all were prepared and gave different looks at the field. We don’t learn about research or the field all that much in the classroom (and since most of my family is not science oriented, I never really learned about the field from them), so their talks were very meaningful, at least for me. Finally, of course, none of this would have been possible without the funding from HHMI, so I am I’m sure my peers are also grateful for their willingness to support this program.
I have also had a great social experience this summer. I really didn’t know most of the fellows at the beginning of the program (and I still really don’t know a few that well), but I’ve met some extremely bright and enthusiastic students interested in biology and made some great friends. I remember thinking how I was going to be bored this summer since most of my friends weren’t here and I wouldn’t have anything to do except go to the gym when I wasn’t in lab. It turned out that I was almost as strapped for time as I was during the academic year. I will have so many great memories from this summer…its too late to list them but if you’ve somehow bothered to read this far and you’re still interested just check out the list Shilpa made in her last blog entry which encompasses many of my memories as well.
Looking back, though, from what I knew when I came in, to the poster that’s sitting here in my apartment on Central Campus, it’s truly amazing to see the progress I made over only 8 weeks. It sounds really cliché, but I bet everyone else in the program would say the exact same thing.
If you have any questions or are thinking about applying to this program or want to know about my experiences working in a lab, shoot me an email at nus2@duke.edu.
