Why I should have been an English major

I once took a course called “Intro to engineering”. In one of the first classes, the professor started asking us why we decided to study engineering. The predominant answer in the room was along the lines of “I’m good at math, I’m not good at writing.”

As I sit up late at night struggling over yet another chapter of incomprehensible, quantitative jargon I am tempted to believe that I could have succeeded in the liberal arts for the exact same reason. Writing, the art of crafting ideas and emotions into pages of eloquent prose, has always been one of my strengths and pleasures. And I’m not good at math. Not good with equations, not good with courses that are entirely based on them.

So why did I choose the path I’m on? If I think I could have excelled in English, why did I not take a single course (other than the writing seminar which, by the way, I aced) in the subject? I’ve always believed that non-science courses were useless. By the same token, I have always believed that if I could master those equations, figures and tables, I could call my college experience a success.

After four years, I have learned an important lesson. You can’t fit the square peg of science into the round hole of a liberal-arts minded brain. Although mussar teaches us that a man’s greatest accomplishment is when he learns to conquer those middot which are naturally most challenging to him, I don’t believe that this is true in the realm of worldly skills. God puts everyone on this Earth with a purpose and a mission. Say a man is endowed with certain strengths. If he neglects those strengths, and pursues a vocation which relies on skills which he does not possess, what good does it do? Who is he serving, himself or his God? Is this man doing something noble? I don’t think so.

I wish I could be a great scientist. But I think I’m going to have to settle for being a great me.

Totally Stupid

I hate career services.

It all started over Shabbos, when I was shmoozing with a family friend. Wharton alum. He said "Yoni, you need to go talk to the people in the Wharton career services. Ask them who's involved in venture capital."

It wasn't the first advice I'd received about venture capital, and I decided to give it a shot. I was particularly excited about meeting the career services people from Wharton. I imagined them to be a lot more helpful than the usual career service people I talked to. So I sat in the waiting room in Hunstman Hall until they called me in.

Whoops. Turns out I was waiting for Wharton Undergraduate Advising, not career services. "You'll need to go over to McNeil for that." My hopes were beginning to sag; I'd been to McNeil before... This time, I told myself, I'll make sure to meet with the Wharton people. I'm sure they will help me out.

I arrived at McNeil with two names of Wharton career services people written on a business card. As I approached the desk where you sign in, I noticed that Claire - the College career services woman with whom I've met 2 or 3 times - sitting in her nearby office with the door open.

I gave the receptionist my name and asked to talk to the Wharton people. She looked me up and asked me why I wanted to talk to the Wharton people, since I was in the college. At this point I was a little embarrassed, because Claire could clearly hear. I curtly told the woman that I wanted to ask about business-related careers. She told me that that's not how it works and everyone in the department is equally qualified to answer all questions. I grudgingly accepted a meeting with Claire, who all the while was busying herself around her office.

Five minutes later she decides she's ready to see me, and I walk in. She told me that she "couldn't help overhearing" that I wanted to talk about business. So I asked her if she knew which Wharton professors were involved in venture capitalism; kind of as a challenge. She said that she didn't, but she was quick to add that those other 2 people I wanted to talk to probably didn't either. You see, she explained, people in career services are not close with professors. To prove her point, Claire called up one of the people I wanted to talk to and after chatting with her for a minute, triumphantly announced that she, too, was unable to help me.

Claire then proceeded to show me how to use a website I already knew how to use and I politely excused myself. I feel like we aren't friends anymore.

What's the point of this story? Obviously, I was embarrassed because of the whole me-trying-to-go-over-Claire's-head thing, and that backfiring. But more than the embarrassment, I think what we've discovered here is a giant gap between my expectations of Career Services and the services they actually provide. By the end of the meeting, Claire was probably thinking "What a lazy kid! Why is he wasting my time? Why doesn't he just do the research himself?" Meanwhile, I'm thinking "Why is she wasting my time? I already know how to use the website. I thought these people are supposed to help you get a job!"

I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. Career Services, like Penn's advising services in general, certainly know a lot of stuff about careers and college, respectively. But they fall short when it comes to addressing you as an individual. They give you generic information, never anything that is specially tailored for you.

Allow me to provide a parable. I have two friends, let's call them Frank and Larry. Now I'm going on vacation to California, and I don't know where to stay or what to do. Frank shows me how to search for and book hotels online, and how to find local events online. Larry, on the other hand, knows exactly which hotel I should stay at and tells me how to get a great deal on a rental car. He also makes up an itinerary based on advice from native Californians.

Career Services is Frank. I'm still waiting for my Larry...

Try it again

After a long day at work (and no dinner) I was H-U-N-G-R-Y.

Not expecting much, I opened the fridge. Ortega taco sauce. Leftover stir fry. Mayo. Sigh.

Let's check the freezer. Frozen peas... cheese... hmmm.... peas and cheese. It rhymes - maybe it'll work!

Just to make sure I wasn't off my rocker, I googled "peas and cheese" to make sure that somewhere on the internet, someone had attempted this peculiar concoction. To my delight, I found a respectable-looking recipe, and I began to gather ingredients.

To begin with, I would need to make a roux. For the non-culinary of you, a roux is when you melt butter and mix a little flour into it until the flour dissolves and cooks a little. Then you add milk and you can build a nice smooth cheese sauce which doesn't get clumpy.

My first roux was a dud. Way too much flour. Plus, not enough milk. After a quick run down to the HRASC, the milk problem was solved. I started again, making sure to put in only a little bit of flour.

At that point it occurred to me that garlic would make a delicious addition at this stage in the game. But, being severely limited in cutlery options, I knew that I would have to pulverize the pungent root with an improvised tool... aha! I will crush the garlic with the frozen carton of soy milk I have been thawing! It's hard as a brick! It will surely do a wonderful job.

So I momentarily abandoned my roux. In retrospect, this was my fatal error. NEVER, EVER, ABANDON A ROUX! A ROUX MUST BE TENDERLY CARED FOR, LIKE A HIGH-MAINTANANCE SIGNIFICANT OTHER.

So I began slamming the garlic with my frozen soy milk carton as hard as I could. But I slammed a little too hard, and the carton burst at one of the seams. I pondered this for a moment, then quickly rushed my garlic over to the roux, which had taken on an ugly shade of dark brown, and was beginning to smell like (according to Brad Rubin) saganaki.

I discarded the spent roux into the sink, where it - of course - solidified and stubbornly stuck to the porcelain. I rolled my eyes at it, and went back to contemplate the soy milk. I decided to rip open the carton and slide the block of frozen stuff into a pitcher to melt. Only it didn't quite make it and there was a lot of messy shoving of icy soy. By the time I got it in the carton my hands were shuh-nasty and there was soy-snow on the floor.

Maybe that stir-fry is still good..

In the middle of the night

(note: this post has been posted post-when-the-post-should-have-been-posted)

The lab is quiet. Machines murmur in the background, occasionally some pipe will make a sound. Green Day Radio on pandora.com comes out of the lab computer's pitiful speakers like headphones in a tin can. I glance at the time. 12:09 AM

Why am I here? Because if I don't get the gel results by tomorrow morning, we will be a day behind. And I'm a good guy; I don't want to hold anybody up. So I sit and wait for 30 minutes to go by so that I can take the gel out of the stain, dunk it in de-stain and go home for the night.

Being in the lab itself can be fun late at night. No one's around, so I can blast the music as loud as I want (when I bring my computer). More importantly, I'm completely on my own. Question? No one's there to answer it, so I have to think on my feet.

But the building and the walk to and from it are creepy, no question. The hallways are dark, and you have no idea who else is around. You walk quickly to wherever you need to go, and don't look back. When you're alone in there, the slightest noise will set you off.

So you can imagine how pleased I was by the fire alarm going off at around 12:20 AM. I've heard the horror stories. Steam pipes exploding. Chemicals burning. Etc. I rushed for the exit, but I knew that my gel was almost ready. So I didn't go too far. At one point I used the wrong stairwell (not that anyone was there to direct me otherwise), and eventually I met up with the night guard as well as two local Philly firemen.

They couldn't figure out what was wrong. But they didn't seem too concerned and moved along. That was enough for me. I sneaked back into my lab real quick, changed the stain and got out of there.

Moral of the story - don't play the night lab rat unless you are the kind of person who knows how to conduct himself in a crisis.

The Scientist

It's my first week back in the lab since before finals, and it didn't take long for things to get, well, interesting.

First, there were the cultures. Cultures are pretty simple - you put bacteria in a tube full of liquid bacteria food, and they are fruitful and multiply until the tube is all beige (because bacteria generally are beige). Some of my tubes, though, were green. This meant that something else was growing in there without my consent. My anger was kindled, but I had the last laugh as I hurled the irksome prokaryotes into a tub of bleach, where they met their doom.

See, bleach is wonderful because it kills everything. When I'm working with bacteria I like to keep a little bucket of it on my bench - you know, so I can indiscriminately throw all my waste into it, and not have to worry about my waste crawling back out and eating me.

So I'm sitting there this afternoon with my bucket of bleach, and I toss in a few waste chemicals from a procedure I'm following. Apparently, in addition to killing stuff, bleach is also reactive. No, there was no explosion. It didn't burn a hole through the floor or release toxic fumes, either (I think). Instead, the liquid quickly adopted the exact color and bubbliness... of Mountain Dew. This made me very excited, since I love Mountain Dew, but also very nervous, because Lord only knew what was in those bubbles.

I rushed over to my boss to see what he thought should be done with this mysterious mixture. He told me not to worry about it, and jokingly quoted another lab member's approach: "the solution to pollution is dilution". Interestingly enough, I had just heard that quote in my environmental studies class, but in a much more vicious context.

By the way, if any of you would like to solve the mystery of What Was In My Bucket, the following chemicals were mixed:
1. Cell suspension buffer (probably a Tris buffer around pH 8 and possibly EDTA)
2. Lysis buffer (NaOH)
3. Neutralization buffer (K acetate, guanidinium hydrochloride)
4. bleach (NaOCl)

The winner for sure gets a prize.

What really sealed the deal, though, was at the end of the afternoon. I set up four big flasks of bacteria food, ready to grow up a bunch of new bacteria for tomorrow. I pulled out my petri dish and tried to scoop up the bacteria growing on it... until I realized that what I thought were colonies were, in fact, dust on the bottom of the dish. I had no colonies.

Another interesting development: my grad-student superior (John), who works in the lab upstairs, has begun bringing his giant brown dog (Montana) to work with him. Apparently, this decision has met the approval of all the members of the lab upstairs, who take turns keeping an eye on the dog when John isn't around. I'm serious.

Don't get me wrong - I love dogs, and Montana is no exception. I simply question the wisdom of bringing one into a room with lots of expensive, delicate equipment and dangerous chemicals that look and smell like water. Also, whenever I have to go ask John a question it gets awkward because Montana is jumping all over me and sniffing my personal regions, not to mention licking my lab gloves ferociously, which can't be good for him...

Just another day at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics.

Cry Baby Cry

Tonight I went to go see "P.S. I Love You" with my two sisters and a friend of ours. Needless to say, the movie had more sap than a maple tree and enough cliches to fill a full season of any self-respecting soap opera. I spent the majority of the movie making cynical comments, yawning and waiting for it to end.

The film built itself up to a penultimate scene which, judging by the sniffles and tissue blowing exhibited by my sisters, was supposed to be emotional. Personally, I did a lot of yawning and laughing. In fact, I did so much yawning and laughing that - lo and behold - I felt actual tears in my eyes.

Go figure.

X & Y

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon while working in the Rosengarten Reserve in the basement of Van Pelt.

Males around here tend to get a lot of attention from the ladies. Not this male, of course. But I see plenty of others who are affectionately approached by one or two random girls. Yesterday, if I recall, I was sitting next to a guy who seemed to have a steady stream of female fans, many of whom would bequeath him with hugs and kisses.

Often, I see males here in that all-too-common situation where they are conversing with two females, both of whom seem to be competing for his attention. And I see this ALL THE TIME, but more here than anywhere else.

Interestingly, I do not see the reverse. While I see females fawning over males, I cannot recall seeing a male approach a female counterpart in the same way.

What is it about Van Pelt? Is this where the suave, popular guys hang out? Is it the air of sophistication and intrigue that draws women to their men with such a powerful pull? I don't know what it is, but I want to find out. In the interest of social science.