The classroom for the lab wasn’t a classroom at all: it looked like a bona fide laboratory, though I later learned it was a teaching lab, a sort of Fisher Price version of the real thing. Six rectangular black benches—three on each side of a central, square bench—stood in the middle of a room lined with shelves of glassware and industrial-looking vents. We were each assigned the right or left side of a bench as we walked in the first day. There were twelve of us, and while we would share the benches for ease of use when it came to large pieces of equipment or distributing supplies, we’d be working alone, and I felt weirdly relieved by that—by having total control over my own space.
Our professor, Dr. Kaufmann, was a biophysicist, internationally recognized as a leader in population ecology. I’d looked up each professor running a section of the lab once I was able to register, and I signed up for hers because she was, technically, the only immigrant: she was born in Germany but came to the United States for her Ph.D. and stuck around after falling in love with our beaches (her faculty Web page said exactly that). I realize this was a stretch—thinking of Dr. Kaufmann as an immigrant the way my parents were—but I saw my very presence at Rawlings as a kind of stretch, and besides, I was basically from the beach, and maybe she’d sense that somehow and see it as a positive.
Dr. Kaufmann was very tall—six-two or six-three—easily the tallest woman I’d ever seen in real life and the only born-in-Germany person I’d ever met. As she assigned us to our benches, I couldn’t guess her age. She was already a fixture at Rawlings, but if I’d seen her on the street I would’ve guessed she was twenty-seven or twenty-eight—impossible considering her rank in the department, which implied enough time there to put her closer to forty at the youngest. Her eyes were small, hidden as if always squinting from a smile, and she gave the same smile to each of us as she told us where we’d be standing all semester (the only chair in the room was behind her bench). She’d been featured on the Rawlings Web site for her groundbreaking study on plankton populations, and I’d read her write-up of the project twice, enthralled by her findings but also a little envious that she got to spend her time researching questions so simultaneously complex and simple: How did these get here? What does that mean?
Dr. Kaufmann spent the first half of day one orienting us to both the lab (This is the eyewash station; this is the emergency shower; pray you never need to use either.) and to the project we’d work on all semester: isolating genes from one organism and learning how to express those genes in another. She showed us a series of slides illustrating the steps the project entailed.
—The project itself is not exactly the point, of course, she said when she reached the last slide. But it will expose you to much of the lab’s equipment, and that is our aim.
She pointed up to the slide, which featured a single-celled bacterium.
—For our final organism, we typically use bacteria such as these, but there’s a chance this term we’ll use C. elegans, a type of tiny roundworm.
The guy at the other end of my bench yawned behind his hand. I didn’t know what C. elegans looked like and so hoped, for exactly that reason, that’s what we’d get. As if reading my mind, she said, It will depend on what we have on hand when we reach that week, but let us hope for roundworms.
She raised the lights and went on to review how to properly keep a lab notebook, which she described as a research scientist’s single most important tool. I’d bought mine already, and it was thicker than any notebook I’d ever owned because every page was backed by a carbon copy sheet. She explained why: we would tear those out and submit them to her each week without surrendering the whole notebook.
—You will always be working, so you can never be without your lab notebook, not even to submit it for review.
As she listed them off, I wrote down each of her lab notebook guidelines as if they were tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers: always begin with the date; don’t skip any pages or leave space to go back later and add things—you should represent your work in the order it was actually performed; keep track of every single step and everything you use—an outsider should be able to replicate whatever you do just from reading your notebook; never, ever use pencil.
—Can anyone guess why? she said.
Knees and ankles cracked as people shifted in place instead of answering; we’d been standing for almost two hours. She held up a lab notebook, raised it to face level, and let the pages flip past us. Several entire sheets were crossed out.
—This is mine, she said. As you can see, it is messy and has lots of scratching out, lots of mistakes.
She put it back down on the table and patted it like a pet.
—This is good, she said. We never, ever use pencil because we never erase anything. You must keep the mistakes there. Mistakes are vital to every scientist’s process. Just put a line through whatever you did incorrectly and keep going.
I wrote down this sentence and stared at it. It made perfect sense. The forgiveness built into this basic research philosophy—so simple and obvious—instantly validated my first semester in a way I could finally accept: everything led to this moment in this lab, the beginning of a new challenge of my own choosing. Put a line through it and keep going—I looked around to the other benches to see if anyone else registered the power of what she’d just said, but I was the only one taking notes, the only one nodding as my pen hovered over the page.
She eventually explained that even though we had a standing weekly class meeting, she expected us to be in the lab much more than just three hours. There’d be organisms to grow and feed, enzyme reactions to initiate and time and halt, gels to run.
—Whatever the lab requires of you, you must fulfill, she said. There are no weekends in a laboratory. As I say each term, a lab is not a restaurant. This kitchen never closes.
I laughed with her at the comparison, but everyone else met this remark with dismay.
She spent the second part of class showing us how to prepare stock solutions and explaining—with almost religious devotion—the fundamentals of sterile technique. She demonstrated the correct (and incorrect) ways of handling the petri dishes, flasks, and pipettes, the various solutions and their vessels. She told us to wash our hands, snap on some latex gloves, and familiarize ourselves with the tools and methods we’d be using daily, to practice as she demonstrated, and I headed to the sink before she’d finished her sentence.
—The laminar flow hood is your best friend, she began as she paced around the room, observing our tinkering. Then she said, Not really, this is an exaggeration.
I tried to keep my gloved hands steady through my silent laughter. No one but me seemed to think she was funny; the guy on the other end of my bench checked his watch, inspected each instrument but didn’t try them out. I considered asking him if I could borrow his squirt bottle of ethanol when I’d almost used mine up. After maybe fifteen minutes of watching us transfer liquids between centrifuge tubes using the various pipette sizes, Dr. Kaufmann handed out our goggles, showing us the sterilization cabinets that would house them whenever they weren’t protecting our eyes. She then gave each of us a lab coat, and when she called my name and held one out to me, I almost died.
—Contaminants are everywhere! she said as I took it from her hands, a smile passing between us. Once we were all properly goggled and coated, she said with clear pleasure, I will use the final hour today to assess your sterile technique. This is your first exam.
Murmurs rose from the other benches. The guy I shared mine with raised his hand but didn’t wait to be called on.
—Professor, some of us didn’t practice very much before because we were focused on listening when you were explaining stuff? You didn’t say we’d be tested right now.
I’d practiced plenty (she told us to!) and thought, What are you, pre-law?
—Well, working in a lab is full of surprises, she said.
I wanted to high-five her before remembering that contaminants were everywhere.
Becau
se of my last name, I’d be going tenth, but my nervousness decreased with each person ahead of me, as everyone screwed up some major element. Everyone plunged their pipette way too far into the sample on their first try; no one seemed to be considering their immersion angle at all; one person scratched his face then touched the lid of a petri dish. Dr. Kaufmann chirped Contamination! every time she witnessed a mistake, and after saying it four times—all on just the first person to go up—people stopped jumping when the word broke the silence. But her point was clear: it was hard to keep your work area and samples sterile, and we all had much to learn.
When it was my turn, I glanced down at my notes right as the professor called my name and decided to start at the true beginning. I walked away from my bench, tied my hair back at the sink, then washed my hands as she’d demonstrated. It probably wasn’t necessary—we weren’t dealing with live materials yet, and no one else had backtracked to the ultimate step one—but it felt important to start fresh, to practice exactly what I’d need to do every time I worked in that room from that day forward.
I approached the flow hood and was sure to work in the middle back so that I wouldn’t accidentally pull my hands out from the sterile area. The hood acted like blinders on a horse, and as I focused on maneuvering the pipette into and out of the plastic tips that needed to be changed and discarded between samples, I forgot that there were eleven other students watching me, that Dr. Kaufmann was a handful of centimeters from my left elbow. The gentle whoosh of the ventilation system covered their breathing and filled my head with a kind of neutral music. I’d thought, while watching others go up, that I’d have to control my hands—figure out a way to keep them from shaking—but as I dipped the pipette’s tip into the last centrifuge tube, avoiding any contact whatsoever with its edge, I wasn’t thinking about anything but the work in front of me, how every small step led to a desired result. My hands took care of themselves.
I backed away from the hood and disposed of my gloves.
—That was great, she said. That was really great.
Hearing her voice suddenly made me realize she had not said Contamination! once.
—What did she do that no one else did, she asked everyone else.
Someone behind me said, She washed her hands. Another voice said, Oh yeah.
She said the next person’s name, and as they trudged over to the sink, she leaned over and said, That was very impressive, Lizet.
I know it was only the first step of thousands and that I wasn’t doing anything like actual research, but to have Dr. Kaufmann—whose own research had kept me at a library computer hours longer than I’d intended as my brain turned her into a new kind of celebrity—say this to me just after having lost myself in the work might’ve changed my life. When class ended and we’d cleaned our stations and stored our lab coats and goggles, after distributing the pre-lab worksheets for the next class meeting, she said to the group, Your student IDs should be set up to open the door by the end of the day. I imagine most of you will need to come back and continue practicing.
She picked up her lab notebook and held it against her chest.
—Some of you will just want to. She looked directly at me and said, That is encouraged as well.
Before leaving, she reminded us she’d be available during office hours and via e-mail should we have any questions or concerns. The syllabus noted her office hours were later that afternoon, and as I packed up and zipped myself into my coat—I had to go to the library to get my spring work schedule—I convinced myself that it wouldn’t be sucking up to visit and ask about her research, to tell her that the project described on her faculty Web page had drawn me to her particular section, to mention that I also loved the beach.
* * *
As I left my supervisor’s office and tugged on my mittens, a shock of red hair dodged behind a wall of shelves. Without meaning to, I said, Ethan? His face poked out from behind the corner a few seconds later, as if he’d debated answering.
—Lizet! he said. Hey, I’ve been looking for you.
—Well that’s not creepy.
—Oh I’m totally being creepy, I freely admit that.
We walked up to each other, and I thought he would hug me, but he kept one hand on the strap of that intensely buttoned backpack.
—I thought you worked Monday afternoons, he said.
—I do, I did, last semester. This semester is different.
I flapped my new schedule in my mittened hand. A guy inside the closest reading room turned and shushed us, making more noise than either of us so far.
—It’s the first day of class, nerd! Ethan shouted at him. I choked on a laugh and he pointed to the library’s front doors, whispering as we headed toward them, Have you had lunch yet?
I had just over an hour to kill until Dr. Kaufmann’s office hours started, and I knew if I went to my room, I’d let the cold keep me from coming back out. So I was, in fact, planning to go get food just then.
—Perfect, he said. Carter House? It’s the only decent place within walking distance.
—I’m not twenty-one, remember?
—I remember. But it’s only twenty-one-and-over after five. They have great sandwiches.
—Wait, why were you looking for me?
—It’s not a big deal, he said. I wanted to invite you to this thing I run for my hall, but also just, you know, say hey, see how your break went.
He swung the door open for me and we stepped into the cold—no snow but the threat of snow—and after I tried saying It was fine into the freezing wind whipping at our ears, we both ducked into our coats and walked downhill in silence, a reflex for people like us—people from places where it never got that cold.
The bar was old and smelled damp, the walls covered in wood, that wood covered in names scrawled on and carved into it. It was dark and warm and felt in some ways like an extension of campus, but there were older people there and a couple families, all eating the sandwiches Ethan had mentioned, baskets of free peanuts keeping each party company. We ordered at the bar—Ethan got a beer with too many words in its name—then grabbed a booth by the window, our coats sprawled out on our respective benches.
—So how was Miami?
I tugged off my mittens, instantly worried at his word choice—Miami instead of home—thinking maybe he was circling around to asking about Ariel Hernandez, that that’s what this was actually about. How could I have fallen for his invitation, considering how many people had asked me how I was holding up along with the fact that he was an RA? I imagined the e-mail he probably got from the Dean’s Office: We are aware you’ve befriended the Cuban. I put the mittens on the table and said, What’s that supposed to mean?
—Jesus, he laughed. It means just what I said! Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.
He cleared his throat dramatically, then said, Seattle was great! It rained every day I was home. I spent New Year’s on the couch with my mom. But I went on some great hikes, wrote ten songs about Mt. Rainier, high-fived an orca. It was swell!
He leaned across the table, dropped his eyes to my level.
—See? he said. Now you try.
I felt like hiding under the bench, but as he lifted his beer, I decided to play it off like a joke. I said, Got it, okay. Miami was great! I went to the beach every day and had breakfast every morning with the Miami Dolphins and went to fifty-five raves. It was super swell.
—That’s better, he said. He reached over and grabbed one of the mittens, smacked my left hand with it.
—What’s that though? he said. He reached for my hand, then pulled all but one of his fingers back and poked at my ring. I’d started wearing it at Rawlings in the hopes it would distract people from talking to me about Ariel and instead make them ask me what a ring like that was doing on my left hand.
—Nice bling, but I think you’re wearing it in the wrong place. Unless you and the Miami Dolphins got engaged.
—We did, I said. I did. Sort of.
—You sort of got
engaged?
I nodded and he pulled his hand away.
—To your boyfriend?
—Yeah, I said.
—Not to the Miami Dolphins?
I smiled down at the table.
—Just making sure, he said. He knocked his knuckles against the table’s top a couple times. Wow, he said. Wow. Congrats, yeah? Does this mean you’re leaving Rawlings?
—Why would I leave Rawlings?
He wrapped both hands around his pint glass.
—I don’t know, he said. I guess, when people get married – I don’t know.
I realized what he might’ve meant—maybe I was pregnant—and I laughed to cover up the awkwardness. He laughed, too, but looked through the window at the cold as he did it. I tried to think of something I could say to correct his assumption.
—You think I’m too young to get married?
—No, no, that’s none of my business, he said. My mom almost got married when she was eighteen.
Make Your Home Among Strangers Page 25