The Idle Intellectual (i.e. Me)

What should I be doing right now?

Well, there are several things that I "should" be doing--I should be doing some literature research on various subjects regarding C. elegans research and techniques without any focus on a particular topic, or, I should be practicing with the worms by putting them into microfluidic channels in preparation for an experiment that will take place sometime near never, or, I could be arguing with the CVS server regarding a set of hyperlinked documents for a boss who is very cranky and bossy, especially of late. Ah, the wonders of working in a cutting-edge laboratory with a multidisciplinary crew of multicultural wonders. In fact, our boss is so progressive that he's a Russian. It doesn't get any more progressive(=totalitarian) than that.

Some might tell me that I'm not being grateful. Well, I am very grateful--I get to work on microfluidics research, which truly is a rare opportunity as only labs with the highest amount of grants could ever pull off. I'm very grateful for the fact that I get to attend an elite academic institution that could sponsor such a lab. I'm very grateful for the fact that there is air conditioning in this lab in the dreadful Chicago heat. However, I find myself wandering because of a general discontent of things, despite all of the things that I'm grateful for.

My P. I. is the biggest source of stress; he's a real PI-in in the ass. He doesn't seem to have highly developed interpersonal skills and his hawkish nature has given him quite the reputation in the department. At first, I thought it was because he just tends to be overly ambitious and that some grad students just don't appreciate hard work. I mean, he's been bringing in a lot of cool postdocs. However, I learned soon enough that the reason why he was hiring so many postdocs was because he hasn't had any grad students enter his lab for two years. Two years. Wow, that reputation must be pretty foul.

So, where do I come in? Well, normally I crack under pressure, so I wonder how I've survived the past year, but I have to remind myself that I was an administrative assistant before and therefore invisible. Now that I'm actually working in the lab, I've seen his true face, and lemme tell ya, it ain't pretty. I've been dodging him for the past few weeks, jumping at the site of any male with brownish hair, staying on elevators for several rides up and down the building to avoid him, crying in the stairwells on the phone to mom. Maybe I'm just too lazy to be working in his lab. Maybe I'm just way too burnt out from the school year. Whatever the case, I've lost all my interest in working here and I can't believe I'm ready for summer to be over.

To combat this chronic boredom, I've been devoting myself to reading various texts on mathematics, systems theory, and (yes, I admit it) other lab group sites. I'm actually interested in switching labs, because 1) my P. I. is a jackass, and 2) I've gotten really bored with microfluidics. I've expounded on Point 1 until now. I'll now continue on Point 2.

One of the labs I'm seriously considering is actually doing some really cool stuff with systems biology. Interestingly enough, it's located in the Physics Department, which pretty much makes it a biophysics lab. I'm personally interested in evolutionary networks and the mathematical descriptions of complex biosystems (their paper is really cool with Boolean logic, but I will refrain from identifying this group for the sake of anonymity). I'm hoping to hear back from the group soon, but while I'm cowering over my screen as to avoid any contact with P. I. (Pain Immortal), I'm starting to wonder why my mind wanders like this and whether or not that means I'm in good shape.

It is the third time I am revising this very paragraph, in which I describe the mundane repetetiveness of occupations since the Industrial Revolution. At the same time, I can only wonder if life before mechanization was any more varied. You can probably hear the arrival of my favorite existential term, "ennui," but here, I will develop more into the freeflowing river of intellectual inspiration... once I'm no longer bored with what I am writing out right now...