Doomsday Has Arrived

And, surprisingly, it wasn't as full of doom as I feared or expected.

So in case you hadn't already guessed, today was the day. Today was the day I presented the paper that I stupidly submitted to Dr. Yu's attention and knew nothing about. Today was the day the world would see my Meryl Streep skills of deception in action.

And the envelope says?

I think I deserve a little gold man to put on my desk.

I gave run-throughs of my presentations to Zhuo, Chen, and Alan this morning to see how much sense I made and how prepared I was. Let's just say I didn't impress myself. I was stuttering occasionally, and I realized as I tried to explain some things that certain concepts just didn't make any sense, whether it was through my lack of comprehension or my errors in translating information from article to powerpoint. I soon discovered it was the latter. But hey, that's what rough run-throughs are for, right?

Mentally I usually divide my days into two segements, namely before lunch and after lunch. If I have something to do in the afternoon, I don't worry about it in the morning. I wait until after my meal, and then I start to focus and/or commence the project in question.

So, given this pattern, I wasn't that worried about my afternoon presentation in the morning. Yes, I had done a rough presentation to the others, but I had all afternoon to make any necessary tweaks, no problem.

Then I went to lunch and returned and the panic commenced.

1:30. 3 hours to go, no problem.

2:30. I still have 2 full hours. So much time!

3:30. Uh-oh. One hour. This is suddenly looking very real. Let's go through my powerpoint for the 127th time to see if there are any changes that need to be made that I didn't catch the last 126 times.

4:00. Wah! I'm downing Werther's Originals like they are going out of style. If I were a smoker, I would be lighting up like nobody's business. Or chewing an entire pack of nicotine gum. Or perhaps both simulatenously.

4:25. I walk with the others to Dr. Yu's office. Chen asks me again if I want to go first, and this time I totally jump on it. I want to get this done and over with.

Shortly thereafter I found out that Alice would also be joining us for this particular meeting, the first time she had been present in such affairs since my arrival. Great. Let's up the stakes a little more because my insides aren't jelly-like enough already.

We ended up commencing the meeting at about 4:40 after waiting for a few minutes for Dr. Yu to finish up a discussion with another lab P.I. I just powered up my laptop, took a deep breath, and jumped in. If I realized I made a mistake in my presentation, I either quickly breezed over it or corrected it before Dr. Yu could notice it himself, and didn't even flinch.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: the key to success is convincing others you know way more than you do, and make them believe you actually know what you're talking about.

My presentation on the paper took anywhere from 30-40 minutes, and that was just for one person. John stopped me frequently and occasionally asked me questions, but mostly addressed the doctoral students and post-docs about the paper and the techniques I was reporting and how they should try some new methods with their ATII experiments. Pardon the imagery, but I felt like peeing on myself. He was telling them to take note and pay attention to something I was saying, to integrate this information as soon as possible and to immediately look into the techniques. Alice arrived about halfway through and inexplicably her presence made me a bit calmer, but she asked questions, too, and I came out alive. I really don't know how, so don't ask. I feel like I was underwater for half an hour and my only source of oxygen was from a straw protruding above the ocean's surface.

After dodging major bullet #1, I proceeded to give presentation #2. Yes, there was a second one, this time on my transfection progress. I compared my first tries with the 293FT to the recently completed trial of the 3T3 fibroblasts. John and/or Alice had asked me what kind of cell the 293FT was, and in all honestly, I had forgotten, so I turned casually to ask Zhuo, brushing if off like it wasn't a big deal while inside of my head I was thinking, 'Stupid, stupid, stupid!' I always study and practice the kick-ass difficult stuff to try to be prepared for any question from any any angle, and then entirely forget about the simple and mundane things. Anyway, 293FT cells are kidney cells.

I also showed them my flow cytometry chart and compared by transfection efficiencies: 10% for the first try, 77% for the second. And I also noted that I performed the analysis for the second sample only one day after transfection. In the relevant protocol literature, it is recommended to wait two days to get optimal results, because before and after that one gets diminshing returns. However, since we did this on a Friday, we had the weekend problem that too many days would pass by Monday came around, so we simply did the cytometry after one day instead of two. I made the point that if we had waited the full two days, in all likelihood the transfection efficiency would have been even higher than 77%.

When I got to my results slide and explained, Alice exclaimed, 'Wow!' After asking which transfection method I used, she explanied that normally a 30-40% efficiency rate is considered successful. Whew.

I also mentioned that I had tried multiple other times with the 293FT cells and it wasn't working for me. John asked if the cultures were okay, and I had said yes and that my cultures were fine. Zhuo then explained that it was during the transfection that something went awry and the cell numbers shrunk.

I still don't know why and I'm still pissed at myself for not being able to do it, but John and Alice seemed to brush it off. And it made me feel better that after the presentation Chen told me that 'two minutes later, John forgets everything anyway.'

Apparently not everything, because after the meeting was over two hours later, he asked to see me. He then asked me to email Miss Wu my powerpoint presentation for him to look over.

Finally getting out of lab at about 6:45-7:00, I decided to skip my training routine seeing as I was exhausted and still perpetually felt like puking. I chose to go to dinner at once of my traditional lunch places across the street. About halfway through my meal, I heard, 'Hey, Shannon,' and turned around to find Chen and Zhuo in line. They came over and sat with me and we chatted for a bit, discussing everything from Taiwan politics and Chen Shui-Bian to American politics and college and everything in between. (Apparently everyone here hates Chen Shui-Bian, and Zhuo told me people call him Chen Shui-Pian. 'Pian' in Chinese means 'to cheat.' I actually got a Taiwanese joke!) I found out that every Taiwanese male must do 1.5-2 years in the army, no exceptions. I found out Chen already did his (and subsequently that he is in his late 20s, at which I was shocked) and that Zhuo was planning to do his time after his PhD. Chen told me it was lame and boring and that he felt like he was getting stupider, and that those two years in the Taiwanese army are just like being in the Boy Scouts. Lame, yes, but it sounds better than going to Arab countries and blowing up innocent civilians.

So I survived the day, and have completed another phase of projects. I am expecting tomorrow to be smooth sailing as kind of a rest period between assignments. Besides, it's Friday, so are they really going to make me start anything intense before a weekend? I hope not.