An Academic Event

Today the lab has been cleaned. It is SO clean in fact that we are no longer able to work there. We were driven to this point because tomorrow the Chancellor of the university and various other important personages are coming on a tour of our building. This is very interesting and it raises the question of how students and people lower in the university hierarchy should behave around those who are academically above us? Before we can decide this the nature of the visit should be determined, we need a comparable real world situation. In the scheme of things, is the Chancellors visit equivalent to Queen Elizabeth II hitting the streets to greet her people? Or is it like President Obama heading to a political rally to give a speech peppered with witty remarks? Or is the arrival of the head of your academic institution a more sombre occasion where celebration is not appropriate? Is it, in fact, more like a health inspector arriving on your premises to suss out what is happening?

Another aspect of this event is what should we, as a department provide? Should we procure cheering crowds and security? Or maybe just light snacks? Do we have a moral duty, as members of the academic community, to present things as they are? To tell them that we don’t like feeling insecure in our positions, that our papers came back 7 times before being accepted, that our labs are in fact often messy. But no, as in all things in life, the charade continues, and all labs will be straightened up, students will be swathed in lab coats and visually pleasing, but useless, experiments will be set up to entertain and amaze our guests.

All speculation aside there is a lot of excitement about this visit. And why is this? Why is a visit like this so exciting? Is it because… 

1. We don’t get to meet many important people.
2. We had become so consumed with the politics and intrigues of our own department that we had actually forgotten we were affiliated with a group of departments called a university. Hence, the arrival of these bigwigs forms a welcome, albeit surprising, reminder that we are part of a bigger picture.
3. Being acknowledged by the governing body of the university is like someone sitting you down and saying, “Yes! You are important! Your research matters! See, would we be here if it wasn’t?!!” And the answer is no, if your research wasn’t important (or at least if it wasn’t producing results) they certainly wouldn’t be here, and neither would you! As your funding would be non-existent. Sigh!
4. We have spent so long locked away in the lab that the thought of seeing anyone who doesn’t work in our building is thrilling. (All departments should be aware that this situation can be a little too thrilling for some of the more seasoned professors and if the school wishes to avoid embarrassing scenes, sending people on fully-funded ‘fieldtrips’ on important days is extremely useful for maintaining the departments dignity and reputation).
5. There’s a free afternoon tea for one and all. A note of caution here, certain prestigious institutions, who shall remain nameless, have found an inverse relationship between the number of snacks and the likelihood of a postgraduate stampede. By spending a little more money, your department could save thousands in repair costs because as the saying goes ‘Hell hath no fury like a hungry PhD student’.

But whatever the reason behind the excitement in the department, it is certainly here. Redolent of scenes from many historical BBC dramas, where the villagers hang flower garlands around the town and leap joyfully through the rolling green fields, the department is being cleaned and decorated within an inch of its life. Staff members who spend the whole year in the same pair of khaki shorts and a tattered shirt of uncertain origin will suddenly appear in suit and tie (also of questionable origin but still – a suit and tie people!!). PhD students who haven’t been seen in the hallways or tearoom for months will suddenly end their stint in the lab as they forage for any free food this special occasion might provide. Undergraduates emerge from the dusty corners where they have been forced to do menial laboratory tasks to bask in the glow of the academic communities brightest minds.

Personally I feel sort of like the staff greeting their returning master or mistress in those old British mansions. If this was really the case all the undergraduates, PhD students and lecturers would have to line up out the front of the building in order of rank and importance and bow or curtsey as the Chancellor strolls by smiling benignly upon us all.  Someone would rush forward to get his bags, someone else would take his coat and then we would all troop excitedly into the building some distance behind him, never taking our eyes off this important personage.

I wonder what things will be like in the department tomorrow when they actually arrive? I sure hope the snacks are good.

Dinosaurs and Your Career.

When I was a little girl I used to imagine all the things I was going to do when I was grown up. Interestingly, life as a biochemist did not feature on my list. Even more interesting neither did ballerina or fireman. What I really wanted to be was a palaeontologist. This is a slightly weird obsession for a 7 year old, but let’s face it, dinosaurs are cool and if you could dedicate your life to digging up their HUGE horrific bones then why wouldn’t you? Sadly, this passion faded by 10 or 11 and I started to aim for what I imagine is a slightly better paid and potentially long-lived field, medicine.

I say long-lived because as long as there are people and the world as we know it doesn’t end, we will always require medical professionals. This means as a Doctor or nurse you will always fill a required and important niche. In contrast there don’t seem to be too many dinosaurs around these days. This seems to suggest a problem of epic proportions. I don’t want to alarm anybody but there is a definite possibility that one day, hopefully not in our lifetimes, we may actually run out of dinosaur bones to unearth! This would be catastrophic and I want to emphasise that this is purely speculation and the likelihood of such an event happening is highly dependent on a range of complex factors. For example we would need to know how many dinosaur bones are actually out there and then determine how quickly they get dug up. In the long run, this may not even be a problem as we could always rebury a few skeletons and not tell the palaeontologists. Then they can have all the fun of digging them up again and again in new and interesting locations. 

On another note, lots of scientists in many fields dedicate their whole lives to researching a hypothesis which is never proven. This means that even if all the bones were safely out of the ground there is sure to be room and funding for those who still believe (and more importantly who have the publication record to beef up their claims) that there is something out there.

Another and more sinister possibility for the demise of palaeontology is that we may, in future, successfully clone multiple dinosaur species from a single amber preserved mosquito like on Jurassic Park! If this happens we will probably be too busy running from the snapping-jaws of these new aged reptiles to dig up the remains of their ancient ancestors.

But for those of you whose dream of digging up dinosaur bones is not to be thwarted by the possible difficulties and slim pickings of the field I include the following useful link:

Helpful Tips for the Future Palaeontologist. 

These scientists, judging from their outfits, glasses and facial hair, are clearly serious and passionate about what they do. If only I had seen this video before my dream was replaced by other childhood fancies how different things may have been! One, I could have had my own collection of tiny dinosaur skeletons and two, I could have been staring into the lifeless jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex instead of planning out my next set of experiments incorporating dangerous microbes. Sigh. Better luck next time.