I want to quickly let you know that I’ve found out a really good blogging solution that works for me and will make it easier for me to write more. It involves me paying for internet hosting, but it isn’t that much money, and it’ll help me be better about writing!

Anyway, I’m busy putting the legitimate site together, and when it’s done (soon!) I’ll let you know.

Much love,
David

You may have noticed that I don’t write much.

Part of the reason is that I’m busy living my life and working here, and if I do have free time, I usually want to spend it with friends or doing crucial things like, well, eating.

Another reason I haven’t written is that I like to take time to write entries, so if I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, I just don’t write. I would rather not write than put out something that was unclear or uninteresting.

Obviously, I want to keep in touch with you all, and not just through this blog. One solution to the two problems I’ve listed above is that I’m going to post randomly to Twitter, and I’m going to stream my tweets to the sidebar in this blog.

As you can see from my past tweets, I don’t write about inane personal activities (a la ‘Just took a shower. Off to work.’). Instead, I like to write about ridiculous things that happen to me, or share something I found while browsing the web.

You may or may not like the feed, but I think it might help me stay connected with you guys more.

A third reason I haven’t written much is I don’t know what you want to hear about. I’ve given you a broad overview of what’s going on here, but I’m not sure what details you want. Right now, I have patterns and habits that I’m following—and a big part of those patterns involves work. I’m trying to build up some cash reserves and (before I forget) buy a mattress. Afterwards, maybe I can start taking a trip or two and going out more to find restaurants I like. I’m doing some of that now, but with more money will come more freedom to explore. (That’s just how life is, I guess.)

I’ve spent a lot of my free time so far hanging out with friends, going to potlucks, dancing, and exploring Cambridge/Boston while the weather is still nice. There’s only so much of that I can describe, though, so I want your ideas: what do you want to hear about?

I hope to hear from all of you, and I always love getting phone calls from everyone back home!

Much love,
David

I guess the next logical thing for me to tell you about is what a work day looks like for me. Not a schedule or a nitty-gritty description. I’d rather just give you a sense of what work is like for me here, how I get along with my colleagues, and what I’ve been up to for the last month in lab.

My job description / where I fit in / the conceptual side
I am a research assistant.

What does that mean? Well, first I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean I make media or clean the lab or go from person-to-person asking how I can help them. I am used to doing all of the above as part of my job (and in my undergrad lab, for example, everyone pitched in to keep up the lab). But MGH is a corporate environment, and there is a definite structure to how we work.

Instead of every person making agar plates and antibiotic stocks and sterilizing equipment for him/herself, there are people who do those jobs exclusively. They are usually in high school and looking to major in biology in college. The lab assistants I work with are great people and will definitely have a leg up when applying to undergrad. What’s more, they make life easier for everyone. So it’s a win-win(-win?) situation.

Because I don’t need to worry about keeping my plate stocks full, I can concentrate on research. I have my own project, which is coordinated by an MD I work with. My boss figures out higher-level stuff (like general project directions, general lab strategies, funding) and I perform experiments and analyze the results. I order supplies for our project and keep our part of the lab running.

This is my niche, and I’m comfortable in it.

I actually have a fair amount of say in what we order, my daily schedule, and how the lab is set up. Two weeks ago I noticed there was not much freezer space left for me, for example, and our coordinator ordered me one. I’ve also got purchasing power, so I can keep up with supplies we need.

In short, I’m here to a) get my project done and b) make life easier for the MD I’m working with. (Or this is my impression so far.)

Who I work with
It has been a great relief to me that I like my coworkers.

You never know how science-types are going to be until you hang out with them. Even though I work in a lab with five people, four labs on our floor share resources and rooms. All the research assistants end up having lunch together and hanging out during incubations. So it’s been easy to get to know them, even after a month. We actually had a barbecue in New Hampshire this weekend that was amazing, and I’ve figured out that these are fun people.

Most research assistants are about my age, in between undergrad and grad/med school. So on some level we already share interests. But as it happens, we also share a healthy sense of humor and laid-back-ness (it’s a word, look it up) that makes life in lab stress-free. Or as stress-free as possible, bad lab results notwithstanding.

Where I fit in / the research side
I’ve been asked a couple of times what exactly it is I’m doing at MGH, and maybe now is the time to explain. Usually I answer the question what do you do? with a simple answer: vaccine research. But what does that mean?

Let me see if I can give you a better picture of what that means without too many gory details.

First, I am working on a very specific project under the broad heading Cholera vaccine research. Our general lab goal is to find many proteins that can act as a vaccine for cholera. I have already explained why this is an important goal. Our lab has already found genes that might be good vaccine candidates, but we haven’t tested them yet. While the rest of the lab is trying to find more candidates, I am trying to turn these genes into proteins and test them. My goal is to see if any of the proteins is interesting enough to investigate.

So far, I’ve taken cholera genes from a gene library, expressed those genes into proteins, and am now purifying those proteins into samples we can test. That may sound easy, but it’s easier said than done: expressing genes alone has taken me about two months.

As a general rule, scientific questions are deceivingly simple. Just like questions in philosophy, they are easy to ask (How does a white blood cell kill cholera?) but may take several years or lifetimes to answer. In science, it is not enough to see something happen once and point and declare, I have the answer! The key to science is self-criticism and rigorous confirmation. So even seemingly obvious questions like Is gravity real? have to be confirmed through complex repeated experiments.

Biology is complicated further by scale. That is: what we want to know about biology usually involves tiny atoms and molecules and cells. Really, we can only work with small molecules using liquid solutions and cultures—because we know what the concentrations of those are; imagine trying to work with a single bacterium!

This means that we have to work with quantities we can’t see, and we have to optimize our processes based on trial and error and systematic experiments. In other words, even our tools and procedures have to be based on prior experiments. So biology takes time to develop.

Another way of putting it is: if you were to ask yourself something like What is the gene for blue eyes?, how would you even begin to approach that problem? Could you design a project to figure out that question? As you start to think about how you would solve that problem, you begin to appreciate how complex these simple questions really are.

It turns out that the best way to answer these small-scale problems is to work with other people and build on other researchers’ work. Within a lab, we depend on each other for results and are each working on a specific project that contributes to the general lab goal. So I am working on project X which depends on my colleagues’ projects Y and Z, which in turn are based on papers they have read from (say) two labs in Europe.

This need for collaboration makes science difficult but productive. You will never find a paper or lab researching broad topics. No, topics are only conquered when they are broken down and spread over multiple labs. But when labs do work together, they make progress and discover some amazing things.

It is important for a researcher like me to remind myself of how I fit into the lab scheme, even for me to operate on a daily basis. I have to remember that it is not my lab who discovers a vaccine; it is a group of labs over multiple decades. So as a scientist, I can’t have an ego. By the same token, though, it is exciting to think that the work I’m doing will add to the growing web of information trying to conquer cholera. Maybe that’s what I like best about working at a well-connected place like MGH.

No, but really, I have been wanting to write here over the past couple weeks about the job. But said job has kept me from doing so. I want to use this entry to tell you some things about Mass General Hospital, or MGH, and about what I’m doing here.

First, though, I’d like to take a detour and say: apparently Mass General employees are kind of schizophrenic about the hospital’s name. Some people (normal people) call the hospital “MGH”, as you would expect. That’s fine and good. The problem is that about twenty percent of the people I’ve met here, and they all work in HR, have decided to call our workplace “the MGH”. Now, I find this obnoxious, not just because saying “the MGH” is a little pretentious… but also because only one in five people adds on “the”. I’ve decided this name change is a plot hatched by HR that will—somehow—end in global domination. No details yet on why I think that; just go with me on this. For now, I’m refusing to put “the” in front of “MGH”. If we’re talking one day, though, and I do put the “the” in there, you will know their plan has worked, and all is lost.

Mass General Hospital's logo... see, no 'the'!

1. Getting oriented
Back to business, though. I’m two-and-a-half weeks into my work at Mass General, and I’m finally getting the hang of things. It all started with orientation at the end of last month. During orientation, HR regaled us with facts and figures about MGH that really are kind of impressive—for example, did you know the hospital employs over 21,000 people and spends $550 million each year, just for research? And if you think that $550 million is a lot to spend on research, you should know that more than $2 billion passes through the hospital’s hands every year. So research is important, but patient care is top priority.

The hospital is a traditional non-profit business that makes about 1% surplus every year, and spends it on building upgrades. 2011 will be MGH’s bicentennial, and the newest wing of the hospital is called the Building for the Third Century (B3C).

So after telling us all about how wonderful MGH is, HR people went on to explain the most mundane details of fire and glass safety, and they told us all about HIPAA. (Importantly, if a hospital employee gives out a patient’s information against HIPAA, they are in serious trouble. So this part of orientation was definitely valuable.)

One cool thing I learned about at orientation has to do with disasters. After a disaster, all hospital employees are considered “essential” and so have to report in to work. In the case of a plane crash, for example, all employees would have to report to the hospital to help with the surge of incoming patients. If the police are blocking incoming traffic (to downtown or to the hospital), I have a disaster pass that lets me get through road blocks. So… on that level, I feel special.

Now, I don’t want this blog to go long, and I do have to eat some time today, but let me tell you a little about my job.

2. Disclaimer
I’ve decided I’m not going to use specific names of people who I work with online, mainly because there are so many regulations at the hospital about information sharing, etc., that I can’t keep up with every single privacy rule they have. And I don’t want anyone giving me the look.

I doubt it would be a problem to share my lab name or coworkers’ names, but I’m just going to avoid that whole arena and use exciting nicknames like Dr. Sputnik and Señor X.

3. What I’m doing: the (really) big picture
So… I work in the Sputnik lab at MGH, and we’re working to make vaccines for people in developing countries. This focus is actually perfect for me, since I want to go into translational medicine. I guess before I explain what I’m doing, I should tell you where I want to go with all this.

It is a sad truth that poverty creates disease, and disease creates poverty. Anthropologists call this phenomenon a poverty cycle. One good example is Haiti, where people are continually dying of preventible Tuberculosis because they cannot afford treatment. Because they become sick, they are not able to care for their families or really sustain a family structure. This means that the kids in the family will not have the money to become educated or escape poverty (or even want to—after all, what is more important, algebra or your dying father?) and will themselves probably come down with Tuberculosis.

I could probably talk about that for a while, but I’m not going to. If you’re interested, I would highly recommend the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, which tells the story of Paul Farmer. My hero. Whose non-profit, conveniently, is in Boston.

I want to break poverty cycles. And prevention is key to that. Every textbook I’ve had at university has repeated one fact: prevention is almost always 1000 times cheaper than treatment. Every disease we learned in school gave a treatment option, but also a preventive strategy. Vaccines can cost a couple of bucks, where many antibiotics and hospital stays cost much more.

SO. I want to help poor people get vaccines. What’s the best way to do that? Well, eventually I’ll become a doctor and administer these vaccines directly. But for now, I want to develop vaccines. Specifically for diseases that cause death by diarrhea—very common in poorer countries.

I want to be part of the team who makes important vaccines cheap, so that poor people can use them. And then, those poorer people can work their way up the hierarchy of needs, instead of worrying if they will die tomorrow. Hopefully, this will help break certain poverty cycles—not an easy task. If it does, then a person’s birthplace won’t limit her to a life of sickness and poverty. Instead, she will be able to make crucial decisions that weren’t possible before—like, “Hey, I should probably get an education.” With better education, loads of possibilities open up, and we get closer to a world where people are equal.

This is my general goal, and vaccine work is how I want to get there. I’ll sketch out my daily life some time soon. But today, I wanted to give you a broad picture of my goals in research and in medicine.

For now, I’m off to cook myself some dinner and maybe dance.

So, while I don’t have much time to write things down tonight, I wanted to at least post once before I start my job tomorrow and give you a little taste into what Cambridge has been like for me so far. Nothing big. Consider this a “fun-size” blog entry.

1. I’m meeting people
Safe and sound in Cambridge, I’ve been starting to meet people for about a week and a half now. And I’d say I’ve already have five or six friends here, plus loads more acquaintances from dances. People here are (contrary to popular southern belief) extremely friendly and accepting, and I haven’t met a person yet who wasn’t interested in talking. The neighbors working in their yards appreciate a smile when I walk by, and really, that part doesn’t feel so different from the South.

I’ve met most of my newfound friends at the two contras I’ve danced. Since contra is community-oriented, making friends is not hard. I’m sure I’ll talk a lot more about my friends as we get to know each other better—and I have more time to think and write. For now, know they are great dancers and fun people.

2. Yes, Jojo, Mom and Aunt Vickie: I am eating
While getting to the grocery store takes about ten minutes, walking, I haven’t had a problem keeping my pantry stocked. So far, I’ve cooked up such delights as the shrimp fajita, shepherd’s pie, and some wonderful curry chicken. I’m still wanting recipes/meal ideas from my cooking friends, so feel free to send them to me via e-mail or as a comment here. My roommate Don has every spice I’ll ever need here, and since not having all spices was my main cooking roadblock last year, now I get to be creative.

3. Boston & Cambridge rock
One of my friends, Eric, showed me around downtown today, and I was kind of astounded at how much there is to see. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I knew Boston was fairly big, but actually walking through the main parts of the city took a good three or four hours. And today I saw maybe a third of the high points! Cambridge is an entirely different animal but is just as big. The “city across the riva”—and Granddaddy, “the Charles” is what we were trying to think of before—feels like a little Europe in that its roads are small, there are local shops everywhere, and everyone walks to get around.

Walking around town, I get that impression that students and young people easily call this town (Cambridge) their own. In fact, I’ve heard that something like one in every five people here is a student. I’m continually amazed by how many stores there are that market exactly to my age group. What’s more, because there are so many students/young professionals here, it isn’t too hard to find inexpensive hang outs. For the most part, my fear of higher prices here hasn’t been borne out too much—though Boston’s version of Fifth Avenue, Newbury Street, is a different story.

4. I look forward to writing about my experiences here
One of my favorite ways of processing what I see after I enjoy it is by writing about my experience. So even if you decide this blog bores you and stop reading and subsequently get the DOJ to send cease and desist notices to me… I’ll still get a kick out of writing here.

I do hope that you enjoy reading and that you write back! I want to keep up with all of my good friends from back in the Carolinas and Georgia, and this is one good way to do that. Another good way is to get my new phone number, which I will give you if you e-mail me for it. I’ll be working from 9 to 5 starting tomorrow (Monday, 29 June) but night is the perfect time to call.

Well, I said I have to go and I do. That’s all I have for now, and I’ll (hopefully) write again soon. Ciao.