Exhilarated

Tags

agatha christie, hercule poirot, job, life, neuroscience, science

It’s only words if you’ve never felt how long the days pass, and for what my measly brain can remember, my last ten days has never trolled through so slowly before. I cannot believe that I just had an eye exam last Wednesday, the same day I received a call for an interview confirmation, the same week I received the job offer, accepted it, and went dancing in the rain. I am not writing this post for an emotional out-pour or an intelligent discussion – I’m merely bored and thrilled.

Perhaps the hilarious thing is how I spent the entire month of April procrastinating with Agatha Christie’s mysteries, alongside one too many trips to the bookstore. Poirot kept me company and Hastings bred sentimentality; my favorite so far – considering how new a member I am to her anonymous fanclub – is “Murder on the Links.” It is a perfect blend of life, drama, love, and the mystery genre that Christie knows best, of course not to mention that Hastings is a personal bias.

So I am on my feet now. Promptly. With hesitation, no doubt, but there is a first time for everything, isn’t there? On the other hand, I cannot locate my sanity. Not yet. It’s still swimming in the fourth dimension.

The lab is a longtime neuroscience research, which means training mice or rats, collecting electrical impulses, detecting synapses and firing of axons, and analyzing computer-generated graphs – not my area. Which is sound and nothing to be anxious of, because the new project involves more or less the molecular biology techniques that I love. The PI has developed a new concept, where the technology for DNA sequencing is utilized to map the entire connectome; in other words, trace each neuron of every pathway occurring in the brain for the much anticipated cost of $1,000 or less. It’s like wiring a circuit diagram in physics class, but instead of resistances or voltages or batteries or switches, you have cells.

Sweet.

A little baffling to some, like me, to enter a neuroscience lab without a neuroscience background, but that’s really in a most positive light. The project itself is extraordinary, and to be part of the drive to make it work is downright amazing.

Excitement steers the wheel in my brain.

And it also rolls the tires. I have but a brake to dictate my life, which is unfortunate, as logic and rationale have a tendency to escape from me.