I wrote down this sentence and stared at it. It made perfect sense. The forgiveness built into this basic research philosophy—so simple and obvious—instantly validated my first semester in a way I could finally accept: everything led to this moment in this lab, the beginning of a new challenge of my own choosing. Put a line through it and keep going—I looked around to the other benches to see if anyone else registered the power of what she’d just said, but I was the only one taking notes, the only one nodding as my pen hovered over the page.
She eventually explained that even though we had a standing weekly class meeting, she expected us to be in the lab much more than just three hours. There’d be organisms to grow and feed, enzyme reactions to initiate and time and halt, gels to run.
—Whatever the lab requires of you, you must fulfill, she said. There are no weekends in a laboratory. As I say each term, a lab is not a restaurant. This kitchen never closes.
I laughed with her at the comparison, but everyone else met this remark with dismay.
She spent the second part of class showing us how to prepare stock solutions and explaining—with almost religious devotion—the fundamentals of sterile technique. She demonstrated the correct (and incorrect) ways of handling the petri dishes, flasks, and pipettes, the various solutions and their vessels. She told us to wash our hands, snap on some latex gloves, and familiarize ourselves with the tools and methods we’d be using daily, to practice as she demonstrated, and I headed to the sink before she’d finished her sentence.
—The laminar flow hood is your best friend, she began as she paced around the room, observing our tinkering. Then she said, Not really, this is an exaggeration.
I tried to keep my gloved hands steady through my silent laughter. No one but me seemed to think she was funny; the guy on the other end of my bench checked his watch, inspected each instrument but didn’t try them out. I considered asking him if I could borrow his squirt bottle of ethanol when I’d almost used mine up. After maybe fifteen minutes of watching us transfer liquids between centrifuge tubes using the various pipette sizes, Dr. Kaufmann handed out our goggles, showing us the sterilization cabinets that would house them whenever they weren’t protecting our eyes. She then gave each of us a lab coat, and when she called my name and held one out to me, I almost died.
—Contaminants are everywhere! she said as I took it from her hands, a smile passing between us. Once we were all properly goggled and coated, she said with clear pleasure, I will use the final hour today to assess your sterile technique. This is your first exam.
Murmurs rose from the other benches. The guy I shared mine with raised his hand but didn’t wait to be called on.
—Professor, some of us didn’t practice very much before because we were focused on listening when you were explaining stuff? You didn’t say we’d be tested right now.
I’d practiced plenty (she told us to!) and thought, What are you, pre-law?
—Well, working in a lab is full of surprises, she said.
I wanted to high-five her before remembering that contaminants were everywhere.
Because of my last name, I’d be going tenth, but my nervousness decreased with each person ahead of me, as everyone screwed up some major element. Everyone plunged their pipette way too far into the sample on their first try; no one seemed to be considering their immersion angle at all; one person scratched his face then touched the lid of a petri dish. Dr. Kaufmann chirped Contamination! every time she witnessed a mistake, and after saying it four times—all on just the first person to go up—people stopped jumping when the word broke the silence. But her point was clear: it was hard to keep your work area and samples sterile, and we all had much to learn.
When it was my turn, I glanced down at my notes right as the professor called my name and decided to start at the true beginning. I walked away from my bench, tied my hair back at the sink, then washed my hands as she’d demonstrated. It probably wasn’t necessary—we weren’t dealing with live materials yet, and no one else had backtracked to the ultimate step one—but it felt important to start fresh, to practice exactly what I’d need to do every time I worked in that room from that day forward.
I approached the flow hood and was sure to work in the middle back so that I wouldn’t accidentally pull my hands out from the sterile area. The hood acted like blinders on a horse, and as I focused on maneuvering the pipette into and out of the plastic tips that needed to be changed and discarded between samples, I forgot that there were eleven other students watching me, that Dr. Kaufmann was a handful of centimeters from my left elbow. The gentle whoosh of the ventilation system covered their breathing and filled my head with a kind of neutral music. I’d thought, while watching others go up, that I’d have to control my hands—figure out a way to keep them from shaking—but as I dipped the pipette’s tip into the last centrifuge tube, avoiding any contact whatsoever with its edge, I wasn’t thinking about anything but the work in front of me, how every small step led to a desired result. My hands took care of themselves.
I backed away from the hood and disposed of my gloves.
—That was great, she said. That was really great.
Hearing her voice suddenly made me realize she had not said Contamination! once.