Installment 1C: Au labo

After years of graduate school, at the mercy of a growth-challenged virus, I am a chercheur post-doctoral and a real virologist. My projet is up in the air for the moment or few, rather I am familiarizing myself with the techniques in the retrovirologist's toolbag. These require suiting up and entering the chambers of the Biosafety Level 3 (BL3) space. (This suit that can transform even the skinniest of the minis in my lab into a Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. I anticipate the day when, all robed and committed to serve my BL3 time, I have to PEE!) Luckily my level of anxiety has gradually lowered in this area of heightened risk.

I won't lie, it is unnerving to be working (for the moment!) with an amorphous undefined project. I have been in this business long enough to know few things are certain, even after the mind is made up. But still. On the bright side, my boss---the only other American in the unit---is pathologically thoughtful. I believe he reads approximately 5 lbs (I am not nearly on the metric system yet.) of papers per day, deposits around 10% of these on my desk, and I feel overwhelmed.

Communication skills have come a long way. An example:
BEFORE: My first day of work coincided with their weekly lab meeting, conducted in French. The head of the unit presents me, en francais, and put in a plug saying people should talk to me, "She speaks French!" I understood most of that bit, and believe he has moved on to another, safter topic. I realize I am not in the clear about 5 min. later when I recognize my name again and everyone is laughing. Merde. "What? Ah yes, funny..Ha! Ha Ha HA!"
AFTER (by 6 wks or so): With no introduction, it is my turn to present at our lab meetings. While I seized the chance to take the freebie "What I Did in Grad School" talk and kept the slides in English, I presented en francais. Despite labmates telling me it was not "necessaire," I a) did not believe them, and b) figured I had better take the plunge. Throw myself in the water, as they say here. The ultimate challenge in my lab meeting was to understand questions posed at me, which I did, which means I was spoken to in baby French. But I'll take it! A few translational errors were brought to my attention post-humously. The painful of which (that I know about) was using the wrong word for screen, as in genetic screen, and instead explaining to them that a Yeast Two-Hybrid Television screen had been performed.

As with any place, there are good and bad. People, I mean. And it depends on the day, my mood, their mood, X other factors (X=infinit) which faction wins out. On the days of the bad, it is still really only 2 or 3 people who make me jump when they enter the room and keep my stomach in knots until they leave it. The lady I work with closest has grown tolerable, even endearing (on a good day) now that I understand her. I understand that she will not divulge to me what she has done unless I ask her directly, preferably in questions that require more than a yes/no answer. Yet, she will beat me to telling my boss exactly what I did. She makes up for these shortcomings by complimenting my progress or explaining to me the lunch formula strategies in the cafeteria, when noone else is around catch her being nice to me. With her, I do believe she is looking out and hopes for the best for me. The leader and chief member of the bad is like a rash for which there is no cream. I plan to stick true to these feelings for she has become a convenient sink for all my negative karma. I believe that when she is not calculating how to keep me from stealing her projects (of course!), she is searching for minute details to criticize. And on her lunch break, she reminds me how my life at La Cite U (see Installment 1A) must be so sad. I want to say to her "Hmm, I believe you are confusing the two of us." Even were I so forthright, I doubt my French abilities would allow it.

The more than dozen others in the lab, including grad students, techs and all the PIs, I categorize as full good. In particular I like a group of girls who talk about what they do outside the lab like it's OK to have a life and ask me what I do outside the lab like they care what the answer is. They make me want to be a better French speaker! My answer to most of their questions or comments tends to be "What?" I feel like my grandmother requiring them to repeat themselves at least once. After one brief squirt of verbal diarrhea, a lab mate switched to slow mode for me after she remembered that she must "speak to [me] like a child." Either a toddler or geriatric, same thing in this case. It hurt to hear, but I have to admit, it's true!