Smelly Things (with apologies to Sei Shonagon)
In order to construct a life table in Ecological Methods lab, it is necessary for the class to age 80 white-tailed deer jawbones: ten jawbones to each pair of lab partners. Three rubrics for aging deer by their teeth are provided; they contradict one another. Also, the jawbones are covered in translucent flakes of dried, ancient flesh, which smells. Pockets of brownish powdery stuff might well be excreta of dermestid beetles. What a charmless situation! It is not improved when the TA, whose specialty is bats, confesses that she knows no more about deer dentition than you do.
So much for the morning; afternoon brings Vertebrate Biology lab, which has moved from systematics to morphology: this means cutting things up. A strange sensation of deja vu: one is back in high school biology bending over a reeking frog carcass, poking around in a mess of entrails and getting a crick in one's back. There are no pins or scalpel in the dissecting kit. Lab partners are more hindrance than help: "I think that's the esophagus," one of them says vaguely, when it's clearly the duodenum. And the stink of formaldehyde mingled with long-dead frog permeates everything.
Opening a drawer in in the Soil Microbiology lab to check on some protozoa cultures, one is buffeted by a powerful waft of geosmin from the actinomycetes that have grown all over the bacterial cultures.
Soil Microbiology lecture is in progress when a classmate butts in with a question whose only purpose is to show off his own knowledge. His self-satisfied manner suggests that he thinks himself the cleverest person in the room--not excluding the professor. Most hateful!
Despite all this, I'm excited about my classes this year. I'm even taking voice lessons--among other things, I'm singing Samuel Barber's The Secrets of the Old, which I loved instantly and intend to sing for my final seminar. Plus, Daniel Hillel, the 2012 World Food Prize laureate, will be coming here this month to lecture. I'm so stoked that this year's winner is a soils guy! I'm going to buy his book and ask him to sign it!
So much for the morning; afternoon brings Vertebrate Biology lab, which has moved from systematics to morphology: this means cutting things up. A strange sensation of deja vu: one is back in high school biology bending over a reeking frog carcass, poking around in a mess of entrails and getting a crick in one's back. There are no pins or scalpel in the dissecting kit. Lab partners are more hindrance than help: "I think that's the esophagus," one of them says vaguely, when it's clearly the duodenum. And the stink of formaldehyde mingled with long-dead frog permeates everything.
Opening a drawer in in the Soil Microbiology lab to check on some protozoa cultures, one is buffeted by a powerful waft of geosmin from the actinomycetes that have grown all over the bacterial cultures.
Soil Microbiology lecture is in progress when a classmate butts in with a question whose only purpose is to show off his own knowledge. His self-satisfied manner suggests that he thinks himself the cleverest person in the room--not excluding the professor. Most hateful!
Despite all this, I'm excited about my classes this year. I'm even taking voice lessons--among other things, I'm singing Samuel Barber's The Secrets of the Old, which I loved instantly and intend to sing for my final seminar. Plus, Daniel Hillel, the 2012 World Food Prize laureate, will be coming here this month to lecture. I'm so stoked that this year's winner is a soils guy! I'm going to buy his book and ask him to sign it!