Thursday Stories

Today in developmental biology a specific protein was mentioned by the professor. The protein name is German and the professor wanted to know if anyone knew what it translated to. In German, the protein name is "dickkopf". Someone from the back row quietly said that the word 'kopf' in German means 'head'. We all stared at the word written on the board. So far our translation brought us to 'dick head'. The entire class started laughing. Great moment. Apparently the full translation is 'large head', but that's not so fun.

In my microscopy class I was trying really hard to stay awake. I took out my bobby pins to readjust my hair. As I was putting one back in my head cocked to the right and I beheld a man, two chairs down from me, that was taking his finger on a joy ride through his nostril. For a really long, intense joy ride. I looked down. I picked up bobby pin number two. I cocked my head again and he was still going at it. It was in this moment that for whatever reason he turned and looked straight at me. His eyeballs burrowed into mine. I pushed my bobby pin in and looked back at the board. Then I realized that the way he had looked at me wasn't in horror that he had been caught, but it was a look of issuing my death warrant. Like it wasn't at all weird that he was picking his nose FOR A REALLY LONG TIME in class, but that I was weird for happening to look at him. Maybe I shouldn't have stared, but it was a natural reaction for me to cock my head to the right to push my bobby pins back in, and if you had seen what I had seen, you would have stared, too.

In my seminar class the invited speaker was from the University of Utah. He was Japanese. Whatever, right? I was getting ready to hear all about his research on axis formation when he started to speak. With the microphone kind of far from his mouth. It was then that I realized that he was legit Japanese. Like, from Japan. He had done all of his schooling in Japan. How did he end up in Utah? Anyway, the point is that I understood one word that came out of his mouth the entire hour. And I'm pretty good with accents. But you stick a non-native English speaker in front of a room full of people with a quiet microphone and a scientific topic with already difficult to understand words and you get a room full of clueless intellectuals that want to be respectful but have no idea what is going on. Somehow I managed to fall asleep.