Tedium
"There is a lot of tedium in science. The need for replication means that you will end up doing the same task over and over and over again. One of the keys to being successful in science is figuring out what kind of tedium you mind the least."
- a professor I admired as an undergraduate
Right now, I'm working on an analysis of growth patterns in the deep-sea stalked crinoid Bathycrinus carpenterii. I have about 300 small juvenile specimens from a long-term recruitment experiment in the Arctic deep sea, and this dataset is just too rare and too precious to leave alone. I want to learn as much about these organisms as I possibly can.
Like most studies, this one started in the library. I read everything I could about stalked crinoids, especially bathycrinids, and took copious notes. In the end, I decided to conduct a morphometric analysis of both juvenile and adult specimens, to see if I could detect any consistent patterns in growth across the population - are the crinoids growing more in some years than others. I'm hypothesizing that growth and reproduction in this deep-sea species is influenced by sea ice cover and primary productivity at the surface. I e-mailed my colleagues in Germany to request access to some of their adult specimens, and I set to work on my juveniles.
Here's where the tedium comes in. The best way to measure and analyze my specimens was to secure them to microscope slides with super glue. Yep, just regular ol' cyanoacrylate you can buy at the hardware store. I individually glued and labeled all 300 of my juvenile specimens, making sure to keep together any pieces of stalk from the same individual. It took me about 4 days at the microscope, working delicately with my forceps and glue, but I got it done!
My next step will be photographing and measuring the juveniles, then either slicing them or sanding them down to see if I can find any growth rings in their stalks. Baby step by baby step, science moves forward.
- a professor I admired as an undergraduate
Right now, I'm working on an analysis of growth patterns in the deep-sea stalked crinoid Bathycrinus carpenterii. I have about 300 small juvenile specimens from a long-term recruitment experiment in the Arctic deep sea, and this dataset is just too rare and too precious to leave alone. I want to learn as much about these organisms as I possibly can.
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| The first 50 of my slides, glued and labeled and stored in numerical order |
Here's where the tedium comes in. The best way to measure and analyze my specimens was to secure them to microscope slides with super glue. Yep, just regular ol' cyanoacrylate you can buy at the hardware store. I individually glued and labeled all 300 of my juvenile specimens, making sure to keep together any pieces of stalk from the same individual. It took me about 4 days at the microscope, working delicately with my forceps and glue, but I got it done!
My next step will be photographing and measuring the juveniles, then either slicing them or sanding them down to see if I can find any growth rings in their stalks. Baby step by baby step, science moves forward.
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