Lab Professionals Week Quotes

ROZ: My sister and I became guarded with each other in the weeks and months after our mother died. I don’t think either of us had a handle on what it was about, but I, in my characteristic way, was eager to roll up my sleeves and iron out some issues with her. She, less given to argument, preferred to keep her distance. Many is the time I drove through the streets of Boston presenting my case in the most cogent terms to a full courtroom just beyond the dashboard, while she was safely closeted a state away. My birthday came and went and still we had not managed to get together; of course I felt all the more put upon. Finally I had the grace to ask myself, “What’s happening here?” and I caught a glimpse of the in-between. All the energy I had been expending to shape a persuasive argument was actually propelling us apart. And I missed her—acutely. I thought that if I could just see her we surely could find some solutions. So I called her, and invited myself to her house for breakfast, and got up in the dark and was down in Connecticut by seven. There in the kitchen in her nightgown I found her, looking like my favorite sister in all the world. We talked gaily while we drank black Italian coffee, and then we took a long morning walk down the leafy dirt roads of Ashford, Connecticut, while her chocolate Lab, Chloe, ran ahead and came back, ran ahead and came back, in long arcs of perpetual motion. What did we talk about? The architecture, and the countryside, and the cats that Chloe was eager to visit at the farm ahead. We revisited scenes featuring our hilarious mother. We talked about my work, and about a paper she was about to present. My “case” never came up; it must have gotten lost somewhere along that wooded road because by the time I got in the car—my courtroom, my favorable jury—it was no longer on the docket. Did we resolve the issues? Obviously not, but the issues themselves are rarely what they seem, no matter what pains are taken to verify the scoreboard. We walked together, moved our arms, became joyous in the sunlight, and breathed in the morning. At that moment there were no barriers between us. And from that place, I felt our differences could easily be spoken. My disagreements with my sister were but blips on our screen compared to the hostilities individuals and nations are capable of when anger, fear, and the sense of injustice are allowed to develop unchecked. “Putting things aside” then becomes quite a different matter. At the apex of desperation and rage, we need a new invention to see us through.

from writing up a fake schedule of classes they’d take based on college course guides, to researching a “thesis” project in their subject, to doing work-study programs in the community. If someone wants to do an SWS major in premed, they have to figure out how to finance med school, how to get all their prerequisites taken without overloading on hours for any semesters, which labs they’ll need, what their books will cost, and which academic groups to join. Then they do a minithesis—ten pages at least—learn about med school entrance exams, and finally, in the last week before summer, shadow a professional in the field well enough to get a good recommendation. Grades are based on that recommendation, their educational plan, their financial plan, and their thesis. And the faculty who grade them are those who aren’t burdened with the grading of normal finals. A.k.a.: me. Me, the counselors, special-subject teachers, coaches, even the nurse. It’s all hands

If someone wants to do an SWS major in premed, they have to figure out how to finance med school, how to get all their prerequisites taken without overloading on hours for any semesters, which labs they’ll need, what their books will cost, and which academic groups to join. Then they do a minithesis—ten pages at least—learn about med school entrance exams, and finally, in the last week before summer, shadow a professional in the field well enough to get a good recommendation. Grades are based on that recommendation, their educational plan, their financial plan, and their thesis.