The Building Block of Every Laboratory: The Kimwipe

I look forward to going into my lab every day. This summer I am working in the Susannah Porter Earth Science Laboratory under post-doctoral researcher, Leigh Anne Riedman, to analyze sponge-like fossils collected from the Australian island of Tasmania. Everyone in the lab is extremely nice and is willing to answer any questions I may have. I’m honored to be a part of the research done in this lab.

Although there are so many great things about my lab, the thing I look forward to the most is using a nice Kimwipe on my fossil sample when I spend long hours looking through the microscope. Now, you must know what I’m talking about. Every lab I’ve stepped foot in is stocked with dozens upon dozens of those beautiful, bright mint green boxes filled with thin, yet durable 1-ply Kimberly-Clark™ Professional Professional Kimtech Science™ Kimwipes™.

I go through approximately twenty Kimwipes a day. While I am an Environmental Studies student and that is no favor to the environment, those tissues are crucial to the work I do in lab every day. The microscope work I do requires something known as oil immersion. This technique is used when using a microscope objective of 63x or 100x as opposed to 20x or 40x. Basically, oil immersion is used for looking at things more zoomed in. The lenses for this objective requires you to immerse the sample you’re looking at in a very thick oil. I place a drop of oil on the area on the slide that I’m looking at and twist the microscope stage until the lens just barely touches the oil. After examining the specimen using this technique, the oil on the slide needs to be wiped off with, you guessed it, a Kimwipe.

Now, the Kimwipe is no ordinary tissue. Unlike a regular Kleenex tissue, the Kimwipe anti-static technology reduces lint and electrostatic discharge. That information was, in fact, provided by the Kimwipe website– I was honestly unsure why they were preferred until I decided to write this. This ensures that I’m looking at important fossils under the microscope rather than larger chunks of fibrous Kleenex.

As you read this blog post, you may be asking yourself, “Why is she writing her blog post about a seemingly meaningless tissue that they sell for eight dollars in the chemistry stockroom?” That, my friend, is an expected question. But, as I was brainstorming topics for this blogpost, I began to think about what holds a laboratory together. It may be the comradery, the dedication, the snack drawer, but I got to thinking that the Kimwipe is truly the foundation of every laboratory. No matter if it’s biology, earth science, or general chemistry, every lab depends on these tissues. The backbone of so much of the groundbreaking research done on campus is a box of these very wipes.

So, I hope the next time you pull a Kimwipe out of the box and wipe off oil, dust or liquids, you think of what that tissue means for your research.

Note: This post is not sponsored by Kimwipes in any way, but I think both myself and my lab mentor are not opposed to it.

EUREKA  Posted by 14 Aug 2018 / 0 comments

Looking Towards the Future

As I continue working on my research project this summer I’ve realized that in order to keep things in perspective that it is important that I think and plan about my future. By planning out my future I make it easier for myself to understand what I need to do now in order to accomplish them. I look forward towards my plans, ranging from short term goals for the next few years, to long term goals further down the line. It is through the completion of different short term goals that I accomplish medium term goals, which eventually lead to my long-term goals. While the picture painted by short-term goals is often clear, the specifics on longer-term goals can often be less distinct, and thus it is important to be flexible in order to shift either your approach to a goal, or to shift the goal itself. My short term goals often are designed in mind to help me accomplish more medium and long term goals and thus I often find it helpful to consider these further goals first. Overall, I would say that I’ve known my overall career goal for a long time; that is, to go into academia, and thus, only my short term goals change significantly while my long term goals have remained relatively constant.  In the short term, I hope to continue working in my current lab during this academic year, and I plan on continuing working in labs for the rest of my undergraduate career. Through work in labs, as well as my continued studies, I hope to be able to identify the field of physics that I am most interested in by the end of my undergraduate studies, and to choose which graduate schools to apply based on the field I want to work in. Later down the line, after I get my Ph.D., I hope to continue in academia by working as a postdoctoral researcher and by eventually becoming a professor, and it is with this overall plan that I hope to accomplish my goal of working in academia.

EUREKA  Posted by 24 Oct 2017 / 0 comments

It’s Okay to Not Feel Okay

If there’s one thing I can say about this summer, it’s that I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned a lot about chemistry (working in a chemistry lab and all) but surprisingly, I’ve learned a lot about how to prepare for my future, career skills, and, probably the most important of all, general life lessons. Of course, every time you go to a new workplace and work with new people you learn different things about life but one of the most important lessons I learned was actually from one of the Eureka seminars.

This seminar was titled “Grad School A to Z” so I thought it would be a boring talk about how to be a good student and how perfect everyone needed to be. I was surprised when the grad students we were talking to started talking about something called impostor syndrome and how they really struggled with grad school because they felt like they didn’t belong. Now I know I’m only an undergrad and they were talking about how much harder grad school was so I probably shouldn’t have taken too much comfort in their words, but I did. I’m someone who always likes to know what I’m doing, I don’t ask for help unless I absolutely need to even when it comes to homework problems. So I guess it’s no surprise that when my grades fell a bit spring quarter and I started working with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met (both graduates, doctorates, and undergrads) I felt really overwhelmed and quite frankly, not good enough. The entire summer I felt like I always had to be the very best version of myself. That’s not a bad thing, striving to be the best that you can be is good, but I feel like I’ve been hiding parts of myself that weren’t good enough and unfortunately, that’s been a lot.

As fantastic as the summer’s been it’s also been the most stressful summer that I’ve ever had and it’s all because of this underlying feeling of not being good enough. When I went to that meeting and heard them talking about feeling that way it made me feel a lot better. No one is perfect and while I have a lot that I need to improve, I’m not alone. Those people happened to be talking about grad school but it applies to undergrads too. School is hard, life is hard. If it’s easy then maybe you aren’t pushing yourself enough. Now I’m not normally this cheesy but I spent a lot of my summer feeling overwhelmed and alone and terrified. For anyone doing a summer program like Eureka just know that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed, I promise you aren’t alone

EUREKA  Posted by 18 Oct 2017 / 0 comments

Making Research Feel Doable

The vocabulary used in describing research often makes it come off as excessively dense and confusing. Which of the following sounds like an easier set of tasks? “For my project this summer, I sat in front of a microscope to pick grains of sand, did some coding, made a bunch of PowerPoint presentations, and also poured vinegar in buckets,” or “I extracted and analyzed microfossils found in sediment samples taken from the Pacific and the Caribbean to gain further understanding of ecological baselines for parrotfish, as well as quantifying the effect of fishing regulations on herbivore populations”? The first one probably sounds a lot more manageable, but both statements accurately describe the research project I undertook this summer.

I remember thinking that research was only for “smart” people, and that I wasn’t qualified to do it in any way until some unspecified point in the future. Who would have wanted me to work in their lab? I hadn’t taken any classes relevant to this project, and while I liked ecology, the last time I had a formal lesson in anything related to marine biology was elementary school! What could I do to be useful in something as complicated as research?

I did not feel confident about my abilities at the beginning of the summer. I didn’t have any experience working with fossils, and I didn’t fully understand the larger context that my project fit into. To my surprise, my project mentor Erin was incredibly patient and accommodating. She understood that I had little experience in anything related to this field of work, and guided me through explaining the importance understanding ancient herbivore populations and linking me several academic papers to read for context. Once I was caught up to speed, my summer project felt a lot more accessible, as I understood the goal of the research and what I could do to contribute with my knowledge, ability, and available time. I was able to start thinking independently about how I wanted to sort and display my data as well as what comparisons and analyses I wanted to make. I didn’t know everything, and certainly felt foolish many times, but feeling stupid and feeling your way through (with some guidance!) is probably the best way to learn in research. (See: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/joces/121/11/1771.full.pdf)


Research can be really slow! When I started the EUREKA summer program, I thought that I would have all this data to show at the end because I would be working full time for two months, but I’ve only managed to get through six or seven samples by the end of this whole process. In order to get a conclusion that’s worth publishing, I would probably need to get through somewhere between thirty and one hundred samples. I’m not trying to say that this is a bad thing, but it was definitely an eye-opening experience to see how much time needs to be put in to move science forward. I feel lucky to have been part of the EUREKA program, as the best way to see the speed of the whole process of research is to see every stage of a study or experiment, and this program gave me a look into that.

In my experiences, people tend to recommend reading departmental websites and research papers before approaching professors to look for opportunities in research. Which is great advice! But sometimes it can seem really daunting because of the complicated language and all the vocabulary words being thrown around. To that I say: understand as much as you can and go for it anyways. You don’t need to know everything that’s going on to get started, because a lot of it will make more sense once you start feeling your way through the process. And I’m pretty sure that professors and graduate students know this, and are willing to help you learn as long as you’re willing to put in the time and effort to honor your commitments and do your best to contribute to the group while also gaining understanding along the way. You absolutely do not need to be a genius or have a 4.0 GPA to begin doing research, it’s just a matter of taking things seriously and getting out there!

The most important thing for getting started in research is to go for it, so the link to the directory for NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates is below! The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a governmental agency that uses taxpayer dollars to pay for academic research in sciences (including social sciences!) and the link below shows programs that use NSF funding to help undergraduates get into research.

Most programs listed occur over the summer, where you get paid to go stay at another college for a little while to do a project. Whether you want to pursue graduate school or not, it’s definitely a great experience that helps you understand the process of research and academia while also getting to travel and live in another place for a bit! It looks great on resumes too, as most of these programs involve a lot of independent responsibilities and public speaking. You do NOT need to be a perfect student or have prior research experience to win these, so get out there and apply if you’re interested!
https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.jsp

EUREKA  Posted by 17 Oct 2017 / 0 comments

More than Cell Culture

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about how our lab experiences have differed, her being in chemistry and me, in biology. The physical things we have done have been vastly different (I can’t imagine running a reaction for 24 hours), but I found that the things that have happened to us have been very similar. I mentioned to her that I was frustrated because I had done a reaction, following all of the steps my mentor took, standing beside him, using the same tools, and still somehow, I ended up with much less product than he did. I thought that I was just inept and clumsy and figured I had made some sort of error along the way, but much to my surprise my friend said something very similar had happened to her. It wasn’t that I was happy that she messed up too, but in a place full of such intelligent people who seem to know what they are doing all the time, it was kind of comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one having hiccups.

I have also started to notice little things about myself that I’ve picked after working in a lab for almost 2 months. Cell culturing is very sensitive and it’s important to be as sterile as possible when doing it. Gloves, spray everything with ethanol, use a new pipette every time, don’t have the plate uncovered for too long, don’t wave your hand over the open plate, and put the cells back in the incubator as soon as you can, all while being as careful as possible and NOT clumsy (very hard for me). The first few weeks, my mentor had a fixed view on my technique and would have to keep reminding me of all of these rules. When I managed to contaminate cells with bacteria, I realized I had to step up my game. With many hours of practice doing this, I have gotten much better at culturing cells swiftly and carefully, so much I may overdo it with the ethanol sometimes. I have also, incidentally, started applying these techniques to my life outside of lab, like putting the lid of the butter immediately back on when cooking, or throwing away new disposable plates after I even slightly make them touch something that’s not food. I will continue to perfect my technique and see what other weird things I pick up.

EUREKA  Posted by 11 Oct 2017 / 0 comments