By Eve Marder
Students often tell me that they don’t want to be scientists because it is too lonely. That always surprises me, because laboratories are filled with people. One of the conclusions that readers of Charlotte Nassim’s “Lessons from the Lobster” should take from the book is that laboratories are communities of scholars of all ages. Lifelong friendships are often formed and sustained as laboratory colleagues may spend as much time together as they do with other friends and family. When Charlotte approached me about writing the story of my research, I was very surprised because there are many eminent neuroscientists, including many other eminent female neuroscientists. What convinced me to work with Charlotte was her wish to reach teenage girls, before they decided that a career in science was not for them. And this decision was validated when a few days ago, one of the students (now working in a neighboring lab) whom I had taught in NBio 140, Principles of Neuroscience, told me that she loved the book, but wished she had had it when she was in high school. We agreed that after she finished the book, that she would donate it to her small home town library, in the hopes that it would encourage other high school students to consider becoming scientists.
Charlotte’s book is a piece of science history. She read our lab notebooks, and talked to many ex-lab members. Her choices of what to emphasize and how to frame the scientific issues speak as much about what she finds scientifically and sociologically interesting as it does about what I was thinking. By reading deeply, she relied not only on my flawed memory, but on what I and others had written. For me, it is an extraordinary reminder that even scientists who revere data have only partial recollections of their own intellectual paths.
Since its inception in November 2017, the six Graduate Fellows from the CommLab have conducted nearly 150 appointments (39% appointments with undergraduates; 52% with graduate students). Most appointments provided assistance in preparing for the graduate qualifying exam (18%); oral presentations like “pizza talks” (18%) or writing applications for fellowships or scholarships (15%).