Sciences and Arts
Voyaging with Charles Darwin on the Beagle
I did research a long time ago. Not because I wanted to do research, but because I wanted future residency program directors, years later during interview season, to ask me about expression of the CXCR3 receptor protein in multiple sclerosis. I planned to sit back, gaze intellectually into the near distance, and deliver a prepared speech on the promise of immunological markers towards “a treatment, and, we hope, a cure” that I had been involved with for maybe four weeks between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon.
During my research summer, I would look through a high-powered microscope and count cells. The cells I needed to count were stained a deep green—simultaneously dark and fluorescent, if you can imagine that. My immediate superiors were two brilliant twentysomething green-eyed blondes, one a Swede named Pia, another a German named Corinne. I had to count these dark green stars in one field of view, then ease the slide north until the topmost star was just below the margin, and count again. Eventually I’d make it through a whole slide and jot down a number.
To read the full article, please click here to download the PDF file.