Overambition on the Horizon

How thinking ten steps ahead clears a path for the first footprint

By Marie Ronnander

I’ve been working on the same experiment for almost five months; each step toward progress is memorized with a mythical rhythm. First, measure the chemical, but be careful, as just one flake on your skin might be enough to give you third-degree burns. Second, dissolve the chemical in water, but don’t stir the solution too fast, as water could splash back, and again: third-degree burns. Now, adjust the acidity of your solution with yet another chemical that could leave you with, you guessed it, third-degree burns. Needless to say, gloves are very important in research.

What is more important in this line of work is accepting that all beautiful things take time to be understood. You can’t just look at Van Gogh’s Starry Night without wondering why he painted it. Most doctorates in science would see these five months as just a couple of seconds standing staring at the Mona Lisa. This is all to say, while my eyes are drooping from looking at outdated, pixelated screens for hours on end, I’m beginning to understand the beauty in my pursuit. Each new failed iteration of my experiment drags me closer to answering what the little enzymes I’m studying actually do.

In addition to researching fluorine chemistry and risking crispy skin, I spend time TA-ing in a neighboring teaching lab. I’m a walking encyclopedia on the do’s and don'ts of environmental toxicology, which is a very technical term for researching how human-made chemicals affect the world around us. In the case of the BIOL 3004 teaching lab, “the world” is synonymous with, well, zebrafish.

I should mention that this is the same class that made me realize how greedy science can be with your time. I remember my first day as a student, listening to the TA spell out my certain failure in the course. My concept of research was that I needed to either solve cancer, world hunger, or, at the very least, the climate crisis. Not to mention, this was to be done with just a few zebrafish and a list of approved chemicals. I felt as though I was supposed to lasso the moon in only three months while also being graded on the technique in which I chose to do so.

My own environmental toxicology research in that class amounted to sunburned zebrafish and a poster explaining why our experiment didn’t work. But throughout this extremely expedited research session, I only grew more curious as to why the world was unfolding as it was. How could I change my experiments to get more meaningful results? My failures only caused me to press harder to understand what I was observing; I could only see the paint strokes if I leaned closer to the masterpiece.

Now, I watch my students file into class with the same ambitious intensity set on their faces. They want that Nobel Prize by the end of the month, and my job is to make sure they'll be more or less mentally stable when they find out they won’t win it. What’s more important is that I make sure that they don’t lose interest in understanding why things go wrong, and how much we can learn from the wrong.

Because within each failure is a little naturally selected success. That tiniest bit of success is needed to keep the fuel burning. Our tiniest bit of understanding of Van Gogh's pain pushes our curiosity for the artist; the smallest piece of supporting data unravels our need to know more. This desire to continue to learn is how cancer is cured, and how the climate crisis will be solved. We just need to stay rooted under the light of our initial ambition.

While, no, unfortunately my students will probably not solve the opioid epidemic, they are learning that failure means growth. I’m hoping to show them that their lofty ideas are worth pursuing, but they have to learn to crawl before they can walk. And if you get real good at walking, maybe you’ll start to run. Sure, you might slip and skin your knee in the process, but if you keep pressing forward, eventually you’ll be running marathons. I’m miles further from where my research began five months ago, but I still have many miles to go — and I’ll make sure to wear gloves in the process.