Big Picture

Its been a crazy week here at the Head Ranch and its only Wednesday. At the top of the week Baby Head contracted yet ANOTHER respiratory illness from that germ-farm i call daycare. This makes 3 colds and 2 stomach bugs in 2.5 months. Remind me again why it is i love daycare so much? Anyway, being male as the Dude is, he melted down from this illness, acting as if his symptoms were catastrophic and fatal, causing the Head and i to scurry away from work to attend to his wailing, snotty needs. And i had a MAJOR presentation to give. Great timing. This is another reason why single-moms amaze me so much. I have NO fucking clue how i would have gotten through the last few days and my pre-presentation stress without my baby daddy. So the Dude is better and the presentation was a smashing success but boy, what a fucked up whirlwind this week turned into.

So the point i'd like to make today is that i kicked ass on my presentation. But no matter how many times i've done it, public speaking is still nerve-wracking. It does get much easier with time, but its always a stressful experience. I tend to feel as if these scholarly talks are performances. I spend a lot of time in rehearsal, i carefully select my costume, i get psyched up, and i walk out on stage like i'm a freaking celebrity and i attempt to work the crowd. I feel that conveying confidence is always good idea, especially when its most likely that i'm suffering from a lack of it. And working an academic crowd isnt always easy. I try to tell a story, make things interesting, amusing, and even humorous without sacrificing formality. But it can be a tough, tough crowd. Great jokes, dead faces. Great data, blank stares. Are they even alive? I cant even tell if they are blinking. My research is interesting, right? Yes, yes it is. Its about weird animals and sex and i've even said the word "vagina" a couple of times. Yes, "vagina" should perk them up. But it doesnt. They just stare. Crickets chirp. Come on people. V-A-G-I-N-A.

Great. I just realized that now all kinds of perverts will probably be re-directed to this blog because of my use of lady-parts terminology. Anyhow, despite a lack of crowd feedback, i know i'm rocking the house. My boss sits up in the back, nodding in approval. My lab-mates are in the front row, appropriately giggling at the v-word. There's a handful of interested parties--smiling and raising their hands to ask questions. A sign of recognition. Life on this strange planet. But what's wrong with the rest of the crowd? Why such blank stares? And i begin to realize that most of them have no appreciation, no understanding, and no related background to what i'm talking about. Most of them are molecular neuroscientists, and here i am, a neuroethologist, studying an animal for the sake of studying that animal. Neuroscience is a broad field and as scientists within it, we should have a basic understanding of the entire spectrum of it. I can read an article about molecules and understand why the experimenters did what they did and interpret what they found. I can speak their language, albeit in a choppy and disconnected manner. Shouldnt they have to learn how to speak mine? This is the problem that i have with many of the molecular neuroscientists in my graduate program--i do not feel like they have a basic understanding of this grand field we work within. Even though you work on molecules, you should still have to know the anatomy of the human brain. Ultimately its what we are all studying! But i remember years ago at a forum where the molecular biologists were bitching about being forced to take neuroanatomy because it was a "waste of time." A waste of time. Its sort of like being a medical doctor, but only wanting to focus all your energy and knowledge on studying the pinkie finger, to exclusion of every other part of the body. I would guess that any MDs out there that are pinkie specialists still have a basic understanding of the rest of the body since things like our skin, blood, bones, muscles, and brain all play major roles in what our pinkie fingers are doing any given moment.

But alas, it seems like the depth of knowledge is more important than the breadth of knowledge in the case of my colleagues, and this saddens me because it makes our field a much lonelier place. I'll go on to give Oscar-caliber performances of my research while staring into the dim bulbs of the audience before me in the hopes that maybe, just maybe something i'll say something that links us both back to the tiny toenail on the itty bitty toe of the footprint of the molecule that they study.