Thankfully (?), not yet!
Today many things became clear:
Jekyll: We'll be diluting the secondary antibody 1:200, meaning 1 part antibody for 200 parts final solution. We've already figured out that we have a total final volume of 4.8 mL. How much antibody do we need?
BF: [writing]
1 x
----- = -----
200 4.8 mL
Jekyll: [sigh of relief]
BF: [writing]
4.8 = 200x
So, we'll need to divide 200 by 4.8.
Jekyll: [suddenly gripped by dread]
BF: [writing]
_______
4.8 | 200
Jekyll: [crying on the inside]
Don't take shortcuts on the math. You need to divide each side by 200 to isolate x, so that should be 4.8 divided by 200.
BF: Oh, right.
________[ominous pause]
200 | 4.8
Jekyll: [helpfully] Instead of working in milliliters, you could put that in microliters so the math is easier.
BF: Uh, so it'd be...480 microliters?
Jekyll: [suppressed inward sigh] No, let's walk through the conversion.
1000 uL
4.8 mL x ------- = 4800 microliters
1 mL
BF: Oh right.
________[pause]
200 | 4800
Wow, it's been so long since I've done long division.
[excruciating pause]
Uh, 2.4?
Jekyll: [gasping and appalled, yet inwardly joyful that she can later share this precious moment with some anonyfriends] Let's think about the decimal point....
And I'm even sparing you the tedious calculations on getting the 4.8 mL number in the first place.
The good news is, it is now perfectly clear that BF has some sort of math disability, by which I might or might not mean "stupidity." I have no idea how he made it through college (calculus, anybody?) although presumably a calculator was involved. [Or a systematic cheating scheme via his frat.]
The bad news is that he is still in my lab. Tomorrow I will talk with Advisor about the path forward.
13 comments:
I don't understand it. Really. What is going on.... it's so much like "I'm just playing around here and if something goes bad I'll just redo it..."
I am in awe with your patience. I'll be thinking about you when you talk to your advisor. Good luck! And the tech, he needs to get it together...
I feel horrible for you but have to admit I laughed until I cried reading your description of this whole experience. And, you are managing to make me feel better about my BF students. Not sure if that is a good thing or not...
I doubt it, based on your descriptions, but is there any way he's just really bad on the spot, but when he's working it out himself, he's ok? When I first started out, I would be so nervous in one-on-one interactions with a mentor that I would say and do really dumb things that I wouldn't do on my own when I wasn't nervous. And of course I would get more nervous because I was saying really dumb things in front of the person I was trying to make a good impression on. If that's the case with BF, maybe having him work up all the solution calculations etc. ahead of time would help him have more confidence? Again, that doesn't sound like the problem here, but if it is, it's worth a shot.
(...Though, even if the math problem is due to anxiety, there's really no way around the lack of concern for animal welfare, except maybe having him get a pet rat from a pet store to see that rodents are intelligent and emotional beings.)
reading that post was painful...excruciatingly painful. I'm not sure what I would do in your shoes...how the hell did this dumbass get a degree??
(in reference to your prior post) what kind of undergraduate neurobiology program allows their students to graduate with no lab classes?? how the hell did he pass intro to neuroscience given his problems with basic math?? Nernst equation, anyone?
part of me feels bad for him, but a much larger part of me really feels as though someone needs to shake him a bit and make him realize what is necessary for him to actually succeed in graduate school if that's what he really wants to do, because obviously his undergrad advisor did a piss-poor job of it.
I would definitely have a chat with your advisor...
Does he have a documented math disability? Is he used to accommodations like calculators? If so, it might be a good idea to encourage him to bring his calculator to lab. But wowzers. Let us know how it goes with the supervisor.
Fabulous blog, BF is extremely entertaining but I feel like I have to interject on his behalf now...
Some people (myself included) are just REALLY BAD at mental arithmetic. Give him a goal, pencil and paper, and 5 minutes alone to work it out. If he still can't do it, you might have issues.
Whoa. There just are no words for this anymore. Did this person finish HIGH SCHOOL?!? That's basic pre-algebra that should be learned by middle school (heck, I learned it in 5th grade). I could understand messing up long division (hey, I use a calculator too), but not knowing how to get there? Wow.
Good luck with talking to your advisor. I think if you summarize what you told us on your blog, this guy will be gone.
hi! first time commenter, been lurking for a little while though.
this story made me laugh out loud. i had to call mr. phizzledizzle over to read it, and he laughed too.
then, my next thought was, thank god BF is not a girl (and you are not a man).
I do think he is bad at working under pressure. 15 or 20 minutes after this episode, when I had left to go do other work, he came and told me that he'd worked through the math and now he understood it better.
I am sympathetic both to possibility that he can't do math under pressure, and that he's just piss-poor at mental arithmetic. I am fairly unsympathetic to someone who sets up a division problem wrong, though.
I will probably have to talk with him directly about the math problems, and ask something along the lines of, "How the bejeezus did you graduate 8th grade?" though more nicely, one presumes.
Heeee. Heee heee hee. I know this must be difficult for the poor child, but really, it's just so entertaining!
When my undergrads have trouble with molarity calculations I always encourage them to write it out with all the units, top & bottom so that they have a nice visual representation of what they're doing (and it's easy for you to catch mistakes). This might be a less stressful approach than on the spot mental math if he has math anxiety.
You are a post-doc. You do not have the time to do remedial dimensional analysis tutorials with a blithering fuckwit. You should tell your mentor the situation, explain that you simply don't have the time to mentor someone this deficient in basic lab skills, and refuse to deal with him any more.
Yeah, I've had students who couldn't handle dilutions by tens. Seriously. I've taken to checking their arithmetic abilities first, because if they can't subtract from ten, they can't do anything with a graduated pipette...
And calculators are useful, but only if you know which number goes where. This post is just kind of sad. I feel bad for both of you.
But ultimately I'm with comrade physioprof. I would get rid of someone like this, simply because I don't have time for remedial tutoring, and I can't risk having someone this clueless fucking up my experiments.
Post a Comment