Grad students are hilarious
March 9, 2016
Scene: Laboratory of Hibernation Studies
PI: “We need to discuss your thesis plans…what have you come up with so far?”
Grad Student: “Bears”
PI: “What? Dude, we have a sweet ground squirrel model all ready to go. What do you want to use it for?”
GS: “I want to start up a bear lab. It’ll be great.”
PI: -Dead Stare-
GS: “Bears! Hibernation! …..get it?”
……
GS: “Meanie”
DrugMonkey 
March 9, 2016 at 12:23 pm
GRRRR!!!!!
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March 9, 2016 at 12:42 pm
Bear hibernation does seem interesting :-).
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March 9, 2016 at 12:42 pm
Send them to this lab: http://directorsblog.nih.gov/2016/01/28/creative-minds-what-can-hibernation-tell-us-about-human-health/
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March 9, 2016 at 12:46 pm
I know, right zb? What kind of meanie exploiting mentor wouldn’t back their graduate student’s dreams about a bear model?
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March 9, 2016 at 12:53 pm
Depending on the Francophilia of the student in question, a good direction to point them would be toward estevating snails. Seriously, you keep snails in a tank, and when you take away the lettuce leaf they go into a kind of hibernation. Here’s a paper… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11060221
Bonus – you get to eat your experiments for dinner, thereby solving the other great dilemma of grad’ student life, i.e. how to afford gourmet food.
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March 9, 2016 at 2:02 pm
@zb
Actually a lot of how hibernation works is due to brown fat thermogenesis, and that can be studied in mice (or indeed squirrels to keep the metaphor going). So maybe the issue is that the advisor needs to show how the lab’s model can address the question the student is interest in.
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March 9, 2016 at 2:20 pm
Ground squirrels don’t hibernate, they stay awake all year long to eat soft pretzels on the quad. Geeze, DM, do you even university?!?!
Also, where is Pascale when you need her? Squirrels have to wake up to urinate. Bears do not. Ergo, bears must have more interesting kidneys, and they must be the more interesting model. QED.
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March 9, 2016 at 2:22 pm
woodchucks (Marmota monax)
Then you can have tongue twister contests in lab, too.
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March 9, 2016 at 2:25 pm
You’re clearly very sad without Twitter. I’m sorry, Ted.
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March 9, 2016 at 2:33 pm
the advisor needs to show how the lab’s model can address the question the student is interest in.
Yes, it is really unfortunate that lazy, evil, meanie PIs do not talk to grad students about the data and papers that have already resulted from the ground squirrel model.
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March 9, 2016 at 3:01 pm
I just learned recently that tardigrades (water bears) can be cultured pretty easily with the same materials used for c. elegans. Definitely interested in giving them a go. Of course, I’ll probably wait till I have my own lab, so no mean PIs can dash my dreams of creating an army of indestructible micro-minions.
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March 9, 2016 at 3:12 pm
The worst part about being a grad student is the inability to get anyone on board with your plans for armies of indestructible micro-minions.
The worst part about being a PI is the inability to get your trainees on board with your plans to turn them into armies of indestructible micro-minions.
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March 9, 2016 at 5:33 pm
There’s some interesting anecdotal evidence that humans can get into a torpor state, like hibernation. Look up what happened to Mitsutaka Uchikoshi There’s a few other cases like his.
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March 9, 2016 at 5:59 pm
Is that what is going on with PhysioProffe?
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March 10, 2016 at 9:23 am
@Becca
Ok, what if I settle for turning the trainees into a brigade of milli-minions, but let them build their own armies of micro-minions?
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March 10, 2016 at 2:03 pm
I had this conversation with my new grad student a few months ago. I could briefly see the light flicker and die in his eyes. My dreams stumbled too: hadn’t he joined my lab to do amazing things with ground squirrels together? (Also, bears are obviously dumb, and I don’t have the IRB approval anyway…) He’s working on a fantastic project on squirrels. I should see when he graduates if he still thinks I’ve crushed his dreams. I’m a little afraid to ask before then.
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