A Letter from Science Camp

Every good Christian wants to see her young Christian children grow up to be Good Christians.  And in this spirit my Crystallography mom (thesis advisor) has sent her youngest boy off to Crystallography Camp.  Christian hipsters insist that they are Xians.  And here everyone writes that they are Xtallographers. Godless, liberal East Coast or not, I’m beginning to suspect that the X can mean only one thing. I came for my PhD, and truly I tell you, brothers and sisters all, I have become indoctrinated. 

Unbelievers will cry, but isn’t science supposed to be the opposite of religion? O my people, truly I tell you, no, not at all. Here we are awake and surrounded by the Faithful for days, nay, weeks on end.  Awake!  We listen to the Good Word in lectures and lo, learn the rituals of experimental protocols that will allow us one day with the Lord’s good Grace to be Saved, yea, to Graduate. There is enough wine and celibacy here that would make the Catholic Church blush with envy. And we have come to understand (or at least repeat) the words of the Prophets, Xtallographers from ancient times, the 1940s. Protein crystal diffraction images appear before our eyes and, at last, we See and Believe! Behold the protein structure . And sinners though we are, we Understand! Like recognizing the image of Our Jesus in the makings of a fish sandwich. Like Jonah from the Whale, early Xtallographers received Revelation: on the decks of whaling ships, whale blood protein myoglobin did crystallize before their very eyes. And I recall my own revelation, the protein I study makes crystals. How were my eyes so blinded? How could I have not Seen?

But why all this pseudo-religious indoctrination talk about an obscure (rather, obscure only to the heathen; certainly Jerusalem to the discipline’s gloriously nerdy disciples) crystallography workshop? The reason—pursuit of science is really hard, like sticking with teenage abstinence, and so takes something like frenzied religion (except without all the make-believe) for one to keep on keeping on with it. Being a scientist in the lab (in this boy’s case, being in grad school) is like being in an abusive relationship: you’re totally committed, you invest way too much time and imagination and lose more sleep than is healthy, and even then you get no sugar. No sweet lovin’ (read: precious positive results) at all. Seriously, wtf? 

And so I talk about leaving. I keep telling my friends, “that’s it, I’m not going back, me and science are through, I’m too precious a flower to take such mean mistreatment.” And then, science comes around one fine day, like Ike Turner to Tina, and is all, “Baby, please! Ike loves you,” and you get the first shred of data in months that makes any sense, and your one eye that isn’t black and swollen shut wells up with tears of joy and gratitude. Metaphorically speaking. 

And the next time I’m in despair about my science project, friends, you’ll tell me to just quit, it’s not worth it, it’s killing me. But I won’t listen. I’ll only reply, but Science loves me. And if I have learned nothing else, it is that I am a True Believer. I have Faith in Science, and Science loves me. It just loves me so BAD, is all.