I now have a job down under! I work at the Gene Technology Access Centre, or GTAC (all you science nerds should catch the reference…), and I teach local high school students about genetics and molecular biology. It has been both interesting and hilarious so far to work with Australian students. This is my fourth week of working there, and I love it so far.
The first labs that I worked on with them are a DNA restriction digest with gel electrophoresis, and then a DNA transformation with E. coli bacteria. I get a new group of students every week from around the state, and it’s been interesting to see how much each group knows. Some pipet like they’ve been doing it for years while others are trying it out for the first time. I just had a group from an all-boys high school, and they had a fantastic time ignoring my pleas to stop shooting the pipet tips at each other… I also am getting better at using the metric system even though in my first week I inadvertently called a student heavy (I said that 90kg was big when the student was 105kg… I blamed American ignorance on that one). The most common question I get in the lab is, “Can I eat that?” This can refer to many things from the food dye I use to demonstrate pipet technique to the agarose gel on which we run our DNA samples. One kid actually sucked on some of the food dye that was on his hands and subsequently turned his front teeth green. His friends didn’t let him live that down very quickly.
The people that I work with at GTAC are fantastic. The education officers are extra helpful and it’s extremely interesting listening to the other demonstrators’ research. This job is typically offered only to post-graduate students, but I was lucky enough to get a spot here. Most everyone is working on their PhD or Masters, so it’s been cool to listen about the diversity of topics that everyone is pursuing. One girl is working with a live strain of Malaria so I’m making sure to always wash my hands after working with her! I’ll post more funny stories later as they occur!
My lab bench!
Double helix staircase.
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