Come on, George, answer the question

I say this all the time, but the other day I experienced the best thing ever. My supervisor was out sick, so he asked me to sit in on the weekly lab meeting. When I walked in, people I knew greeted me and people I didn't know said flattering things like, "Oh, so you're Jill. I've heard so much about you. Your supervisor raves about you." But before I could get a big head, the meeting started and I remembered that I was the least educated person in the room because it sounded to me like everyone was speaking in tongues. As usual, I only understood a little of what they were saying but tried to follow along with what felt like an interested and intelligent look on my face.

Then one of the researchers went to the white board and illustrated the experimental design for his next study. I was in heaven. Hypotheses! Controls! Independent variables! And then the other scientists chimed in. Incorrect hypotheses! Unreliable controls! Unnecessary independent variables! The expression on my face changed from trying-to-look-intelligent to stupidly-enjoying-every-moment. When I took my first methodology course in college, I realized two things: that I wanted to be a scientist and that no matter how enthusiastically I described a really clever experimental design, people who didn't want to be scientists just didn't care.

The discussion quickly became very heated. The amount of yelling from the men next to me was directly proportional to the amount of diagrams the researcher presenting his experiment drew on the board. At one point the man next to me smacked the table with his fist and shouted, "Dammit, George, you're not answering the question!" There's nothing a researcher hates more than illogical scientific reasoning. Nothing.

When I got home that day and Markus asked me how my day had been, I excitedly babbled about the lab meeting, ignoring the familiar trying-to-pay-attention-but-failing expression on Markus's face. I didn't care that he was zoning out because that lab meeting was the best thing ever.