Week 1

Hello again!

This week has been a little hectic. Turns out that working in a lab requires a lot of paper work. Who knew? Well, admittedly, I did, but I didn’t expect to be turning in quite so many circles.

In order to work in Dr. Conrad’s lab, I needed approval from two groups: the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S). So, week 1 was primarily filling out forms and taking tests.

On Monday, I took my sister to ASU to sell Girl Scout Cookies (which, by the way, is a very lucrative business as college students go crazy for them), and thought that this would be a good time to drop off the paper work. So, I stopped by Dr. Conrad’s office, handed her the forms, and ran back to save my sister from the approaching hoard of students. The paperwork was done, so, now, all I needed was to take three tests in order to be approved to work with animals.

On Tuesday, I sat myself in Starbucks to study for and take the exams. The three tests are titled Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, Humane Care and Use of Mice, and Humane Care and Use of Rats, and passing them gains the approval of the IACUC. First, I went through about 30 pages of reading (all the stuff I would be tested on). The first packet was about the acts and regulations in place to ensure that laboratory animals are treated humanely (humane meaning “marked by compassion, sympathy or consideration for other human beings or animals,” as the reading defined it). The result of all the legislation is that there are a bunch of review boards to ensure that laboratory animals are properly cared for. The goal is to guarantee that we eliminate or minimize pain and distress in research animals. The approaches to doing so are categorized as follows;

1 – Refinement of technique

2 – Reduction in the number of animals

3 – And replacement of vertebrate animals with species lower on the evolutionary scale or the employment of non-animal techniques

After completing that exam, the other two were geared specifically towards working with mice and rats. I am happy to say that I passed all three and am now cleared to work with animals.

As a quick side note, even though studying for and taking the tests took a considerable amount of time (about 2 hours), it made me feel much better about working with animals. It is very clear that the utmost care is put into using laboratory animals and that they are used only when they are essential to scientific discovery.

Now, back to my week. On Wednesday, things went downhill. Tuesday night I got really sick to the point where I had about 1 hour of sleep. So, I spent most of Wednesday in a comatose state waiting for my medicine to work (no worries though, it did and I’m feeling much better now).

On Thursday, I woke up to a couple of emails from Dr. Conrad asking about two things that have proven to be very difficult to obtain: a courtesy affiliate ID and EH&S training. A courtesy affiliate ID is so I can work at ASU even though I’m not a student or professor and the EH&S training is so I can work in a lab. I had one email saying that I needed to complete the training in order to get an ID and another email saying I needed to get an ID in order to complete the training. We had found ourselves a paradox. Needless to say, I was very stressed out (quite ironically since that’s what my project is about).

Today, I have been working to resolve this paradox and am happy to say that, after many emails and phone calls, I have received my ID. Now, I can begin my EH&S training.

Overall, what I got out of this week is, when working in a lab, start the approval process as soon as possible because it’s always more complicated than you think it will be. Also, you need to be as active as possible and reach out to as many people as possible in order to get your project off the ground. You can’t just sit passively and hope someone else will sort it out for you.

Thanks for reading! Sorry this post is so long; next week I’ll try to post a couple shorter entries instead of one long one.

Gillian