Yes, this picture is from the past. No, my camera is not back yet...I heard there was going to be a talk on patience as a virtue, but I couldn't sit still long enough to listen. For those who know me, and you know I have only so much virtue, rumor has it I was worse in my twenties. I find this hard to believe. But it's probably true. I was in graduate school, cocky, and thinking the world revolved around the Thermodynamic and Kinetic Regulation of the Coupling Factor Complex in Spinach Chloroplasts.
When I think back to those years of frustration and wonderful discovery, the beauty of diving deeply into this biochemical process takes my breath away. And it's not until my own have come home with questions regarding membrane transport, when I say, "That's not completely correct." And know exactly where my thesis is stored, (behind the box of maps in the old winter coat closet), so I can prove it to them.
Why do those tiny bits of scientific trivia stick with me? Why is the value of 11.5 kcal/mole so important? I hear that number, and I see that graph, and I remember all those experiments, in a tiny pitch black room: me, my thylakoid membranes, lovingly gathered, and more radioactivity than you could shake a stick at.
Those were the good old days.
1 comment:
I know where my copy is too.
Love, M
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