Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

Chapter 12. My First Scientific Meeting  The physiology graduate students and I formed a nice little study group to relate our trials and tribulations to each other concerning classes and the physiology faculty. We could compare notes on classes, make suggestions as to classes or faculty advisors and just listen when things were going wrong. [...]

With the neurophysiology texts and cheat sheets in front of me I tried to get started on my final studying for Wednesday. But I couldn’t get the endocrine-reproduction exam out of my head. I wrote down each of the questions from both exams and a brief synopsis of what my answers were. I was sure [...]

The big day finally arrived, after 42 days of studying during which my body went through 41 sleep/wake cycles. All eight of the Ph.D. candidate students got to our meeting place very early with coffee, food, drinks and even changes of clothes to be prepared for a long 8 hours of testing split by a [...]

I was intensely studying something called kinetics. This is the study of rates of chemical reactions and it involves a lot of math. It was an essential part of my research and I worked hard to learn all of the formulas and how the math worked with the science. I had all sorts of numbers [...]

The comprehensive exam is a big written and oral exam that every Ph.D. student at Michigan State University needs to take and pass. In my own case, it would cover all of the material in my physiology texts and be broken up into the 6 major areas of physiology. Those areas were: Neurophysiology, cardiovascular physiology, [...]

A few days after my little spill in the cold room Dr. Dillon summoned me to his office. He asked me to repeat to him what had happened, when it happened, what I did about it, and whom I told. Dr. Dillon was an efficient person and wanting to hear something twice was not consistent [...]

After several months, I had accumulated enough pig arteries to start the purification process. This was a big deal and an important milestone for my work. It is kind of like having enough ingredients to bake a cake or make a soufflé. A good cook will get all the ingredients together and work hard to [...]

I was working in my “office” associated with Dr. Dillon’s lab. It wasn’t really an office, it was desk space in a busy, cluttered shared lab next to his lab. The door on the lab to my “office” was a huge, heavy, solid wood door that seemed to choose to open or close at random. [...]

I finished prepping the arteries, cleaned up the lab a bit, and we went to lunch. Deli sandwiches in Michigan are not as good as they are in New York, but it was a good lunch. I went back to the lab after lunch very happy and ready to get on with the experiments to [...]