This past weekend was the annual UNC Genetics Departmental retreat. It took place at a golf resort near Asheville, NC. Despite direct advice not to do so by my father, mother, brother, cousin, psychiatrist, general practitioner, warnings on multiple bottles of my prescription medication, and common sense, there was heavy drinking involved. Miraculously, I managed not to offend anyone. The student to whom I said, “I hope your mom gets prostate cancer” took it all in stride. I won’t get into the details of the retreat’s activities, as doing so would make God kill a kitten, Jesus cry, and a baby seal club itself.

This and last year’s retreats were both strong reminders that although I’m in a genetics lab, I am a neurobiology student at heart. Several of the talks dealt with the newest technologies for analyzing and interpreting huge amounts of genetic data. For instance, sequencing data from the Ashkanazi ethnic group, which suffers more frequently from a specific form of Parkinson’s disease than the general population. I was pretty pumped about this talk at first. I was looking forward to possibly learning that researchers had identified a previously unknown protein tied to the survival of dopaminergic neurons, and that they were generating an analogous mouse. Instead, I was expected to be excited about mutations that had not even been checked for effects on protein sequences or regulatory regions. What!?

Another pervasive occurrence in these talks was my feeling like a drooling idiot. For example, many speakers displayed images similar to those seen on the left (actual size). At this point I would get scared and fix my hair in an effort to ward off the imminent assault on my ego.

Presenter: “As you can see from these data we obtained from the mutant cells, several of the genes required for cycle checkpoints are I am making as much sense as a gun that shoots backwards.”
Me: (hair looking good, nodding thoughtfully) Maybe I am getting this after all…

On the whole, I met a number of very interesting people and had a fine time. Not to end on a pleasant note, however, I leave you with a public speaking tip: To “beg the question” is not to “lead one to ask the question.” It is a form of argumentative fallacy meaning that the conclusion of an argument is being assumed from the outset, similar to circular reasoning. Honest.