Alexandria Hicks-Nelson
The Mouse: Reformed
It was June 1st, and I had finally snapped. The night before had been the biggest relief of my senior year, but it took until 11:15am the next day for it to finally sink in. I never had to smell like burnt duron or acrylic again if I didn’t want to. Never again. It finally struck me that the project was up, and staying up, thanks to a bottle of rubber cement and 10g of Instant Krazy Glue. Before I knew it, it was 11:16am, and I still hadn’t answered any of the questions on my Genetics section quiz. I was just staring off, amazed and stupefied, looking just vacant enough for my TA to watch me warily from the front of the classroom. As if I needed to cheat on a two point quiz. Somewhere deep inside my head, I knew the answer had to do with imprinting, tumor suppressor genes, and other Biology buzz words. I realized I was softly snickering to myself. Why did all of the female children from this particular family suffer from the illness but neither parent showed any abnormal symptoms? ‘Because the mom’s copy of the gene herped too hard for the father’s copy to derp-a-doo it away’. My TA and I burst out laughing when I handed it in. I needed that.
~~~
Before June 1st and my outburst in section, before I smelled like a persistent bonfire, I was a committed and well-versed artistic dreamer. I had taken art classes in high school, and won a few kudos in my day, but never for art related to my passion. Those first few weeks in Autumn Quarter I was torn between Going Big, and Going Super Duper Big for my project. I didn’t just want to showcase anatomy, I wanted to showcase my command of veterinary science. I originally wanted to make a giant, full body polar bear suit with animatronic facial expressions. When we were workshopping ideas and the issue of practicality came up, I tried to curb my own enthusiasm. Ok, fine. A full body polar bear suit WITHOUT animatronics. Nailed it.
~~~
“Why don’t you just draw something?” My Mom sounded worried on the phone, and to be honest, a little judgey.
“I want to do something I’ve never tried before.”
“Ok…” Less judgment, more concern. Heavy on the anxiety. “Just leave time for yourself.”
My Mom was probably right. During Autumn Quarter, I was taking 20 units, with a job at the library of education on campus, and a job as a zoo intern at the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo. Neither was particularly taxing: being a student librarian mainly consisted of shelving books, and I loved my time with the zoo animals. Convinced that I had enough space to account for a nine foot tall steel construct, I half consciously, half subconsciously ignored the subtle warnings of my parents. I scrawled pages of notes on how to go about making my jointed golem. I daydreamed that I would take it out for Wacky Walk and go barreling around the stadium.
~~~
“Does it have to be a costume?” Another workshop, another peer questioning the method of my madness.
In my feverish need for Go Big, I took it a little more personally every time. Yes of course it had to be a costume. Humans have a very y-axis-centric way of looking at the world, and I wanted a suit that could be righted or kept on the horizontal. Did I know how to weld? No, but no doubt I could find someone to help me. My ace in the hole was a mechanical engineer friend I had at the time, a SLAC engineer who had expressed interest in my project. Would I have enough time? Of course I would! The Senior Reflection was a year long course, there would be time enough for everything, whatever ‘everything’ entailed. Throughout my first weeks as a senior, the excuses and avenues for my deluded visions of grandeur ran rampant. Since section was discussion based, I wasn’t forced to bring in a prototype or start doing anything particular. I was convinced I was on the path to finally settling the issue of my right to be a veterinarian.
~~~
It is a little embarrassing to admit it: there was a time very recently when veterinary science wasn’t in my ten year plan. As current Co-President of the Stanford University Pre-Vet club I have to be passionate about and comfortable in my field. And I am. I have to rally support for our little club, and promote whenever possible. And I do. I meet high school students, and I have to immediately push the veterinary school preparation agenda… In high school, I hated chemistry and only took AP Biology because the large words made me giggle, and the teacher was amazing. I found that I had a knack for not only understanding, but memorizing pathways, and an irrational need to figure out how things work. I took a marine biology and dissection course that opened my eyes to the wonders of anatomy, interned at the Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History, and whiled countless hours away watching specials on benthic dramas and trench ecosystems. I wanted to be a Marine Biologist. When I was mulling over what university I wanted to attend, I would make mental notes of how far the coast was, what sorts of Biology tracks they offered, and how soon I would be riding my own whale-pulled chariot into the sunset.
Validity has been my constant enemy. It isn’t to say that anyone else voices doubts about my resolve to become a veterinarian. It still stings though, knowing I’ve only been a pre-vet zealot since the end of freshman year. Sitting at Pre-Vet meetings, surrounded by life-long veterinary science fanatics, I wanted to push myself to learn more, expose myself to whatever new experiences I could. I was always afraid I was behind, or not far ahead enough in the race to vet school. For non-chemistry, non-physics classes, Going Big was Plan A, followed closely by Plan B, Go Super Duper Big.
~~~
I hit the harsh rocks of reality extremely hard a few weeks into Autumn quarter. I hadn’t anticipated several issues with my project. Firstly, the SLAC engineer turned out to be a SLAC engineer. He was interested in my art in a spectator fashion and, even if he had known how to put a costume together, he was too busy trying to do his job to take on a year’s worth of building. Secondly, I had no idea how to make a costume, nine foot tall or no. I didn’t know how to find the materials for it, find the mentors to help me with it, or describe my creepy need to make one in grant format. Plan A and Plan B were useless against the logistics of the grant writing process and the need for support from different mentors. While those I told seemed extremely enthusiastic about my ideas for the bear suit, the sheer vastness of the project was causing some doubts and worry. I hit one of the low points of my journey in TSR. The first half of my sketchbook was dedicated to an idea I couldn’t possibly hope to realize, and my time in Bio 196A was running out. To sum things up, my mom was right. As always.
~~~
It just so happened I was taking a mouse necropsy and histology course concurrently in the Fall, taught by the faculty advisor of the Pre-Vet Club, Dr. Bouley. While gazing into a microscope, squinting down at the explosions of colored sinew and muscle on higher magnifications, I realized that slides were rather pretty in their own macabre way. In fact, if you ignored the low magnification shots of bone and tendons, the patterns of cells knit and stained together could be beautiful. It was beautiful. It occurred to me that histological slides included artistic elements like color, composition, and patterns. Animal testing has always been controversial, but perhaps I could reach out to the community at large by showing them the kind of elegant information even one mouse could provide. Suddenly I had a project again! Thankfully Dr. B. had just enough spare time to act as my scientific mentor and partial patron for the tissue collection part of the process. I already knew how to get murine tissues, how to take pictures of them at various magnifications and how to hit ‘print’. I had several ideas for how to mesh all these things together, and though I still wasn’t sure how I would display the reconstructed mouse, it sounded like a better lead than the bear suit.
The December 1st deadline for small VPUE grants was looming, and I was suddenly busier than ever before with my courseload. I had been attempting to search for artistic mentors in my spare time, but it wasn’t until Sue and Andrew contacted Kenney Mencher that I finally met someone face to face. Unfortunately, I met him the day before the grants were due. Without a decent turn-around time, asking for a letter from Mr. Mencher seemed unfairly rushed. I resolved to try for a later deadline and just push my project back. This didn’t seem too bad at the time: I could busy myself making the slides and worry about getting funding for the art project itself later. Not to spoil the surprise, but I never did get a VPUE grant approved. I’d like to thank Dr. Bouley and Sue for funding my ill-conveyed artistic vision.
~~~
Winter was a productive quarter for everyone in my section, except me. I was taking only 19 units, but for some odd reason that lack of unit capping didn’t translate directly into more free time. Even worse, I had lost the mouse’s brain in my rush to get the tissues fixed in formalin, and my histological slides were behind schedule. To get the variety of colors and patterns I wanted, I would have to subject my tissue slides to special stains that showed more than just protein density. Special stains cost time, and were only useful given a well cut piece of tissue. Many of my slides didn’t emphasize the cells I needed or the symmetry inherent in the organ, and so Dr. B and I had to send them back to the histological technician before we could move ahead to the staining process. Some of the more classy (expensive) stains were also hard to get done, as it turned out I was the only one who wanted them during that time and undergraduates aren’t exactly high priority.
In winter quarter I also resumed my job hunt. Fixing my resume and hiding out at the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo became my escapes from the mouse project. Though it helped my psyche to get off campus every week or hole up in my room for hours, I couldn’t help but notice that the project refused to build itself.
~~~
When I could schedule time in the imaging lab, I was in front of the microscope, taking practice pictures of other slides I had created for my mouse necropsy course. I was attempting to learn the basics of form and composition without having ever opened a book about either. I didn’t feel like an artist, and yet the push for artistic decisions was nagging at me. In workshop I could only look on in terror as my friends showed their preliminary work. I didn’t even have my final slides picked out, and some people were already asking for critique about how to present their work in the gallery.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t even finalized what I wanted the work to look like. I thought it might be nice to layer the organs over the form of a mouse, to show the overlapping patterns and colors of the stained tissues next to each other. An abstract looking mouse, because I feared people might be a little taken aback by a realistic mouse, cut up the midline and flayed to show viscera. But that would mean I would need transparent material to put the images on. In my head I was drafting some sort of large mouse cut out with organ cut outs stacked on top of it, each cut out somehow displaying the tissue that was its namesake. I wanted to get some physical depth incorporated, and so I mulled over putting each organ in its own little frame, then placing the frames tastefully and anatomically correctly on top of the mouse cut out.
If my master plan sounded vague or hard to follow, don’t worry. Everyone had the same reaction. They were ultra-enthused, freakishly excited about the vibrant colors and forms of my slides, but had no idea what I was talking about in terms of the final work. I tried in vain to represent what I hoped to be a 3D project on a 2D white board, scribbling depth lines to try to illustrate my point. I felt silly asking questions like “which mouse shapes seems most mouse-y to you” for lack of any definite examples of my work. For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t communicate an idea. It was intensely frustrating and discouraging, but finally, there was a breakthrough. One student in my section eventually understood what I was trying to convey, and insisted I could use Stanford facilities to craft my project. She told of a magical place called Room 36, a mini product design realization lab equipped with something called a laser cutter. I had no idea what Room 36 was, or what sorts of materials I would need to bring my quasi-vision to life. I have always had a fondness for lasers and the things they cut, but what good would it do me if I couldn’t even verbalize what I wanted to do adequately? I had hit yet another roadblock and, though I worked diligently trying to resolve the issues with getting my slide images, I didn’t make much progress on the final piece in the winter.
~~~
Between Winter and Spring quarter, something amazing happened. I got a job. A summer job, mind you, but I would be working as a veterinary technician assistant at a sizeable animal hospital. Even more wonderful, my superior was giving me the chance to work part-time before the summer because I was so interested in learning the dynamics of the hospital and helping offset the summer rush. The plan was to work on Saturdays, biking down to make my shift at 8am and then biking back at 7pm. I reasoned that, since it was a job I was passionate about, it wouldn’t really impact my life too much. It would be like doing something I love on a Saturday, which is never a burden.
I was wrong.
For some reason I had forgotten that I already worked on Sundays at the library, essentially KOing my weekends for Spring quarter. I could do some homework at the library, but I was active my entire shift at the hospital, and I couldn’t bring myself to do more than shower and go to sleep after I got home. Moreover, I was taking 20 units at the start of the quarter, which somehow swelled to 22 units, because my subconscious is a secret masochist. At one point, I was trying to deal with 3 quizzes, 3 problem sets, 10 hours of running around a vet hospital, 4-5 hours at the zoo, 4 hours at the library and who knows how many hours of homework on a weekly basis. I had to change my sleep schedule and wake up at 6am in the morning to do assignments before my 9am class, because I didn’t have the energy to do anything after getting home from classes in the afternoon. For a while, it looked as though I was balancing everything perfectly.
~~~
Then one day it was three weeks until installation, and I had no idea how the quarter had passed. I think I lost touch with regular people time somewhere between having to get up at 6am on Saturdays and passing out at 9pm on weekdays. I loved and still love my job at the animal hospital, and I couldn’t very well stop doing school work, but I hadn’t made any progress on forming the mouse. In my frustration I went back to the inspiration for my piece, and concluded that I wanted some sort of light element that would tie into the light microscope I used to image the slides. I wanted the mouse to be set into a box that could be more easily moved, and have a better presence than a simple animal cut out. Sue graciously lent me her Christmas lights for the illumination aspect, but neither professor had any spare, thin timber collecting dust at their house.
It was time to finally find Room 36.
~~~
It was intimidating to say the least. When I was taking my safety course in Room 36, I was introduced to several machines I had never even heard of before. There was the constant drone of product design majors at work, outdone only by the scariness of the industrial décor. I was afraid to touch the walls, or sit for too long near a bin full of blades, for fear one would leap out and stab me in the face.
Fortunately for me, the TAs of Room 36 were more than happy to assist a lost and frightened Biology Major. I could come in during any shift the shop was open after purchasing a quarter pass, and do anything from talk over my design schemes to cut pieces for my work. Even though I only had a hazy idea of what I wanted the end product to be, the assistants were used to starting projects from scratch. I could even purchase materials on site, or browse through their selections. I decided that acrylic, a thin plastic material, would be ideal for the organ cut outs and mouse body. It came in a variety of colors, but to get the specific color, thickness and size I needed I eventually had to go to TAP Plastics in Mountain View. Duron, a wood material, I could purchase in massive quantities, and I used this to construct the box and inner shelves.
~~~
Despite how easy it was to get started in Room 36, I ran into a small gaggle of problems. The laser cutter, my main tool for the project, was frequently used by product design majors. They were always in the shop before I got there, and lurking in the shadows after I had to leave. There isn’t any ventilation system in Room 36, so if someone was using the band saw, I was intimately away of it. Even just working on my own project I grew fearful that the fumes from the laser cut edges of the plastic were harming me. The smell saturated my skin, my clothes, anything it came into contact with. The closet I set aside for my project still smells, though it is partially offset by the odor of charred wood from the large pieces of laser cut duron I stashed in it. Because I was handling acrylic and I was careless, I often cut myself on the sharp edges, or cut holes in my backpack trying to transport it. The piece quickly grew to be too large in dimensions to construct the box correctly by engineer standards, that is, by fitting notches in the side panels together and letting gravity come to my aid. I had to resort to krazy gluing everything until it stopped moving, which more often than not meant krazy gluing my fingers to my work. I probably don’t have one fingerprint to save my life on my right hand. Additionally, the adhesives in Room 36 weren’t producing worthwhile bonds between my vellum printed slide images and the acrylic, so I resorted to slathering on more krazy glue in the confines of my dorm room. Suffering from migraines, loopiness, and a general hatred for my piece, I stumbled through my last quarter on five or six hours of sleep a night and the remnants of Plans A and B.
~~~
My Spring was hectic, and much of it I don’t remember clearly at all, but it all came together in the end. Specifically the night before installation, when I realized my diffuser level was inadequate. I’ve been told that no one notices, and so long as The Mouse: Reformed isn’t stinking up my room, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I think my proudest moment was when Dr. Bouley said she liked it. Or maybe when Andrew said it looked professional. I have no idea what kinds of scrambling professionals do to produce their quality of work, I just know my mad dash to opening night spit out a rather snazzy piece.