Today

My mother always said that men have a wonderfully one tracked mind. They have the ability to block out everything else and focus all their attention on the task at hand. I believe this is an evolutionary scheme.. unless full focus was given to hunting that deer.. the family would starve. Women, on the other hand, have evolved an amazing capacity to multitask. Save family from cougars, pick acorns for dinner, clean cave.. we can keep several tasks going, yet tend to not dedicate ourselves fully to one activity. I had a classic example of that today.
Currently, in my lab, there are two Ph.D's and one M.D./Ph.D. All very smart.. all men. The two Ph.D's are some french dudes who are supposed experts on a complicated machine called an Ussing chamber, that measures electric potential across a cell and can measure changes in that potential relative to drugs opening and closing chloride channels, like in CF treatment. I digress. Anyways, they are the experts. And they are very french. Very. Everything we think of french people.. they are. But it is kind of fun, I feel like I am in Amelie. The MD/Ph.D is my homie/boss man. Ok, scene set.
Today I started working on the final analysis of a project that my "intern" and I have been working on.. pretty much since I started. So this is a big day for me. One that requires my full, undivided, attention. Not too hard, but there are a bizillion samples all begging to be mixed up and completely ruin all our hard work. So I am trying to focus.
Then the questions start. "Um, Jean, sorry to bother you.. may we borrow a beaker?" "Where is the ATP kept?" "Could you get me a 10 blade scalpal?" Like I have nothing better to do. Of course I help out, especially with the boss man around. I just find it funny. Then the phone starts ringing. I delivered a ton of different cells to different labs yesterday. And apparently they all decided to call me today, in the middle of my experiment. "What medium were they grown in?" "Did they have cilia?" Just tons of random questions.
But in my evolutionary prowess as a female, I managed to get all the samples done, without any mixing up (crosses fingers), helped out the dudes to have a very successful Ussing chamber day, and got all the cell questions answered. In science, I know a dedicated mind is quite necessary. But it seems to me that a flexible mind is perhaps more critical than once thought!