Well, it's been a while since I updated this blog - lots going on in my life with no real time to post an update. This one is long-overdue but I'll do my best to fill you in. (as if anyone out there beyond my friends and family CARES, but hey, maybe it will encourage another mid-life changer to keep up the good fight...)
In January I ran a study (of my own design) involving an experimental drug treatment after a chronic mild stress paradigm. I managed to get sucrose preference test results which no one else in our lab has managed to achieve. This may be due to the fact that I used Balb/c mice and not the cheaper and more stress-resilient CD1s that everyone was using before. Never-the-less, I still have to analyze the remaining behaviour data and run Westerns on the tissue samples which are currently sitting in the -80C freezer. (Despite the preliminary positive results, I sometimes think the only ones stressed at the end of these studies are the researchers and students working on them.)
This spring I completed my undergraduate BSc. Honours in Neuroscience with a rockin' GPA (Carleton has a weird GPA system, but it's equivalent to something like 3.95 on the 4.0 scale). I also won first prize in Neuroscience for my poster presentation at Undergraduate Research Day. Honestly, nobody was more shocked than me about THAT prize - my poster was about a drug screen and was so boring I added a picture of a mouse in the FST to jazz it up. But I guess it all came down to the presentation part - I KNOW my subject area in great detail and that impressed the judges.
In June, I graduated with "High Distinction". My 74-year-old mother and my stepfather attended my graduation. It was very sweet of her to fly all this way to see me graduate. In addition to my parents and Bri, my friend and co-counsellor Ian (whom I affectionately refer to as my "academic sponsor" - i.e., "don't let me quit!") was also there and cheering me on. Bri apparently "cried like a baby" during the ceremony. (Love that guy to death. At moments like that, I forgive him his penchant for TV shows like "Glee" and collectible plates with kittens on them...).
I realized, as I was there, lining up to cross the stage, that I had not walked across a graduation stage in 30 years, the last being my high school graduation. Kind of ironic that I graduate from university THIRTY YEARS after high school. (I never went to my college graduation - I had move 250 miles away and was busy trying to start a career). Thus, I have my first undergraduate degree at 52. (It took a while, but I got there. Late bloomer, anyone?)
Ironically, I had this entertaining conversation earlier this year with the oldest professor in my dept, (and frankly, the ONLY professor in my dept. who is older than ME). He is well known and respected in the fields of stress and depression research and his lectures are filled with entertaining anecdotes about characters like Nick Spanos (famous for his studies debunking alien abductions and multiple personality disorders), and his own experiences with aging, memory and anxiety.
I stopped by his office to ask a question on designing a protocol. After he answered my question he said, "Can I ask you a personal question?".
"Sure", I answered.
"How old are you?"
Amused, I replied, "Fifty-two."
He then asked, "Why are you here?", to which I candidly responded,
"I was in IT for 30 years, I had a successful career, but it just wasn't exciting me any more. I didn't feel enthused about getting up and going to work every day. I had always thought I would go back and get a degree, but I never really had anything that grabbed me enough to make me leave, and then I read this book about neuroplasticity, and that was IT. I realized THAT was what I wanted to do. I wanted to study and understand the brain. Carleton then opened up an undergraduate program in neuroscience, so I figured this was a sign, and took a correspondence course in chemistry so I could get in."
He then asked, "So what do you want to do after this?"
I told him, "I want to go on to get my Phd. and hopefully do research. If that doesn't happen, I have other options, but that's my first goal."
And then he said something I found quite amusing and not at all insulting, he said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you are not the typical mature student."
"What do you mean?"
"Most of them are here for the wrong reasons."
I can't remember the words he said exactly, but he did indicate that I was doing exceptionally well for a mature student and far exceeded expectations. I thanked him for the somewhat awkwardly worded compliment. It really meant a lot coming from him.
He was most concerned about what I'd do AFTER I graduated from my Ph.D., "Do you HAVE to work?", he asked.
"Yes. I am on the 'Freedom '95 program. I am bleeding away my RRSPs to be here, but there isn't enough there to retire on."
"Do you have any children? I'm always worried about leaving something for my children."
I laughed. "Yes, I have two sons, aged 27 and 29, and I've told them I am dying poor, and with any luck I'll kick it from a massive coronary at some later stage so they won't have to look after me and change my Depends."
Canada unfortunately does not have a lot of research positions outside of academia, so he was terribly concerned that my age would exclude me from opportunities at universities, but not for the reasons you might think. Apparently, at Canadian universities, your salary (dictated by union contracts in each province) is determined by the number of years since your FIRST degree (i.e. your BSc.), thus, if I theoretically graduate with my Ph.D. at age 57, and I had received my first BSc when I was 22, I would command a MUCH higher salary than a younger and more recent graduate with the same experience and only 6 years between their BSc. and their Ph.D. - thus, I would be less desirable to a potential university.
I explained that this was going to be my FIRST Bachelor's degree of any kind, that my only other credential was a 2-year diploma from a technical college, and he heaved a sigh of relief.
I also explained that I have a ton of experience in IT and project management, technology, programming, leadership, and a host of other skills that your typical graduate student does not have, and thus, I'm not worried about the job prospects. One way or another, I'll figure it out and survive. As much as I'd love to go on to do research, my dream job is to start or work for an Ethical Pharmaceutical company (no, that is NOT an oxymoron) where we pursue clinical trials and reasonably-priced delivery of drugs from open patents that would benefit the greater public good (such as from the Salk Institute), and which no other pharma will touch because of the lack of patent protection.
In any case, it was very sweet that he was concerned about me and that he gave me a strangely-worded compliment about my progress to date.
And on that note, was accepted into the Master's program at Carleton with funding, so that helps to lessen the pinch on the RRSP front, especially given the way the economy is going and the looming "R" word. I also won two other grant awards (one of which I declined (by accident - a subject for ANOTHER blog entry), but you can only hold one, so it's all ok in the end). Despite the funding, I'm still technically below the poverty line, but Bri says instead of being merely poor, I'll be the working poor because part of my funding is through TA-ships.
On the research front, I have one study complete (tissue on ice, with both behaviour data and tissue ready for me to analyze), another on which I am co-author recently completed, and another co-author study about to start, for which I have designed the stress protocol schedule. We have a new professor who is great (she and my advisor are collaborating and having periodic joint lab meetings - it's fantastic), and she has a couple of transgenic mouse lines she brought with her, so I'm going to be using one of the lines on my next study in the fall. By Christmas, I hope to have 4 studies under my belt, and tissue analysis well under way, positioning me for application to fast track to my Ph.D. in the spring.
I'm still passionately interested in the mechanisms of neuroplasticity that underlie depression and antidepressant responses, but there is a ton of really interesting work going on in other areas as well, so I'm open to new and interesting avenues of research.
Yes, there are definitely tedious parts to research, but the lab is bustling, and I'm still loving it, and that's what counts!
