I raised my hand....

At a series of talks given by the Assistant professors in my department this week, I raised my hand. One time. Everyone turned around. My hands shook (partially due to the massive amounts of coffee I drank to wake myself up at 6am.), but partially because almost everyone and their mom and their mom's ears perked up. I could hear them thinking "What on earth does she have to say?"

Someone gave a talk dealing with some genes I dealt with as a grad student. The talk was based on looking at mRNA expression of these genes in response to a particular treatment. The problem is, the product, the protein made from these mRNAs are freakin' non-functional unless they are proteolytically processed. I know this, and everyone in my previous field knows this. So a red flag went off in my head, "why would anyone just look at the mRNA?" "Does looking at mRNA expression levels mean anything in terms of function?" "I wonder if this splice variant he is describing is processed in the same way?" I raised my hand.

What came out of my mouth you ask? ....
"So, these proteins normally need to be cleaved in order to be activated, have you looked at the processing of these proteins in your model?" His answer: "No, no I haven't". My response: "I think it would be cool to look at." Chair of Department: "Well 'Ms. Know-it-all Postdoc', how would he look at that, Western Blot?" Me: "Uh, yeah, western or a cleavage assay." The speaker's answer: "Yes! That is totally something I am interested in too".

Somehow it turned from me asking a question out of pure interest, to me coming off as a know-it-all be-yotch. Actually, I hesitate to even say how I came off. But the fact that the department chair interrupted me to ask HOW he would go about checking for this, made me feel like she was trying to diffuse something. WTF.

Afterward, I asked AdvisorDude what he thought of the whole thing. He said that I didn't come off as a know-it-all, he thought I was just offering some good input on how to advance the work he was presenting.

Arrgggggghhhh. (I'm a pirate apparently) But this is why I am deterred from asking questions. Isn't the ability to ask questions and listen, and just being able to GET IT on the spot, part of my training? How else am I going to be able to join in with Professor shenanigans? I just felt like there was some unspoken thing where I wasn't supposed to ask a question or give input. Maybe I am being paranoid.

During the break, I spoke to few profs. Afterward, I spoke to a few more. I think I was able to show I was not a total know-it-all and hopefully did some damage control(I cringe that I even think this way). Luckily, AdvisorDude is a GREAT advocate, which spurned others to come up to me about my work. During his talk, he made it absolutely clear whose work he was presenting, complete with putting a picture of me up next to my gels! Very cute. I heart AdvisorDude for being awesome that way. I was having fun talking to some of the Profs in the department I never get to talk to.

An Assistant Professor comes by, looks at AdvisorDude and the Prof I was speaking to, "Lunch?", he says. Yup. All the profs left to go to lunch together, while the trainees were left in the dust.