Pig Meds

Professor Smyth-Gladstone is ten minutes late. Lynn, his PA, assures me he is on campus. Standing with my back to his door, lightly tapping my head against the wood, I consider making chit-chat with Lynn but hold off as she devours what looks like a field of carrots.

Twenty minutes late. I shuffle the three sheets of organic molecules, mechanisms, and tabulated data in my hand for the fiftieth time. They're still the correct print-offs; they're still the correct data. I lift on my toes, still tapping my head. The cold coat hook slides against my neck. Like many times before, I imagine it impaling my skull and switching out the lights.

"He won't be long, Steven," Lynn says. "He's in a meeting. Something about a parking space."

As I return a smile, the professor comes bombing down the hall. I swiftly roll out of the way like a marine as he crashes through his door.

"Are we meeting today, Steven?"

"Erm, yes. To discuss my…"

"… Not late, am I?"

"No, no, it's all good, Professor…"

"…Apologies, Steven. Held up by HR. You could have sat in my office."

"Oh, that's OK, Professor," I mumble, following him inside.

By the time I am through the door, he has collapsed into his chair with his back to me. He fires up his computer. "Tea, Steven?"

"Erm, yes, please, Professor."

"The kettle is over there. There is English Breakfast, Chamomile, or Earl Grey. I'll take Earl Grey."

"Oh… Of course, Professor." 

My colleagues and I are used to this. Part-time grad students, part-time servants. We have even been known to do his Christmas shopping if Lynn is out. As I walk over to the kettle, he hammers his keyboard. I make an Earl Grey, and a chamomile for myself, minimizing the clinking of cup and spoon as I stir.

 "Would you like milk?"

""Just a splash, Steven. Again, my apologies. I would ask Lynn, but I believe she is still grading my first year's midterms."

"Absolutely fine, Professor."

"With you in a second. I'm emailing bloody admin. Every Fall, they kick us out of the parking lot for football games. Bloody tailgating! I wouldn't mind, but last Saturday, I couldn't even get a space over by Physics, and I ended up all the way over by Psychology. Took me seven minutes to walk to my office. Good lord, Steven. I know the football team brings a lot of money into this school, but paying me what they do, seven minutes amounts to a hell of a lot of wasted funds."

"I can only imagine, Professor."

I pick up the cups and take them over to the desk just as he is prodding the send key with the power of a jackhammer. I place the cups on the desk, and as I sit down and begin to speak, he swivels his chair, stands up, and walks over to a set of shelves to my right. I withhold talking for several seconds and scan the desk before me. It is a mess: paper everywhere, seven pens, three staplers, and a snow globe. On the wall to the left of his desk is a photo of his daughter. The professor takes a book from the shelf and opens it.

"Looks like your daughter graduated high school, Professor. You must be very proud. Is she going to university?"

"I am proud, indeed, Steven, and yes, she is going to university. Well, in a way, she is. She plans to major in sociology, unfortunately." He flicks through the book at a rate unconducive to reading it before putting it back and walking over to his seat.

"So, Steven… mmm, lovely… what can I do for you?" he asks after sipping his Earl Grey."

"I would like to discuss my recent data and graduation date."

"I see… Well, as you know, I have a high bar for graduation." His sips become slurps.

"Of course. We are all very appreciative of the three-publication requirement. I think it is excellent that you push us in this way."

"Not the highest I will have you know. Professor Chekov-Gore, up the hall, demands five first-name authorships of his students. And where are we at with yours?"

"Just got the amended data for my third, Professor!" I say, waving my sheets in the air.

"Yes, I remember. Well, three is three. I just had Penny in here…" 

Penny Dallalgio: seven publications so far!

He continues. "...She was presenting me with some very intriguing data regarding the eating patterns of pigs. With a single pill, she has managed to stimulate breakfast, lunch, and dinner dietary habits without human intervention. I swear, that girl has these animals behaving more and more like humans every day. Fascinating stuff!"

Penny Dallaglio is a third-year, the year behind me. She's mostly worked with cows and horses but trod on my toes with the pigs over the last eighteen months. She is sickeningly clever. I half expect to turn up one day and find those pigs literally dancing in unison. She's always sniffing around my stuff and my desk. I would be paranoid she was ripping off my data if I didn't know it sucked so bad. The professor glances at a photograph of Penny receiving a government grant. It is hung on the wall by the photograph of his daughter. "That does sound fascinating, Professor."

"Yes, I expect the data will form the basis of an outstanding eighth publication."

"She is inspirational," I exclaim. "Well, as you are familiar, for the last four years, I have been exploring sedatives, also for pigs. We have discussed my exploration into the intricacies of pig farming and how it led me to the concerns of many farmers that their livestock is often very unrested and unwilling to breed."

Professor Smith-Gladstone's field of research is synthetic chemistry in farming and agriculture. It is a good cause, but when I enrolled, it wasn't apparent he collaborates with his brother, Patrick, who owns a farm half a mile away. So, I began the program expecting to ship drugs out the door for testing, only to find out I would spend half my time wading through animal dung."

"I am familiar," he replies. "As I understand it, sedation of pigs is well established. What does your sedative bring to the mix again?" He knows the answer to this.

"Erm… well. I believe it's slower acting. Less traumatic to the pigs, Professor."

"And you can quantify that, can you?"

"Hmm… Well… I can closely monitor and time the behavior of the pigs post-sedation."

"I see. And what behavior is that?"

"Erm, less trauma, Professor. They look kind of happy when they roll around afterward."

"Hmm."

We have discussed this metric many times before. If he asked me to change it, I would, but for now, I interpret hmms and ahhs as unequivocal validation.

I continue. "Anyway, my first paper discussed the impact of my sedative shortly after it was first synthesized."

"Remind me of the results, Steven."

"Mild impact."

"And how many pigs were tested?"

"One, Professor. It was definitely drowsy, though. The thing was sitting in its hut for hours."

"I see. It's not a convincing sample number, is it?"

"Well, the revelatory nature of the results allowed me to pivot. They directed me elegantly into the study described in last year's publication."

"And what was that, Steven?"

"Same drug, five pigs."

"Hmm, not a whiplash-inducing pivot, is it? Results?"

"Three of the five were very drowsy, Professor." It didn’t support the hypothesis that the other two were high as kites.

"Aha, 60 % success rate. Now, we are getting somewhere. And where has your foray into pig sedation led you now? Six pigs?"

The professor leans back with his hands behind his head as I look down at the three sheets in my hand and shuffle the front to the back and round again. They are still the correct print-offs.

"I originally increased to ten pigs, but peer review wasn't happy with that increment. So… I have managed to modify my drug to un-traumatically sedate twenty pigs from a sample of twenty." I resist jazz hands.

"Twenty out of twenty, eh? And how do you know they were un-traumatized, again?" 

"They looked euphoric, rolling around in that pen."

"Hmm, yes, I'm still unsure about that metric, Steven? Sounds subjective. You should speak to Penny. She deals in finite quantities. She developed a drug for cows, which led them to herd in specific numbers. She could control the number by dose as well. It was mesmerizing to watch those things pair off and triad, all the way up to groups of seven. Patrick said it was like watching Planet of the Apes… with cows."

"I remember the work, Professor."

"OK, well, let me see your data."

I hand him the sheets and begin to fidget as he peruses them. His desk really is a mess. I lean into the snow globe. Unless I am mistaken, the feature seems to be the professor getting piggybacked by some sort of yeti through a savannah. It's a photoshopped thing.

 "Hmmm, this synthesis looks… OK,” he says, rubbing his chin. “I can understand your line of thinking with this enantiomer. Have you considered the hydrogen shift during this…"

"…I love the snow globe, Professor Smyth-Gladstone. Where did you get it?"

"A conference, somewhere… and this hydroxyl group looks remarkably unstable by this nitrogen gr…"

"…No, but I mean, where did you…"

"… OK, Steven. Some of these organic mechanisms lack elegance, but twenty out of twenty pigs seems publishable. Where are you looking to submit this research?"

"The Austrian Journal of Agriculture, Professor."

"I see. And why is that?

"I feel the Austrian scientific community is most in tune with research of this nature."

"Hmm… and what journal just rejected it."

"The Australian Journal of Agriculture."

"The Australians love their pig meds as well, do they? And the journal before that?"

"Analytical agriculture."

"And before that?"

"I believe it was Agricultural Chemistry, Professor."

"Yes, I am familiar with that one. Some of my finest output has been published in Agricultural Chemistry. Penny submitted her work on stimulated horse intuition there. Two fantastic articles."

"I know the work well." Unfortunately, I do. That study was mind-blowing. Those horses could tell when we were lying to them!

"What does interest me is your journal order of choice. Rather than carefully targeting a suitable audience, you seem to be blindly descending an alphabetical list."

"Err, now you mention it, it does look like that. I think that's a coincidence."

"I see… Well, what kind of readership will your research expect to garner in this Austrian journal?"

"I beg your pardon, Professor…" I know where he is going with this, and that was a poor deflection.

"What is the impact factor? The very top journals have an impact factor of 20. I believe Agricultural Chemistry has an admirable impact factor of 8."

"Ah… well, it's a new journal. So, nothing remarkable by number, but I expect big things…"

"…From the Austrian Journal of Agriculture?"

"Yes, like I say, they are most in tune with research of this na…"

"…What is the impact factor, Steven?"

"0.5, Professor."

"I see… It's not Bible-level readership, is it?"

"No, Professor."

"Well, I suppose we need to get you over the line." 

Jackpot! Now, we need to pick some reasonable academics for peer review, and I am home-dry.

"So, Steven... Regarding peer review, I was thinking Professor Leanne Pigford…"

Not bad. Good scientist, generous with her criticism. However, we do run the risk of sounding like we are mocking her name.

“…Professor Bryson Carter…” he continues.

Hmm, not so good. This guy has great stuff but can pick you apart for sloppy science, which is my forte.

"… and I think a good third choice would be…" Come on! "…Professor Davis Baxter-Thorpe."

Yes! Baxter-Thorpe and the professor go back a long way. Former student, now peer, and long-term friend. There is no way he is knocking me back. "I think they sound perfect, Professor."

"You better get writing then, Steven."

"Of course, Professor. Late nights for me."

The professor drinks his Earl Grey. The slurps have softened now the tea has cooled, but he looks worryingly pensive.

"How long have you been here now, Steven?"

"Four years and three months, Professor." It feels like ten.

"Got a job lined up?"

"Not yet, Professor." Turned down for five. One because I missed the train. "I'm going to take a break. Maybe see South America."

"I hear Penny just lined up a position with Professor Dwayne Wang up at UTA. Quite a feat to land a post-doc with a Nobel Prize winner a year in advance. You know he actually called her first?"

"Really? I hadn't heard." I have heard.

"What are you drinking there?"

“Tea, Professor… Chamomile.”

"You like that stuff, don't you?"

"It relaxes me, Professor. Grad school has been a tough time."

"No, but Steven, you really like that stuff, don't you?"

"Erm… Yes?" The professor stands up and walks again to his bookshelf.

"A little birdy in the laboratory tells me you like that stuff a lot. Several boxes of chamomile in your desk drawers." Uh oh!

"I'm sorry, who…"

"…Four boxes of chamomile, to be exact. 100 tea bags in each. All gone in one week. I believe that amounts to 57 cups a day. Relaxing, you say? You could even say camomile acts as a mild sedative…"

"… I'm sorry, who says this, Professor?"

"That's academic, Steven. It was just an observation by a good scientist. Something we can all aspire to be." He looks at me for what feels like a lifetime. I sweat. "So... I think you can probably defend your thesis in June. Can you write it by then?" Mercy!

"I'm already well on the way."

"We will need to find you an examiner, of course," he says, slumping back into his seat.

"Oh yes, Professor. I was thinking maybe Professor Davis Bax…"

"...Yes, Professor Davis Baxter-Thorpe. I think so, too. Now get out of my office and start writing."