You Must Be Very Intelligent Page 4
Five minutes after the match ends, Gorgie Road is overrun by armies of supporters who, despite having just attended a sporting contest, are a rather dismal advert for physical health. They invade the street such that taxis and buses struggle to get along it. Police are everywhere but actual incidents of note are rare. I look at the army of faces and try to figure out if its team won or lost. But nobody ever looks terribly happy or sad; just gratified in some ritual way beyond my comprehension. Half an hour later, Gorgie Road is back to being a lacklustre thoroughfare.
A few people stay behind in the Hearts pub. These are supporters who will keep me awake, but they will do so entertainingly. After a few hours in the pub, they mutate from football friends into uncontrolled, lurching meat-bags of testosterone. Some of them, while standing on the pavement having a cigarette, will lose the ability to stand, and make their way to Earth with tragi-comic stumbles. Others will shout and fight, glasses fall in the street, mobile phones fly, tempers rage and violent intent abounds. Yet it is still all rather unfrightening and, again, strikingly ritual; especially from my aloof vantage point. Amazingly few injuries ever result from the noisy shows.
The climax of the show – for me anyway, and I am about the most consistent member of the audience – occurs when men emerge from the pub with pool cues. The plan is to chase and batter each other, but running is a tricky business after seven hours of non-stop drinking. The tattooed guys might really want to smack each other’s brains out, but carrying a weapon, let alone wielding it effectively, is an ambition beyond their talents after midnight. They fall over the cue, bang into the bus stop with it and – a personal favourite – they get the weapon stuck in the fence of the City Farm. They are reasonably adept at breaking the cue in half but that momentary act of concentration is usually as much as they can muster, and it seems to drain them. Afterwards, the fights fizzle out with one party leaving the scene, though invariably pausing to bellow a few sexual swear words from a safe distance. Homophobia re-enters the acceptable scope of insults at this stage.
Tonight, my first night after arrival, I am observing the first of these typical Gorgie Road scenes. It scares me and the thought that my flat is not ideally situated comes home to roost. But, hey, I have a home…
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_4
Chapter 4
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: office@karinbodewits.com
It is seven in the morning. I have slept in my new apartment for two nights now and feel much less like a stranger. My eyes are wide open. I had an alarm set quite early as I know it takes time to get ready, but I haven’t needed it. A healthy dose of adrenaline and excitement has wakened me for my first day as a postgraduate student. It would all kick off with a “School of Chemistry introduction event” for this year’s selected students. Introduction days are not my forte. These are days that I have to be spontaneous and smile, and not come across as a sociopath. I enjoy meeting new people but as soon as it is compulsory to “make new friends” I flop.
Nevertheless, I am motivated to go. I want to be a doctor. I want to be the first person in my family to have a title in front of their name. I fantasise about discovering a wonder drug which targets cystic fibrosis and writing an intellectually dazzling thesis about it, which will be discussed with great reverence amid prestigious cloisters and kick open doors to the most hallowed ivory towers in the scientific world. I can imagine myself walking down a red carpet to collect the Nobel Prize. Sometimes I even ponder how I will handle the inevitable fame… but I know my natural humility will see me through. Already, in the few days before I moved to Edinburgh, I started reading literature from the field and came up with some ideas for my ground-breaking research. Once the introduction day is done… Yes, I have itchy hands and want to get down to serious business.
Standing in front of the commode in the bedroom, I wonder what does one wear on one’s first day in a chemistry department? I had seen most of the members of the McLean group during my interview and know they all looked okay – like Mark, not extremely fashionable, but also not as if they had plundered their grandparents’ wardrobe. But then, the McLean group is working on the interface between medical biology and chemistry, making them probably the most “non-chemistry” group in the department. Today, I will mingle with the other groups; I am entering the world of chemistry geeks. It would probably be fine to show up like a hippie who has not had a shower for four weeks, or in a gangsta hoody, or in a T-shirt expressing offensive or sexist language – the bandwidth in academia is not limited – but a blazer would not go down well. I quickly stare at the only pair of high heels I have. I feel a love-hate relationship with them; aesthetically they are adorable, but they hurt. Anyway, high heels are definitely the ultimate no-no – too sexist or too sexy or too something or other. And they are practically ill-suited to a lab.
I look in the mirror that is still largely covered with packaging material and let my just-too-small turquoise miniskirt casually drop to the floor, after deciding it would be very unwise on the first day. I slide my freshly shaved legs into tight jeans and don a printed tank-top. That’s better! I glide my fingers gently over the covers of my two new shiny notebooks before putting them in my bag – ready to go. I feel excited and nervous. Am I really clever enough to become a doctor?
As a teenager, I dreamt about going to university, sitting in a big lecture hall with my smart clothes and listening to a professor with small glasses resting on the tip of his nose. All the students would be very attentive of the bright man holding forth about difficult subjects hardly anyone can understand. We would all scramble after each other with interesting facts and ideas which the professor had raised. We would meet up in the student bar, drink a glass of cognac and discuss the latest news before going to bed. By the time I got to Edinburgh I had long ago realised I watched too many romantic movies about Oxford and Cambridge during my formative years. In reality we did not all spend our breaks talking about world affairs and not all students sat with rapt attention in the lecture halls.
However, there were some students who talked knowledgably about the world and culture, and who were even fascinated by the subject they were studying. They could talk about bird breeding, molecular interactions or the biological breakdown of pollutants for hours. And there were students who maybe did not want to pursue a career in science after their studies but who had a clear strategic plan of how to break into management consultancy, a traineeship at the community of Amsterdam or work for Heineken. The professors who taught me biology in Groningen might not have had glasses resting on the tips of their noses but they still lived up to some teenage hopes. They always came across as very critical, clever and skilful human beings. I often relished their lectures. They motivated me to study for my exams. Late in my studies, when I was working in their labs for months writing my master’s thesis, or was remotely supervised during my times in industry, they infected me with their passion for discovery and they encouraged me to stay in science. Two professors in the Netherlands asked me to work for them but I wanted more, I wanted a famous university and the adventure of travel. By now, I had got addicted to moving. Addicted to meeting new people, learning new languages and finding my way around a new town. It makes me feel free, being anonymous somehow.
And so here I am, standing face to face with a statue of Joseph Black, a big cheese Scottish physician of the 18th century. While staring at the mouldering face covered with traces of moss, I think “well done dude, you made it!”
For the second time in my life, I walk through the long old corridor of the School of Chemistry. I pass the Museum again and note that this is where I must be in half an hour for the introduction programme. I make a left turn in the corridor, pass the chemical stores and up to the second floor. If I remember correctly from the interview a few weeks ago, I have to turn left
after the stairs to reach the lab where I will be working. When I see an old door with a tiny opaque window, and adorned with a biohazard sign and the number 262, I know I am at the right place.
I open the door to see two people working at the bench in the middle of the same messy lab I saw during my first visit. It is a big enough workspace for four people. I greet them and wait while they slowly lift their heads and reply to my greeting with a cursory “Hello.” Their expressions very clearly state, “What the fuck do you want with me?” Ah well, it takes time to warm up with each other, maybe a teambuilding event or something…
I walk towards the office and feel my backpack touching something. At race pace I turn to catch the bucket of ice I almost smacked onto the floor. Thank God there does not seem to be any samples in there. I feel slightly embarrassed by my clumsiness and keep my eyes on the ground. I take a step forward and feel my head hitting metal. Ouch! That was the huge autoclave I noticed on my interview day, when I had wondered in which century it might have been forged. That's going to leave a mighty bruise on my forehead. Feeling dizzy I step into the adjoining office.
There are four people sitting in the office, one of whom is Hanna. She is chatting with two other girls; their shabby, brown padded office chairs turned to each other. One is staring at a computer screen which is far from flat. In fact, this striking relic has much in common with the first computer my parents bought, in the 1980s. It had one game on it, which I loved, called Jumping Frog. I can’t remember when they binned it but it must have been before we got the Internet in 1996. Maybe they didn’t bin it? Maybe they sold it to the University of Edinburgh?
I say “Hi!” in my brightest, friendliest voice. Hanna and one girl reply, neither in a tone that suggests my brightest friendliest voice is doing the business today. The very small office is equipped with seven desks, three computers and one cupboard. The stench of stale cigarette smoke languishing in clothes – which I know too well – tells me at least one of them is a smoker. I look around to hang my coat and drop my bag, but all desks and chairs seem to be in use. “Which desk may I use?” I ask, brightly of course.
One girl, who has bubblegum pink hair cut in an asymmetrical bob that makes her face look much longer than it actually is, moves her head in my direction, opens her eyes as wide as possible, sniffs and says, “You don’t have a desk.”
A bit surprised, I enquire, “Is there another office where I do have a desk?”
“No.”
I can’t pin down her expression: does she feel superior or piteous? Either way this does not feel like promising rapport and my brain files her under “unsympathetic.” I smile at her in a far from natural way. The girl who did not reply to my greeting and still has her back turned to me, says: “Maybe I will be gone in a couple of weeks and you can have my desk. But now I need it.”
“Okay, great!”
I put my hand on the doorpost, sort of steadying myself and pausing to think: Is this real? Did I accept a PhD position without a desk? Was it even possible that the University of Edinburgh would not give you a desk?
“Can I maybe hang my coat somewhere for now?”
The girl turns her head in my direction for the first time. She has beautiful brown hair but it does not equate with her face. Her eyes are tinged with red and they lie deep in her face. Her skin has a grey-yellowish hue and her teeth are far from white. Her belly is hanging over the top of her jeans and she holds a bottle of diet coke. “You can hang it over mine if you want.”
There is a black coat and scarf hanging over her chair, both covered with long brown hairs. When I come closer I realise the smell of old smoke, which fills the office, is emanating from these two items of clothing. I hang my coat over Diet-Coke-Girl’s coat and drop my bag in the corner of the office.
“Is Mark in his office?” I ask.
I want to say hello, show that I have arrived, and ask him about the desk situation. I must have a desk, somewhere…
“Nope, Karin, he’s at a conference. Good start for you. Holiday class two!”
This is from a short guy who has just entered the tiny office. He looks remarkably sloppy in a very wide jumper and talks with a strong Italian accent. Like Hanna, I’d seen him before during my presentation but I have no idea what his name is. As we certainly have been introduced, I think it’s embarrassing to ask a second time and decide to wait until I hear someone else use it.
“What’s class one?” I ask.
“You being on holidays yourself,” he says giving me a playful wink. “But no worries, class one is a rather rare event.”
“I’ve got thirty holiday days per year written into my PhD contract,” I say, more to myself than anyone else.
“Yes, but you will be feeling too guilty to take them,” Bubblegum-Bobline-Girl sneers.
I sit on a chair hoping that one of them might initiate small talk with me. None do. For all they heed my presence I might as well be in Amersfoort, or Timbuktu for that matter. Feeling utterly superfluous to requirements, I listen into their conversation. And I feel the right side of my forehead swelling; the pain of the bang is still reverberating. I took time to pick sensible clothes this morning, I wanted to fit in, but I am marked as the clumsy girl with the signature of an autoclave on her head.
Feeling like a five year old who has had her favourite balloon burst by laughing bullies, I walk to the Museum a couple of minutes before the programme starts. About another twenty-five PhD students stream in around the same time. I’m delighted to note they look much less nerdy than I expected. In fact there are two guys in the room that are really quite cute. We all shake hands but again it’s all too quick to remember names. A dark-haired guy, who doesn’t seem much older than anyone else in the room, stands in front of us and starts instructing everyone about the games we have to play. He is at least thirty pounds overweight, attired in jogging pants and a white T-shirt that looks like it has been starched and ironed by his mummy. From the expression on his face, he clearly feels very important standing there. There is nothing appealing about this guy. As soon as he starts talking, with a strong Glaswegian accent, I not only struggle to understand him, but I also struggle to contain the irrational hatred he has inspired in me. “Aye. Ye jist standing, tryin to find the person with the same wee card…”
I want to stuff the stack of cards he holds in his left hand into his mouth to keep him from saying another word. Extremely demotivated I take the card out of his hand not really knowing what to do with it. Somehow this guy got so far into my allergies that I only focused on him, the irritant, and I entirely neglected his instructions. I ask the girl standing next to me what the plan is with the cards, and after her explanation I move to the right spot in the room. About an hour into the intro games, I pretend to go to the bathroom but don’t return. I had found myself in a line-up with twenty-five other new PhD students, ordered by body length. We also did a line-up based on our hometown’s distance from Edinburgh. Fascinating as height and distance surely are, I felt I just didn’t fit in and exited lest anyone rumble me as a party-pooper.
“They said what?” my mum asks, sipping from a cup of coffee on the other side of the screen.
She had asked me to phone her after my arrival to update her on how I was getting on. But until this afternoon I didn’t have internet in my apartment, so I had only sent a quick I-am-alive text message before.
“It turns out I don’t have a desk or a computer,” I say into my laptop for the second time, trying not to sound too frustrated.
For a few seconds my parents look dumbfounded on the screen. I’m not sure if Skype is just delayed or if they are thinking about an answer.
“Can’t you bring your own laptop? Then at least you have a computer.”
“I could, but I can’t do anything with it. I went to the IT Department and they don’t want to connect my private computer to the network for security reasons. Unfortunately, there’s no Wi-Fi in our lab.”
My mum is clearly thinking now; she’s
a problem solver, always has been.
“This sounds too strange. Of course there will be a desk and a computer for you. They really won’t take more PhD students than there are desks. Everyone needs a desk nowadays. Trust me. ”
“It didn’t sound like it, mum. They all told me I won’t have a desk.”
“Just wait until this boss of yours is back, doctor McLean I mean…”
“I hope so. I wouldn’t know how to do my PhD without it.”
“Really Ka, don’t worry about it.”
“I hope you’re right, mum. I really hope you’re right.”
After Skyping with my mum, I am convinced that the misery I felt during the first day of my PhD will give way to a whole new situation once Mark is back, and somehow I am excited to see how it all unfolds.
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_5
Chapter 5
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: office@karinbodewits.com
The second day wasn’t much different from the first. I spent both days perched on one of the lab chairs resting my back against the rusty autoclave. I had printed a new stack of papers to read, but I struggled to concentrate. No one talked to me unless I asked them a specific question. It felt miserable, and I ended up clock-watching. I didn’t have anything to do and hadn’t even talked to Mark about where to start.