Science Slam: Kenneth Hipp

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04/05/2018 Added

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Kenneth Hipp, chemistry

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[00:00:02.807]So the title of my talk is called
[00:00:04.650]Learning Who I Am,
[00:00:05.980]and that's kind of because the topic
[00:00:07.790]of this talk made me think a lot
[00:00:09.980]about how I got on the path
[00:00:11.057]to where I am now.
[00:00:13.170]And it's not that I never thought
[00:00:14.400]about these things before.
[00:00:15.740]It's just that I never thought
[00:00:16.720]about them in quite the way that I have.
[00:00:20.930]So the topic, of course, was,
[00:00:22.817]"When did you feel like a scientist?"
[00:00:25.060]And my first thought when I saw this was,
[00:00:26.955]I was very excited for the science theme
[00:00:28.337]'cause I came last year.
[00:00:29.470]It was my first time.
[00:00:30.330]I loved the presentations.
[00:00:31.670]I had a wonderful time.
[00:00:32.520]The food was amazing.
[00:00:33.440]Jocelyn's amazing.
[00:00:35.840]My boss is on the chair.
[00:00:39.020]I was gonna get volun-told
[00:00:40.040]if I didn't volunteer, so.
[00:00:41.954](laughter)
[00:00:44.287]I'm like, "This is easy.
[00:00:45.167]"I'm a scientist."
[00:00:46.090]I go into--
[00:00:48.540]Thank you.
[00:00:50.170]I go into the lab every day,
[00:00:52.020]I show up, I do research, I have this nice
[00:00:54.570]little box here on the right.
[00:00:56.840]And yes, that's nail polish,
[00:00:58.710]and I promise you it's a very important
[00:01:00.160]scientific tool.
[00:01:01.354](laughter)
[00:01:02.187]I'm primarily an electrochemist.
[00:01:03.020]I work with bio sensors.
[00:01:04.180]So you can think like the glucose meter.
[00:01:05.536]You put a little drop of blood on it
[00:01:06.794]and you measure it
[00:01:07.674]and you can figure out what your blood sugar level is.
[00:01:10.405]I design different types of bio sensors
[00:01:12.306]along those lines.
[00:01:13.760]I've worked with things that detect HIV,
[00:01:14.593]things that detect pancreatic cancer.
[00:01:17.600]I've use gold substrates,
[00:01:18.706]I've worked with metal oxides.
[00:01:19.885]All this sounds very scientific, right?
[00:01:23.010]Yeah.
[00:01:23.990]So I have these nice, fancy designs
[00:01:27.940]with leads attached to them
[00:01:30.020]and I get outputs and graphs using 5,000 plus
[00:01:33.970]dollar instruments.
[00:01:36.830]That's science, right?
[00:01:39.150]And as I look at the topic,
[00:01:41.386]I saw the e-mail that Jocelyn sent out.
[00:01:43.100]I looked over it, I was like, "Oh my god."
[00:01:46.610]I looked over at my co-worker.
[00:01:49.617]"I don't feel like a scientist."
[00:01:51.175](laughter)
[00:01:52.440]Because the truth is, I feel like it's kind of
[00:01:54.660]the graduate student condition,
[00:01:55.710]or at least it is for me,
[00:01:56.543]and if you feel differently, more power to you.
[00:01:59.760]I have no idea what I'm doing.
[00:02:01.144](laughter)
[00:02:01.977]But, like, in a good way.
[00:02:02.810]The whole point of science is,
[00:02:04.920]you're trying to elucidate new things
[00:02:07.005]in the field.
[00:02:08.090]That's the whole point.
[00:02:08.923]If you already knew it, you wouldn't be
[00:02:09.940]in there doing it.
[00:02:10.773]It wouldn't be worth publishing.
[00:02:11.606]It wouldn't be worth talking about.
[00:02:12.910]So I spend so much in the lab
[00:02:14.133]working on something that I have no idea what I'm doing.
[00:02:17.940]But I know enough to get started.
[00:02:20.280]So I constantly feel like I'm just below the bar.
[00:02:24.240]So I kinda had to center myself and regroup,
[00:02:27.680]and go, "How am I gonna do this
[00:02:29.187]"if I don't feel like a scientist today?"
[00:02:32.410]So I Googled it.
[00:02:34.103](laughter)
[00:02:34.936]And Google tells me that
[00:02:35.984]a scientist is a noun.
[00:02:38.960]Which is good, we're part way there,
[00:02:39.900]I do feel like an actual thing, an object, I exist.
[00:02:42.192](laughter) Perfect.
[00:02:43.490]And then Google says, "A person who is studying
[00:02:45.807]"or has expert knowledge of one or more
[00:02:47.312]"of the natural or physical sciences."
[00:02:49.701]I feel like that wasn't inclusive enough,
[00:02:51.490]so I skipped it.
[00:02:52.490]And I went to Merriam-Webster
[00:02:53.620]and it says, "A person learned in science"
[00:02:56.320]and we're gonna stop it there
[00:02:57.153]and ignore the rest of it.
[00:02:58.203](laughter)
[00:02:59.036]So I'm like, "Okay, I'm definitely doing science.
[00:03:00.237]"I go in the lab," like I said.
[00:03:01.487]I've done these things.
[00:03:04.080]And it still doesn't feel complete to me.
[00:03:05.860]And there's a reason it doesn't feel
[00:03:06.880]complete to me.
[00:03:09.960]I don't wanna be a scientist.
[00:03:11.540]I know that sounds weird.
[00:03:12.373]I'm a graduate student,
[00:03:13.206]I work in the chemistry labs.
[00:03:14.870]But that's not my career path.
[00:03:16.090]I don't wanna work
[00:03:17.210]in an industry lab,
[00:03:18.180]I don't wanna do quality control.
[00:03:19.205]I don't wanna have
[00:03:20.860]a wide array of instruments
[00:03:22.344]that I'm in charge of.
[00:03:25.490]I wanna teach other people how to do these things.
[00:03:27.810]And so this is a wonderful picture of me.
[00:03:30.653]I wanted you all to see my face twice
[00:03:31.744]'cause it's that important.
[00:03:33.482](laughter)
[00:03:34.315]And these are two of my students
[00:03:35.148]who I made sure
[00:03:35.981]that they were most definitely following protocol
[00:03:38.410]before I put this up there.
[00:03:39.380]They're wearing, you know, they've got their lab coats
[00:03:40.922]on, they're wearing goggles, they've got gloves.
[00:03:42.472]They look like they're scientists, right?
[00:03:45.810]And the truth of the matter is,
[00:03:48.970]this is when I feel like I'm a scientist.
[00:03:51.350]So a little bit of back story,
[00:03:53.484]I, of course, didn't know I wanted
[00:03:54.874]to do this my whole life.
[00:03:56.600]Like most people when they were younger,
[00:03:58.405]the idea of being a teacher was
[00:03:59.576]absolutely horrifying.
[00:04:01.234](laughter)
[00:04:02.150]Why would I get paid so much worse
[00:04:05.480]to deal with children?
[00:04:07.650]And I consider--
[00:04:08.483]I'm sorry to all of you that are there.
[00:04:10.550]If you're undergrads or grad students like me.
[00:04:14.760]I consider you a child.
[00:04:16.290]I consider myself a child.
[00:04:17.658](laughs)
[00:04:18.491]I'm still worried that one day
[00:04:20.100]I'm gonna show up and I forgot to pay
[00:04:21.629]one of my bills, like the oxygen bill,
[00:04:25.610]and they're just gonna turn it off.
[00:04:27.340]I have to hold my breath for three minutes
[00:04:28.660]till I get it turned back on.
[00:04:30.550]So just a little bit of back story
[00:04:32.220]on how I wanted to become a teacher
[00:04:33.109]and it's nothing really special, in all honesty.
[00:04:37.320]Actually, I don't even think this person
[00:04:38.690]knows the effect that they had on me.
[00:04:40.240]And that is, I was a tutor in undergrad
[00:04:42.941]to make some money.
[00:04:44.050]You know, school pays you minimum wage
[00:04:45.380]and you say, "I got my tuition money back!"
[00:04:47.682]So I was teaching an analytical student
[00:04:51.152]and they had questions regarding
[00:04:52.501]the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation.
[00:04:54.970]For those of you who aren't familiar with it,
[00:04:56.221]it's a wonderful (mumbles) equation
[00:04:58.720]about weak acids and weak bases.
[00:05:00.690]If you know the concentration of something,
[00:05:02.108]you can figure out the pH.
[00:05:03.780]It's beautiful, it's simple to understand, I thought.
[00:05:07.280]I'm a chemist.
[00:05:08.113]Of course it's simple to understand.
[00:05:09.330]But this wonderful person,
[00:05:11.120]I love her to death.
[00:05:11.953]She was an extremely average student
[00:05:15.710]who struggled, and I love her to death
[00:05:17.460]because she tried so hard,
[00:05:18.550]and that's nothing against her.
[00:05:20.110]And she tried and tried and tried
[00:05:22.628]and I spent several hours with her
[00:05:24.127]and then finally, magically, we got through it.
[00:05:26.140]It clicked for her.
[00:05:26.973]She understood it perfectly.
[00:05:28.247]And that was it, I moved on.
[00:05:30.290]I got my paycheck.
[00:05:31.123]It was a good day.
[00:05:32.090]And then about a year later,
[00:05:32.923]we were in the same class together.
[00:05:34.920]We were taking a biochemistry course.
[00:05:35.995]And the interesting thing about this course,
[00:05:38.257]and I went to a very small liberal arts college,
[00:05:39.476]so a lot of times people taught classes
[00:05:41.836]that necessarily they weren't the best person
[00:05:43.367]suited for it.
[00:05:44.200]So while she was a wonderful professor,
[00:05:45.698]she was a biology professor
[00:05:47.548]with a degree in parasitology.
[00:05:50.030]So while she'd clearly taken the
[00:05:51.140]chemistry portion of this biochemistry class,
[00:05:54.452]she was a little rusty on it.
[00:05:56.778]Which is perfectly fine.
[00:05:57.611]So a lot of times when she was getting
[00:05:59.430]to more of a chemistry topic,
[00:06:00.780]she would have one of the senior chemistry students
[00:06:02.042]explain it.
[00:06:04.790]And we got to Henderson-Hasselbalch
[00:06:06.570]and that student that I have taught
[00:06:08.210]just a year ago volunteered
[00:06:10.070]to explain the concept to the class.
[00:06:12.700]So she got up and explained this concept
[00:06:14.223]to the class
[00:06:16.300]and I welled up
[00:06:18.070]with this feeling of
[00:06:19.750]what I thought was pride.
[00:06:21.730]And then I realized, no it's not,
[00:06:22.840]it's anger 'cause everybody else is right,
[00:06:23.673]I should totally have been a teacher this whole time.
[00:06:25.760]I don't know why it took me this many years
[00:06:26.940]to figure it out.
[00:06:28.120]So this is kind of what I'm getting
[00:06:30.743]at is I don't feel like a scientist
[00:06:33.530]because I'm not where I want to be
[00:06:35.970]as a scientist yet.
[00:06:37.114]I like learning the science, I do.
[00:06:39.020]I do truly enjoy my job.
[00:06:40.270]I love going in and working,
[00:06:41.570]but it's not where I wanna be.
[00:06:43.340]I want to learn the material so
[00:06:44.740]that I can then tell everybody else
[00:06:45.874]about this material.
[00:06:46.892]That's when I most feel like a scientist.
[00:06:48.604]'Cause when I sit in the lab
[00:06:50.143]day in and day out,
[00:06:51.919]my boss is amazing.
[00:06:53.900]She's way smarter than me.
[00:06:55.340]And when I compare anything I've done
[00:06:56.600]to the stuff that she's done,
[00:06:57.433]I wanna pack up and leave.
[00:07:00.420]But if I go out to lunch
[00:07:01.570]with a colleague in another lab,
[00:07:03.930]I feel like a genius.
[00:07:04.763]They have no idea what I'm doing.
[00:07:05.911](laughter)
[00:07:08.520]So, just kinda the last thing I want to leave you on
[00:07:11.210]is a Relevant XKCD,
[00:07:12.490]'cause there are always one.
[00:07:13.323]And I'm not gonna read the whole thing to you,
[00:07:14.546]but it basically boils down to,
[00:07:16.170]every single day people are learning new things.
[00:07:18.370]And they gingerly admit that they're learning new things.
[00:07:20.490]And you can't shut down learning.
[00:07:22.720]You embrace learning.
[00:07:23.553]So this person here just heard about the Diet Coke
[00:07:27.060]and Mentos, and we all know how cool that is.
[00:07:29.070]And if you haven't, go buy a Diet Coke and Mentos.
[00:07:30.748]It's really cool.
[00:07:31.659](laughter)
[00:07:32.670]And he's gonna go to the grocery store
[00:07:34.620]and teach him how to do it.
[00:07:35.453]So every single day when I'm in the lab,
[00:07:37.788]I'm the person on the left
[00:07:39.259]who has no idea what's going on
[00:07:41.700]and is just waiting for something to happen.
[00:07:44.560]But when I teach, I get to be the one on the right.
[00:07:47.860]And that's when I feel like a scientist,
[00:07:49.620]whenever I'm sharing what I've learning
[00:07:50.940]with other people.
[00:07:52.800]So, that's all that I have for today.
[00:07:54.730]Thank you all for listening to me rant.
[00:07:56.699](applause)

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Science Slam: Kenneth Hipp

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