Work, part two

Here’s part one.

***

First summer home from Berkeley, I had grandiose hopes. My father had mentioned a job at a water-bottling plant with an unbelievable wage of $10 per hour. Money like that, I could save a bundle, and at last put into effect an escape fantasy I had hatched for my girlfriend. We would rent an apartment together. She would transfer to one of the many colleges in the area, and we could both take part-time jobs to pay expenses.

She knew nothing of this, and it was just as well; my first day home I spent chasing down a job that didn’t exist. Meanwhile, my gf was less than amused that I would put a nonexistent job above her — I didn’t see her until that evening.

I found a great job the next day, in the Classifieds. Minimum wage, but it was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had: I became a short order cook at the local golf course.

Jack and Mary were the owners’ names, an old married couple who seemed inordinately impressed by a college boy wanting to work as many hours as possible. My immediate supervisor was Joe, a fifty-something guy who had worked minimum wage food service jobs all his life and who lived for golf. He taught me everything I needed to know about flipping eggs over easy, making perfect dollar pancakes, and fixing killer omelettes (omelettes containing bacon, hash browns, fried onions, and cheddar cheese). We fed the golfers breakfast and lunch, and had a grand old time of it.

That job was the only stability I knew that summer. Not only were things strained nearly to the breaking point with my girlfriend, but some major weirdness at home (which isn’t my story, so I’m not sharing) had me thoroughly rattled. But every morning I came in bright and early to boil and peel potatoes, fry up a ton of hash browns, and crack eggs by the dozens. To this day, I find mega-cooking therapeutic. I think that’s when it started.

You know, I’d like to say I worked my way through college, but the jobs were hit or miss. No, my dad gets full credit for putting me through my undergraduate years. I took care of med school, thanks to graduate school stipends and student loans, but my father shouldered the financial burden at Berkeley.

Anyway.

Come September, I was back in school. Sophomore year. My next job came about a year later when I did a six month internship at Stauffer Chemical Company. Not bad, getting paid a couple thousand dollars to play with chemicals (and make at least one decent explosion). I saved enough money to buy Karen her engagement ring two years later — or did I earn that money in the Kim Lab?

The Stauffer internship convinced me I didn’t want to be a PhD chemist. Feh. The intellectual challenges struck me as maddeningly similar from one day to the next. Imagine being handed a new sudoku puzzle each morning. “Sudoku again?” you complain, and the Vice President replies, “No, no! This one’s different!” I suppose all work is like that, but medicine is a lot more like being handed a whole book of different puzzles. Today I’m working an acrostic, tomorrow a cryptogram, the next day a crossword puzzle.

But . . . back to work. Next job: senior year.

If I remember correctly, I had been working in the Kim lab for nine months when Sung-Hou told me they had a bit of extra money. If I wanted to work for him and Rosie that summer, I could make a few hundred bucks. I was planning on hanging out in their lab anyway, so of course I jumped at the offer.

To orient you: Karen and I had been together for six months, and I had just graduated. I didn’t have much to do that summer but wait for med school to start the following September. (Six months into a great relationship, you think I’m going to go home for ten weeks? Hah!)

Um . . . actually, I think Stanford had me on the waiting list, so I spent most of that summer WAITING. So I waited it out in the Kim lab and did a bunch of minilysates, plasmid preps, and minigels. Molecular biology was still fun back then — very little automation. No PCR, no DNA sequencers. I would bust up bacteria by the millions with a good slug of phenol, which is probably carcinogenic for all I know, then take off the phenol with ether.

Mmmm. Ether.

Add sodium acetate. Add 100% pure ethanol.

Mmmm. Ethanol.

Watch the DNA come out of solution, a bluish-gray wisp, and spin it out in your microfuge. Those were the days. Such fun, and they paid me well for it.

But I missed the golf course restaurant. Nothing like dishing up a perfect poached egg.

To be continued, of course.

D.