Monday Morning Motivation: Let's Go Beat Cancer

Swiping my card for the familiar “Click-Click” unlocking of the Biomedical Research Tower doors, I get through and press the up button for the elevator. As the car dings its arrival, I notice someone following my path, only a mere 30 seconds behind. Feeling generous this morning, I hold the elevator. With my gesture appreciated, I smile. It’s Monday. Weekly lab meetings are on Mondays, and it’s my turn to give out the Buckeye Leaf. Russell, who works in bioinformatics, granted me the Roychowdhury Lab’s ultimate mark of appreciation for my Pelotonia fundraising efforts over the past few weeks. Walking into the conference room, I immediately spot the other students: Avni, Kaitlin, and Gabrielle. They return my greeting and laugh at my corny joke about the freezing cold 80-degree weather. Continuing to scan the room, I recognize my developing habituation to the remarkable integration of bioinformaticians, clinicians, and wet-lab researchers into one coherent, cancer-fighting team. Despite their different definitions of the word “science,” no passerby could single out the computer geeks from the pipette nerds.

      Dr. Sameek Roychowdhury walks in, and the room quiets in a way reminiscent of a high school classroom welcoming a widely-respected professor. I’m called upon to choose my Buckeye Leaf recipient: the person or group that has best embodied our chosen “Ten Principles for a Successful Team” including selflessness, specialization, and communication. I announce the remarkable teamwork demonstrated by the students over the past week—from splitting times for cell culture experiments to running favor supply errands, it was inspiring and should not go unnoticed. My heart soars watching the young scientists add the traditional buckeye sticker to an OSU football helmet. As Dr. Roychowdhury continues with the week’s agenda filled with Pelotonia tours, paper/grant submissions, and more meetings, I find myself focused on the helmet. Nearly covered, there’s only a few spaces left after today’s addition. Soon, it will be added to the collection of completed helmets in Sameek’s office. Hundreds of individually-placed stickers. Hundreds of expressions of gratitude. Hundreds of selfless acts of dedication, teamwork, patience, accountability…

     “Let’s go beat cancer!” Sameek’s familiar dismissal shakes me from my daydream. We depart the conference room in herd before groups break off—some to traditional offices, others to humming computer rooms, and the last group (myself included) to our lab benches. The snapping of our wrists against latex accompanies the familiar “How was your weekend?” conversations. First thing’s first, I check on my cells growing in culture. They grew and divided well over the weekend, so today I can run a qPCR to examine oncogene expression. I look up from the microscope. Again, I smile. Mondays aren’t so bad. We are curing cancer today, one Buckeye Leaf at a time.