CU is doing this to you?!? Man, my husband’s alma mater (law school) gets more fucked up every day… Back in the day, the big scandal was getting DNA from every football player when Coach McCartney’s daughter turned up pregnant… 
Sorry, mamma. My SILs and BIL were all in academia (UCLA and USC) and got tired of being fucked out of grant money, publications, etc. Two are in the private sector now (big pharm & private practice) and one is only biding time at a uni until the baby is born…
Ooooooh, the things I could do with a hundred mice!
:: Starts drafting Evil Plan to conquer the world… involves mice, teeny tiny little helmets with lazer beams… ::
Your stepfather works at CSU? The red-headed stepchild of Colorado academics? 
Research on batshit, hell why not?
I applied for a job with CSU, even looked into their vet program. Sounds like a nice place.
I’m glad that your in-laws found better work. Getting in to industry looks really tough!
Mouse_Spouse is encouraging me to go to school full-time next year. Right now, I’m so tired and frustrated, I’d just want to give the fuck up. If I finally finish my Biology BS, what can I do? Return to the U and get my ass losened up? (Guess I’ll be keeping that anal training toy my friends gave me.) Try for industry?
Be my guest! Happy conquering 
These mice have repressed immune systems, or none at all. You’ll have a War of the Worlds ending to your plans. Unless you take over every computer clean room and clean freak’s home in the country.
RE: Spoiler
You could put 'em in tiny little Dalek suits.
Mice chanting “Exterminate! Exterminate!”? That’s irony, isn’t it? 
Past tense - He’s doing research back in his native California now. But yeah - Was looking at guano accumulations as means of doing long time-frame analysis of air contaminants, especially things like mercury. Bats are a bio-concentrator, use certain roosts in very predictable fashions, over periords of time that begin to make geologic sense. So, if you core a mountain of batshit, you can get a very good idea of polution levels over hundreds, thousands, and even many multiples of thousands of years. His lab included a freezer space full of batshit cores.
Red-headed academic stepchild - Heh! At least that means taking second choice on jerks and political liabilities, too…
The Vet program there is simply superior. The only peer to CSU’s vet program in the entire US is Penn. One of my numerous sisters has her DVM from CSU (big surprise, eh?), and her profs and peers read like a Whos-Who of the Vet world.
Edit:
Oh, and I would pay money to see mice Daleks. The irony would be worth the admission, alone.
For some reason, this has me giggling like mad. If your stepfather still has those cores. I’d trade a rat’s ass for one. 
I’ve never understood why CU and its campuses got so much attention. (I’ll stop being coy. Here is where I work. In the sake of fairness - very un-Pit like - my experiences do not speak for the whole place.) Colorado has several other high quality colleges. If I was ten years younger, and not expecting, I’d be busting my ass to get into CSU’s vet program.
That’s it! Dopers, lets take our collective intelligence and create mouse-powered Daleks!! We can take over the World!!
Whaaaaaa-HaHaHa!!!
I got dibs on who they attack first. Just need to find a couple of addresses. Exterminate! Exterminate! Fuckers!
Hey, it’s my idea, and I’ve got a little list, myself. 
My mice. Ok, not technically mine, but I’ve been playing with their lives for several generations now. Priority due to delusion of murine divinity.
Okay, fine.
But I pick the secondary targets.
Can I choose the collateral damage?
Deal!
Ah, do you know why a big blue box just appear in the basement?
Moi?
You know, the instant I noticed this thread I thought it was about this lab.
Bummer about CU, sincerely. It’s in need of serious global reform.
Wow! That makes my cats’ behavior look much better.
As for CU, I have been disgruntled with them for awhile. This Pit was sparked by the fact that the mother-fucking admin will cough up the NCAA fine and take away funding from research - letting an entire department die.
Atheltics vs. Academics at a university is throughly beaten corpse. IMHO, this U. has over-extended itself. It needs to reorganize and get a cohesive vision.
If it’s any encouragement, my sister didn’t graduate until her early 30s - She took the scenic academic route - And she wasn’t the oldest graduate in her class, either.
OTOH, from what I saw, having a baby underfoot would pretty much doom you - You’d either need very good support in taking care of el bambino, or wait even longer.
Mouse you bring a lot to the party, give the vet school some more thought. Will it be easy with a mini-mouse? No, it won’t. but it won’t be impossible either.
And just think how good your practice’s accounts receivable will look with little mice in Dalek suits chanting exterminate! doing the collections.
Mouse Maven-
I know exactly what you’re going through. When I was a post-doc, my PI was a clueless fucktard and the admins at the institution enabled his fuckery. After 3 years of his insanity (and I could go into a lot more gory details), I finally literally told them all to “fuck off”, quit his lab, quit research, and now I teach. I have many bright students that want to go into science, and I am very conscientious in telling them my tale and warning them to be prepared to wade through piles of BS on their way.
I feel bad for how you’re being treated, lab techs are the beating heart of a lab…grad students and post-docs come and go, but lab techs that hang around keep the lab functioning as it should. I chuckled at your dialog about the chemotherapy/mouse study proposed by the PI. I was a lab tech myself for many years as an undergrad and a couple of years after getting my B.S., and it was the realization that I was every bit as intelligent (and sometimes more so) than the people that were my “superiors” that helped spur me on to get my Ph.D.
I might add, and I hesitate to do so because it may be more discouraging to you than helpful, that the things that made my decision to chuck a high-end research career easier was the wife and baby at home that didn’t get to see much of me because I was spending so much time chained to the lab bench. Domestic tranquility was also strained by the fact that the stipend and benefits given to post-docs go beyond suck, my wife’s profession pays crap also, and we were sinking into an abyss of debt and depression with no hope in sight. I ultimately chose what I saw was quality family life versus a career path that isn’t very family-friendly. If you have a child on the way, don’t be surprised (like I was) that your priorities in life may take a turn. There’s a reason why most scientists (and other higher-educated professionals) marry late and have children even later, it’s very difficult to balance the needs of being a new parent and build a successful career at the same time- I chose not to play that game. Not to say it can’t be done: those that I personally know that did the build a family + science career thing either A) had lots of money (rich family or had a highly-paid spouse) and could pay to have a live-in nanny/maid/slave, B) had lots of local familial support (i.e a live-in grandma that could serve as a free nanny/maid/slave.) or C) had a miserable home life and are now divorced.
Good-luck. You seem like the type that will land on their feet, so don’t fret too much.
btw…those wouldn’t happen to be using SCID mice you’re working with?
My mini-Daleks would wreak havok on ankles around the world!!!
A couple of years ago, I got my first job as a lab tech. Before that, I was an animal care tech. My experience with the research animals got me that job.
I was very grateful to be given the opportunity to do reasearch, even though I was going to school part-time to get my BS. For three years, I managed a four strain colony of mice, the lab accounts and ordering, did necropsies, collected tumors, processed those tumors for pathology, cell culture, cyro-freezing, and flow cytometry. I provided these tissues for the PI, a post-doc, and three fellows! They all thought that animal handling was “gross” and didn’t want to do it, but they needed the bits for their research. When their big research paper was finished, I fought tooth and nail to get an authorship. I was the one coming into the lab at 6 am to thaw and prep cells for flow. My photos of the necropsies were in the paper. And I did all of this making less than standard starting tech pay because I didn’t have a degree!
I got the authorship, but it was a hollow victory. Since I take classes part time, I tried to use the paper as a way to get academic credit for my work. My advisor basically said, “That’s nice, but your GPA is to low to qualify for an independent study program.” :mad: All those early mornings and late night in the lab took time away from my studies.
Because of my experiences, I have adopted a “only 40 hours a week” attitude. Its sad, really. After years of being told that hard work will bring rewards and opportunities, I have had to set boundries. Students and PI’s don’t like it, but they have to suck it up.
What to do for a living is on my mind. I’m 16 credit hours away from finishing my fucking BS. Mouse_Spouse can work from home a few days a week and is willing to mind the Mouseling while I go to school full-time. After the baby is born, and we get into a routine, I’ll look into this. Maybe I can move into industry. If it doesn’t look like Spouse will get transferred because of work, and his job isn’t out-sourced to India, maybe we’ll consider vet school.
Worse case senario: I work admin some where. Its not what I like, but I’ve got tons of experience and the money is green.
We’ve got SCIDs, NODs, GFPs (green glow mice!) and a couple of transgenic strains that produce only B or T cells. No Nudes, but they’d be fun to have.
(I’m a mouse nerd. If I could, I’d attempt to cross breed GFPs and Nudes. Naked glowing mice would look cool!)
The Spineless Bastard just walked in the lab showing someone the “Great research space.” :rolleyes:
The Fucker is picking over our corpse. He must have seen this coming. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be giving the person a tour.
I’m tempted to approach the canidate (I’m assuming that’s who he’s showing around) and tell her, “Oh hello! Did you know that the last person who interviewed for a PI position with this Bastard was told she’d get no funding and promised her used equipment that actually belongs to my lab, not the Bastard. He’s a lot of fucking fun!” The bastard actually did this last year to a candiate after DH annouced that he was leaving. I know because she told me!
Eat shit and DIE, you stump-fucking asshole!