Sight, Application, and a Second Purpose

If we were to look at the whole nerve ring of a C. elegans organism, it would be unclear to us whether each cellular component is a sensory neuron or a glial cell. If I didn't know that the DCR 1337 strain only had Green Fluorescent Protein illumination in the CEP sheath glial cells, the axonal processes would certainly look strikingly similar to the dendritic connections between two non-glial cell neurons. It's not like the images in a microscope come all nice and crisp like a textbook diagram, on the very contrary actually. If it wasn't for Dr. Norman, wormbook.com, and weeks of practice, I wouldn't be able to tell a worm's head from its tail. This week, I attended Ben's workshop on argument and analysis writing. The acronym we worked with for the argument piece was PSAC - Proposition, Support, Application, Conclusion. The most important part we focused on was application; in other words, telling the story.  It's the piece that connects everything together and leaves no room for variant interpretation. When one makes an argument, application allows us to explicitly say, this is what my evidence means and this is how each piece works together to validate my initial proposition. In my first few weeks at the lab, I wasn't "arguing" with Dr. Norman, don't worry. But it was kind of the same idea. I could look at those worms through the microscope all day, all the pieces of evidence were right before my very eyes, but it wasn't until Dr. Norman and the others introduced me to the meaning and functions of the structures that I actually understood enough to proceed.

Sight alone does not allow us to know the complete story - it simply shows us the end result. Much like there's a story behind every person, every thing that we see, a journey that led up to their existence at that very moment, the narrative of glial cells is not one to be overlooked. I've discussed this at length before; the roles, functions, and special contributions that glial cells bring to any organisms's nervous system but the more I consider the completeness of a story, the more I see potential ignorance that comes about from acknowledging image and sight alone.

Earlier in the year, I wrote a journal about my purpose for journal-writing. I told you about how writing is what allows me to understand the dizzying and incomplete thoughts which fill my mind. And while that remains a truthful purpose now more than ever, I think I've come to conceive of a second, possibly more valuable purpose. That is to take it one step further; to express to you the reader ( whoever you are) the way things look from where I stand, and why they appear so. While that probably seems similar to my initial purpose, I've been thinking about it more in the lens of the application piece I mentioned earlier. At one point or another, we must begin to take that extra step and go the extra mile. It is not enough for me to understand, I am but a small insignificant mind amidst the multitudes of other people. The first step, without a doubt, remains to come to one's own personal understanding of something but that is not a stopping point. It would be foolish then to think that achieving a piece of any endeavor is achieving its whole. To understand the truth about something is manifold. Let me go back to the workshop for a second - in argument writing, using words like "clearly" is a big no-no. If your argument was truly well crafted, you would have no need of such diction, the narrative ought to speak for itself. Part of verifying such clarity then is to personally understand it, but the other part is to understand how to convey such to your audience. 

With respect to my project, I think I face an extra obstacle that is often a struggle for me to overcome - understanding how to make people care about glial cells and being able to draw that connection to a larger theme which most people really do consider important. For that reason, I've recently been engrossing myself in a book called "The inheritance : a family on the front lines of the battle against Alzheimer's disease" by Niki Kapsambelis. I've always stood by the fact that Alzheimer's Disease poses a very unique struggle for those afflicted and their families, so unique that it's compelled and intrigued me far more than any other ailment's characteristics. As someone who struggles on both ends of this; understanding biological components of the disease and wrapping my head around its psychological/emotional implications, I find the challenge to be immensely humbling. But truly, it is through reading this book, reflecting on many a summer experience at the nursing home, and considering my communicative role as a questioner of this disease that I am attempting to chart a map for myself through it all.