Wednesday, March 22, 2006

feeling old or honored?

I decided to google my name the other day with following options: "Sackett, Marcella", "Sackett, MJ", and a few others. As usual, my scientific articles from graduate school, aka my former life, popped up, but another article caught my eye, "Cell-Cycle Progression and the Generation of Asymmetry in Caulobacter crescentus". If you are really interested in reading this article, you can find it here.

Well, this review includes a few references to my old articles. So, I decided to check out my reference numbers in the bibliography and then search for them in the text. The very first one I come across is

"Early work on CtrA showed that it...."

EARLY WORK?!? What? Have I been offically archived in the scientific community to "EARLY WORK"?! I have been trying to come to terms with what I have been feeling and I have run through quite a few different emotions. The first was a really strong sense of "where did the time go?" or "how old am I", but then I started to think about it and am actually feeling a bit proud. Does this mean that my work made a difference and that it was a jumping off point for other researches to investigate the mysteries of cell division?

3 comments:

mindakms said...

Nah, it just means you are old.
Kidding.

What a geek you were. I could hardly read this outloud to Scott for all the words that were in latin! (greek?)

Proud to know you brainiac!

Anonymous said...

Marcella,

When you said "Microorganisms make tractable model systems and Caulobacter Cresecentus has emerged as the main model for understanding the regulation of the bacterial cell cycle"- did you mean to make us weep? I loved it dahling, loved it loved it! I laughed, I cried, it was better than "CATS!"

nancy_scraps said...

You should feel honored.

I actually went to a class once where my MS work was quoted/used as a reference. I had changed my name so no one in the room knew I was there.

I should have spoken up... "Eh, pretty clever of that Nancy Shaler to come up with such a conclusion." Then maybe they would all agree. and never know....

Nancy