Growing up I always wanted to be a chemical engineer. I would mix and match everything from paint to kitchen cleansers and solvents. Sometimes I would get cool results, maybe an obnoxious odor, or even some steam or smoke, but mostly duds. I experimented with fuel mixtures and even tried to formulate my own ethanol corn blend. Leaving it in the shed right in front of the window on a very hot summer day ended my little lab experiments for a while. Something about burning down the shed was the reason my parents used for discarding everything I ever used in my makeshift labs downstairs, in the shed, and in my bedroom. But try as they might my enthusiasm only grew in the classroom. Science and math were easy enough and with very high grades in school I was able to secure a scholarship to a top notch Chemical Engineering Program.
Fuel mixtures quickly disappeared from my desires to experiment and my time and effort began focusing on chemical reactions. The cause and effect of mixing two solutions or rearranging their molecular structure was a wide open area for exploration in chemical science. I would find myself in the lab for hours and hours at a time. This effort along with some of the papers I had written gained me valuable attention from the professors and enabled me to apply for a couple of grants under the university oversight. However after a multitude of paperwork and applications I was either denied or given restructured criteria in which to resubmit. My original ideas were rejected.
One of the restructured grants I had returned to me was in the field of reproductive science and fertility. When I first saw the outline I set the document aside and figured it would never be something I would consider. And for many good reasons. I was the class nerd my whole life. I was the one who developed acne the soonest and had it the longest. I was the one with the skinny arms and boney legs that was ridiculed all through high school. Whenever I was approached it was usually one of the jocks who needed tutoring so he remained eligible to play whatever sport he was in. By the end of high school I was respected by the athletes because of the people I had helped over the last couple of years. They high fived me in the hallway and a couple even had said I had saved their butts. But that was only on the athlete side. Girls still laughed and avoided me and therefore I had never had a date or even kissed a girl. So why would someone like me consider doing anything regarding reproductive science. College life did agree with my size as I grew to just over six feet tall, my skin cleared up, I added some weight, and was no longer the scrawny kid. Carrying books and walking campus or riding the campus bikes also bulked me up a little and I began to fit in with the others. Of course there was always the added bonus of a fantastic meal plan in the student center which always included things to help me gain weight when I wasn't at work studying.
My work in the labs continued daily and I spent many hours trying to figure out what I could do to get a research grant and stay on for a master's degree at the university. The pile of rejections were revisited with most of them ending back up in the bottom of a drawer. The grant for fertility research was left on my desk since I thought it had been discarded already and would make sure I did today when I cleaned up.
My favorite pastime was searching the internet to see what others had done for their working grants. I stumbled across a lab that required using a litmus test to check for acidity and was experimenting with it when Professor Barrows walked into the lab. The test was to kill time and was not something I was doing for a project, a grant, classroom assignment or any other reason. It was just helping me clear time while I pondered my options. If I didn't get a grant, I was going to have to end my education journey. Walking up to my area he stopped at the desk and picked up the grant proposal request for the Reproduction and Fertility project that I had left out and destined for the round recycle bin out front.
"I see you're giving the fertility testing some consideration?" He asked.
"No sir, I haven't looked at it too much. It is not in an area of study I would like to pursue. I was leaving that one out so I could throw it out when I left."
"Jake it is not about the problem's subject itself, it is about the science it takes to resolve it. You take the problem and break it down into requirements and you determine how to meet those requirements using the science you know and the science you need to learn in order to come to a conclusion or solution. It is the same as any other problem you have tackled in the last four years here."
With that he picked up the litmus paper and asked what role would acidity or alkalinity play in the problem I am trying to avoid. I was told to give it some serious thought because the grant was still available and the current interest in it was poor.
"Science doesn't solve the problems we like, science solves the problems we have." He said.
I picked up the package and started reading it more thoroughly with the whole pregnancy thing out of my mind. Professor was right the package did focus on fertility but also on the fact that higher levels of acidity can negatively affect the woman's ability to conceive. But that wasn't the avenue I was thinking. Since the acid levels affected the window of opportunity why wouldn't it be easier to just tell whether or not the window was open? Pin point the exact day and time using science and increase the chance of becoming pregnant. Reduce the acidity during the same time of the next cycle and the chances increase.
