The DNA of Life Anonymous

Vigorously shaking the two milliliter eppendorf tube, the bubbles sprawled out from the bottom, captivating the threads into a structure that engulfed me in a trance. Then the trance was broken. I looked at the scratch left on my hand when I pushed the nylon glove off. A month’s worth of work had just been tossed into a trashcan. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) would not show any bands of DNA, and I was left to carry my disappointment all the way to the bus stop.

While sitting on the bus, I recounted every second I spent pipetting and the hours put in that left me with only a few bands of DNA. Sitting there with the end of my pursuit in science, I realized at that moment there sat many more stories beside me. They surrounded the medical student who had jumped on the bus as she eagerly pulled out her Netter’s Anatomy ; the nurse who stared blankly at the floor as if she just delivered new noone would want to hear. Millions of stories stirred on the bus and the triviality of my end to my pursuit came into light as I found that I could make the next story on the bus completely different. The moment right then was just one moment. Our life was meant to be the culmination of these moments, all mustered with failure, brutality...