Microbiology must die.

I feel a peace descending upon this very table where I have sat entering my data for each of my recent labs. I am finishing my Microbiology class. And I plan on finishing on time, in spite of all odds against this. Chicken blood is growing bacteria in an airtight test tube at room temperature for cultures to be started tomorrow; my biochemical tests have been recorded; five plates of bacteria sit growing in a cooler over there, soon to meet their death by bleach; and I almost had a heart attack when I opened up a contaminated plate the other day that I had been saving to use for a current experiment. When one realizes that a microbe is microscopic and then finds an infested dish with a beautiful~~albeit completely, hideously creepy~~filamentous growth on it, the realization is all the more terrible.

Kindly, my instructor has let all students have extra time to finish up labs, as supplies only arrived recently for the last assignments. This caused a fair amount of grumbling on my end. The end of the semester is~~well, the end of the semester. I don't want your generous offer of extra time. I just need to be done. Done with these pet microbes reproducing in their comfy and nourishing plates.

This class has put much into perspective for me.

1) If you have health, you should get on your knees right now and thank God, because there are billions and billions of unseen creepy crawlies that want to live with you and possibly kill you, often in a completely passive and accidental kind of way;

2) When Time Magazine discusses the terrible and imminent end of our world due to global warming, I wonder what the press would have reported when people died in cholera epidemics prior to the invention of modern sewage treatment. Watery and profuse diarrhea until death without any flushable toilets. Can you imagine? No, you can’t. Not if you’re reading this on the internet. Neither can I.

3) Washing your hands and cooking your meat is incredibly important.

4) A tapeworm, even an 18 foot long one, may cause remarkably few symptoms. However, “emotional distress may result when a meter-long segment drops out of the anus.”

And that, my friends, is the understatement of the year.

I’m not sure I can handle much more of this class!