Boring talks

So, the lab's summer retreat is coming up. I'm going to be back in the good ol' US of A at the time, but I get to hear about it, and one thing is that everyone needs to give a talk.

These talks can be about whatever anyone wants to talk about, whether it's related to their research or just some random topic they find interesting. For example, last year someone decided to talk about whether science and religion were at odds with one another (this topic is dull, sry, I just am sick of hearing about it), which apparently started a lot of discussion.

Anyway, the PhD student I'm working with is trying to come up with her talk. The other talks that people are giving seem pretty dull so far. This one guy is talking about lab safety and security (snore), this other guy who is one of those obsessively meticulous tinkering organic chemists is talking about how to use lab equipment properly. He basically is going to go on for ten minutes about how no one really knows how to use the high vacuum pump correctly and you actually do it like this and blah blah blah blah blah (the PhD student I'm working with said she hoped she would be drunk by that point). Someone else is talking about the antibacterial problem, bugs versus people, which, while in principle is interesting, it's a topic I've heard so many times that it's become pretty dull. I guess last year there was a talk about how to troubleshoot PCR (change the Tm, change the cycles, change the magnesium chloride concentration, etc. etc. ad nauseum), time management, and teamwork in science.

I suggested that she give a talk on how to multitask in lab. I mean, if someone can talk about how to use lab equipment, then why not? She's famous for being "a scientist on speed" and always running 90 million things in parallel. The other thing I suggested was that she give a talk on the chemistry and health benifits of coffee. She's a huge coffee drinker, so it would be pretty amusing. Then I suggested that the other PhD student I work with should give a talk about how smoking cigarettes lowers your risk for Parkinson's (since he's know for being a chain-smoker). That might cause a few laughs, at least. And the dopamine axis is pretty fascinating.

But anyway, I think I'm going to make a list of boring talk topics that I've had to sit through:
1) How to use Web of Science. Really, seriously, it's a frickin' search engine.
2) How to use Sci-Finder. This was useless to me, because things like Sci-Finder (and Web of Science) are things that I just need to tinker with to really learn how to use.
3) Lab safety in all its iterations.
4) How to properly tutor someone, how to deal with personality clashes, how you weren't supposed to have whine and commiseration sessions about particular professors during tutoring, etc. etc. During that seminar I wanted to ask, just to be obnoxious by the end "what do you do when if you sleep with your tutor/tutee and they won't respond to your emails because shit got awkward?"

So yeah. I think horrendiously dull talks should be outlawed.