DIR Helps an Undergrad Go SURFing

This summer, junior chemistry student Jordan Theriot is SURFing far from Caltech, but on familiar ground, in her home state of Louisiana. Jordan's return to her roots was made possible by an unusual unrestricted Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship funded through a grassroots effort by the members of Caltech's Office of Development and Institute Relations. Over the next few months, Jordan will be sharing her experiences in a Louisiana State University inorganic chemistry laboratory headed by former Caltech graduate student Andrew Maverick (PhD '82), and her journey toward becoming a full-time research scientist.

What have you been doing?

I have a lot of reasons for doing a SURF in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I'm a New Orleans native, and like most teenagers, spent all of high school dreaming of the day I'd leave my home state. After two years in Pasadena, I have to admit, I like California, but I absolutely love Louisiana. The homesickness started to get to me my sophomore year, and by the time SURF application season came around, my mind was so stuck on the smell of muffalettas and shrieks of, "How ya doin', dahlin?!" that I just couldn't help myself.

I chose LSU specifically because almost all of my high school friends are here, but also because of something a little more personal. It's a question we all think about as Techers. What if we had chosen a different path? What if we had gone to a school with 30,000 students, 250 buildings, and 20 different varsity teams? What would it be like? I'm really here to answer those questions for myself.

Jordan with her four roommates, dogs, cats, and two other high-school friends.

I moved into a house with three fellow alumni from my high school—all close friends—two dogs, and two cats. It's full and busy, but in a completely different way from the Caltech houses. It's really my first taste of adulthood: writing rent checks, grocery shopping, and endless amounts of dishwashing. I'm actually sort of enjoying the newfound responsibilities. Not that pretending to be adults has detracted in any way from us behaving like we are still all in high school together. We've dyed our hair, caught up on all the gossip, and spent hours on end trying to learn the dances from Lady Gaga videos.

What has your SURF experience been like so far?

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from my lab work. All I knew was that Professor Andrew Maverick came highly recommended by both my advisor, Harry Gray, and my previous SURF mentor. As Harry put it, "When it comes to being a mentor, there's no better choice than Andy." As usual, Harry was right.

If I have one regret about my previous research experience, it's that I never asked enough questions. I was always too afraid to be wrong, and would end up making costly mistakes. This year, my goal is to get over that attitude. I knew a great mentor could help make that happen.

My goal quickly became more of a necessity once I arrived. During my last SURF, I worked side-by-side with a grad student on his project, and I arrived at LSU expecting the same. That wasn't what I found. My project was covering some new ground for the group, and as with all new projects, stage one is paper reading. I sat down to a hefty stack of articles. The more I read, the more I realized I didn't know about inorganic chemistry. The more I realized I didn't know about inorganic chemistry, the more flustered I got. The more flustered I got, the more indecisive I became. And the more indecisive I got, the fewer ideas I had.

After about three days of sitting at a standstill, with not a clue as to how to make the first step towards the target molecule, I started to ask questions. A lot of questions.

The Maverick group at the statue of Mike, the LSU mascot

We have a small group. There's the professor, one grad student, one postdoc, and me. Because of this, everyone has taken a part in getting me educated. It started with Chandi, the postdoc: "But how do I even know a reaction is working?" followed by Jackson, the grad student: "How do I use this machine? And this one? And where can I find this? And this?", and finally Dr. Maverick, who has patiently tapped out pages of responses to the dozens of emails I have sent to him in my short time here. I've been so grateful for everyone's patience with me.

It's easy to see why folks are drawn to this field. The reactions are quick and beautiful. Entries in my lab notebook read something like, "A lime-green solution of nickel nitrate was slowly dripped into the clear yellow solution containing the ligand. During this time, the reaction mixture turned pink, then dark purple, then a light purple precipitate formed." How could you not love that?

Is it what you expected?

My research isn't anything like I expected. I've been given far more freedom to explore than ever before, and to be honest, it's a weighty responsibility for someone so inexperienced. Fortunately, the environment in the lab is perfect for generating ideas. Because we're such a small group, everyone is familiar with each other's work, and so the lab is full of drawings, discussions, and good advice.

Although we do SURF for the research, the program's greatest value is often the opportunity to find out what it's like to be a full-time researcher, or even more relevant to us, to be a graduate student. How better to make such a discovery than to be allowed to design my experiments? Never before have I spent so much time preparing, planning, and seeking advice. And I realize that's how it should have been all along, because as an undergrad, I'm here to find out what it's really like to work in a particular branch of chemistry: success, failure, and all that's in between.

Jordan and Professor Andy Maverick.

As for my personal life, I've been surprised too. When you're at Caltech, you start to get weighed down by the feeling that you're working so much harder than everyone else you've ever known. While we might be able to make that argument academically, life for an LSU student is stressful in ways I wouldn't have even begun to imagine. Just about everyone has a job, and not just working the desk at the school library (no offense, library workers). They're baristas and waitresses and clerks. Isabella, my best friend from high school and one of my roommates, works at a vet clinic performing surgeries! Add in finding housing, cooking meals, and trying to unclog the vacuum cleaner every other week, and it's amazing anyone finds time to relax.

That said, it's been so much fun getting re-acquainted with everyone after two years away. We've all made steps towards becoming the people we want to be. Maybe I'm standing in the kitchen cooking dinner, and we're all shooting the breeze, just like always, but then the dog starts scratching and Isabella begins calculating the proper antihistamine dosage for a canine of his weight, and I'm just amazed. We're the same people we were back in high school, but we're not some group of teenagers anymore. We've become chemists, a vet-to-be, and computer scientists, and we're so much happier for it.

What have you learned?

Now that I've got the label "junior" over my head, it's beginning to dawn on me that sooner or later, I'm going to have to pick an area of chemistry to pursue. With every new chemistry class I take, I get more and more nervous about that decision because I've yet to find an area of chemistry I don't like. Should I continue to sample more subjects or is that just a waste of time? Working in a supramolecular lab has been wonderfully reassuring in that sense. The work is so interdisciplinary!

With respect to discovering the differences between Caltech and a place like LSU, I'm going to have to call a "grass is always greener on the other side" argument. While I spent the last two years wondering what it would be like to spend my Sundays watching football in Tiger Stadium, cheering "Geaux Tigers!" alongside 90,000 others, my friends were wondering what it would be like to spend their weekends building Interhovse, shouting out math jokes to their fellow housemates. We've decided to split the difference by spending the evenings sharing our best stories.

I'm also realizing that, despite attending completely different colleges in two very different parts of the country, all four of us are dealing with very much the same summertime struggles. We're all living poor, trying to make use of our vacations to rack up both savings and job experience. We're all starting to freak out about the future. It seems like we just graduated from high school together, but we're stressing out over GREs, majors, minors, grad school, vet school, and job opportunities. We have no clue what we want—we just know we want everything.

As for me, I'm learning that no matter how far my Caltech experience takes me, no matter how many years may pass, I want these friends to always be part of my life. I want Louisiana to always be a part of my life. This is what summer is supposed to feel like. This is what coming home feels like.