A few days passed. It was Wednesday, and Shawn was hunched over his desk at the dorm. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why his cultures weren’t growing. He had a bunch of Petri dishes with plant matter lying in front of him, each injected with spores of a different mutant. The aim of his project was to genetically modify rusts and pucciniomycotina, which were a type of plant pathogen, with the goal of creating a beneficial mutant that would reduce the extent of agricultural damage they caused. However, his project was a shot in the dark because he didn’t even know what type of mutation he was looking for. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing whether the needle existed. “Maybe I should have thought this through,” he said aloud. He poked around with a metal inoculation needle, using the tool to move around the plant matter and check for potential signs of growth. He had a few of them on the table. Four were rusted. Not great, he thought. Frustrated, he got up and decided to ask Pat what to do next.

“Hey, Mr. Sp—” he caught himself slipping, “I mean Pat.”

“Yes?” Pat asked with a raspy voice.

“Uhm, I wanted to ask for help. The rusts aren’t growing?”

“And?” Pat asked with a laugh.

“Well, isn’t the point of it to cul—”

“Just make more of them. You need volume, Shawn,” Pat replied.

“Even more?” Fuck, not more of them, he thought and sighed. He hated the tedious, repetitive work cultivation brought with it.

“What have you got? Two hundred plates? The probability that you will find something of value will be slim to none.” Pat paused and continued, “You have to account for the fact that some of the mutations might cause defects in vegetative —growth— functions.”

Shawn sighed. “Right.”

“Shawn?”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t received an application for the Amazon trip from you. You’re still planning on coming?”

His heart ached at the thought of the excursion. With a pained expression, he said, “Well, I would really like to go, but… the thing is… I don’t think I can afford it.”

“Could you take our a loan?”

“I already took on a lot of debt to pay my tuition. I don’t think they’ll let me borrow anymore,” Shawn explained.

“I see,” Pat said, stroking his beard with his hand, “What if I covered it for you from lab funds? I think there’s some grant money I could rustle up for you.” [I changed this because I think it would be completely inappropriate for a professor to lend money to a student, but giving the money via a grant would be routine.]

Shawn’s jaw dropped

“Are you kidding me? Pat, that’s amazingly generous of you—”

“You have a lot of potential, Shawn. The trip is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You’re one of my most promising students, and I really think you should go,” he puffed his pipe and coughed.

“But my grades aren’t even that good,” Shawn said. [Love this honesty! I wish more Northwestern University students were like this.]

“It’s not the grades. It’s the spirit that makes a scientist,” Pat paused and continued. “A discerning eye that sees possibility and opportunity where others don’t… that’s the sign of real talen. When we talk about the ‘what-ifs’ of biology, I find myself often surprised.”

Shawn couldn’t help but smile. Please continue, he thought and almost laughed out loud as he noticed his craving for praise.

Pat remembered, “I mean… the idea of a symbiosis between horses and a glitter-producing bacteria, then calling it a unicorn, that’s true genius,” both of them laughed heartily.

“Or the space squids with Morse code?” Shawn remembered, and they had another fit. When they calmed down a bit, Pat said again, “Think about it. You have three weeks until the application deadline,”

“Thank you, really.” Shawn said with a big smile, “ I’ll think about it.” 

As he walked home, he had a huge smile on his face again and thought, finally, things are starting to work out for me. He had barely finished his thought when his phone rang. He took out his phone and saw “Mom” on the screen. He sighed and pressed the green button.

“Shawn?”

“Hi, Mom. What’s going on? Are you missing me?”

“Was your father at home when you left?”

“Yes? Why?”

“He hasn’t come home yet, and he isn’t answering his phone,” she said with worry in her voice.

“Don’t worry about it. He is probably getting drunk at some bar. He’ll show up eventually.”

“So you haven’t heard from him?”

“No way, he wouldn’t message me in a million years,” Shawn replied.

“Okay,” she hung up.

“Love you too, Mom,” he said aloud. His high spirits were washed away, and he now regretted believing that things might actually be moving in his direction for once. Yeah, right.