Hi everyone.  Since this is my first blog entry (of many) on this “Mayo Clinic Education and Diversity Blog, Three Shields, Many Perspectives”, I wanted to pass out some introductions, some niceties, some meet and greet information—well the most you can do online.  My name is Joseph Jon Dolence (proud of my middle name—more maybe in later blogs) and I am finishing my first year at Mayo Graduate School in the Immunology track.  I work in the Medina lab on early events in B cell development with a healthy mix of cellular and molecular techniques.  In later blogs, I will surely talk about my research, classes, and other feelings I have about Mayo Clinic in general.  I want to state here—These are my opinions, not necessarily those of the Clinic’s so don’t take what I say and run with it as Mayo’s position on something.  They are mine.  Another thing—I love going to Mayo Clinic for Graduate School—I can’t complain, the Clinic has given me a wonderful opportunity and I honestly feel most every day that I am living the dream.  That might sound naïve and not callous to the fact that I have only been here for one year—but continued readers of this blog will know certain things about me—one of them is I take Tiger Woods approach to life (with my edits in parenthesis), he says, “I view my life in a way...I'll explain it to you, OK? I want to take in every moment and appreciate everything. The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today. And that's how I look at my life. I will be better as a golfer (& researcher), I will be better as a person, I will be better as a father (son), and I will be better as a friend. That's the beauty of tomorrow. There is no such thing as a setback. The lessons I learn today I will apply tomorrow, and I will be better.”  That’s my philosophy to life.  And you will no doubt see that attitude sprinkled on the pages of this blog over and over.

I might get political on the pages of this.  I might talk religion.  I will talk sports.  I will obviously talk about school, education, Mayo, and anything science based.  Just don’t ask me about X-ray crystallography or NMR.  Nothing is off limits.  Well—as long using vulgar language is avoided and the Biggs at Mayo allow it.  I speak from the heart honestly about how I feel—you will get my spin on anything I deem worthy enough to talk about.  The point of this blog is to expose the three shields to the world in hopefully a way they haven’t before.  Mayo has so much tradition and prestige, and I have the role through this medium to show Mayo to the world.

That being said, I think I have introduced myself and the concepts behind this well enough to go to my first issue I thought of while listening to a lecture in Cell Bio or Genetics last quarter…or a seminar, I can’t remember—all I know is that I came up with this idea that JT (Justin Timberlake) isn’t bringing sexy back, scientist are.  I know this is like one of these, WHAT?, moments—but I will explain…it seems that in today’s scientific community, anytime someone has a chance to slip in sexy or a word like, provocative, promiscuous, or even in today’s seminar, the speaker expanded “BS” to that expletive.  It makes me laugh, but I am wondering when this started?  When did science and its countless researchers make a conscious effort to spice up a lecture with these words?  You know what my goal is?  Use the word lascivious in a scientific journal.  If I can pull that off, you can tip the hat to me.  If not, I guess I will just have to settle for less provocative words such as sexy or promiscuous.  Maybe the answer is that since most in the scientific community don’t look the part (as Justin does), we need to throw these in to wake up those sleeping, bored out of their minds, or to remind ourselves that, yes, we are cool enough still to throw this hip words around.  I know one thing though—you have everyone’s attention when you infuse these types of adjectives into a lecture.  So at least for that nanosecond, everyone is listening and to them, the world is sexy, perfect, and wonderful.

Have a great day!

Till next time,

Yours truly,

JJ

Another quote to live by—one of the fave’s on JJ’s list:

“Love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. Love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.” Maya Angelou.              

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