I’m teaching cell biology, but the first thing I have to do is hammer them over the head with…chemistry. They typically haven’t realized yet that biology isn’t all butterflies and cat dissections, it’s also all built on math and chemistry, and we have to get the students thinking quantitative. Today I’m lecturing on small molecules — ions in solution, pH, redox reactions, chemical bonds — and lab is all dilutions and concentrations and basic algebra.

It’s not fun for me, either, but we’ll never get to the fun stuff without it. I’ve been cramming general chemistry all weekend, because I have to know it all better than the students.

Another important matter this week is that I have to get a haircut after a long summer of flowing locks. I’m trying to decide if I should bring back an old style. Here’s what I looked like in the mid-1960s.*

back row: the second wave of cousins, Tim Smith, my brother Jim, Matt Sones.
Front row: first wave cousins, Don Smith, me, Kelly Sones.

That haircut was easy to maintain, and cheap to cut — my mom would just stroke her electric hair clippers over my head, and it would be done. I don’t think I look anything like me now, just a homely, shaggy old man.

I was no prize to begin with, and it’s not fair that I got homelier over time.

I think teaching chemistry over and over aged me. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

*P.S. Only Matt and I are still alive. I should be grateful I’m still here, no matter how ugly I get.