how knitting helped me get through grad school

I am always amazed how little things that I don't even think of come into my life and end up making a very positive difference in unexpected ways.

As I was standing in the lobby at work the other day waiting for the elevator, I browsed the job postings stuck on the bulletin board. One advertised a laboratory position with a group I know back in Pittsburgh. The qualifications included general biology competence, but also something that caught me off guard: manual dexterity.

I don't exactly know what "manual dexterity" means in that particular lab group, but it made me think of the work I performed in my doctoral studies. A large part of what I did involved holding delicate tissues with forceps (a.k.a. tweezers) and using teeny tiny scissors to cut out circles of tissue parts that were about 5 millimeters in diameter. I suppose that involved some degree of manual dexterity.

In general, I don't consider myself to be extraordinarily coordinated. I cannot dance to save my life, I drop things rather often, and I typically have at least two cuts or bumps on my body at any one time. But, I CAN knit. And when I knit, I use both of my hands and pretty much all of my fingers, and they all need to work together. I also like to knit socks, and that involves handling very fine yarn and very thin knitting needles. FIVE very thin knitting needles, to be precise.

I sense that my knitting helped to build my "manual dexterity" and improved my ability to cut out minuscule tissue parts. And besides all of that, knitting proved to be great stress relief and a refreshing mental challenge all at the same time. A great recipe for an enjoyable and productive graduate career! Thus, the moral of the story is that every graduate student...ought to knit.

:-)