40 pages • 1 hour read
Hope JahrenLab Girl
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 1: Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
This chapter explores Jahren’s experience working in a hospital pharmacy while she is an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. At first, she is a “runner” (32), carrying medication from the pharmacy to the patient or departments who need it. She is later promoted to “shoot bags” (36), which entails mixing drugs in intravenous bags. An older woman named Lydia, who is a “lifer” (37) in the pharmacy, teaches Jahren about the medications and procedures in the pharmacy.
Jahren narrates the process of mixing a bag, which includes disinfecting the workspace, receiving an order form, mixing the requisite chemicals in the bag, and signing off on the finished product. At first, Jahren finds this process stressful, noting: “We are constantly reminded that any mistake we make could kill someone” (43). On her first day, Jahren makes a couple of mistakes, including mixing a “benzo bag” improperly and contaminating a bottle of interferon.
After a few months, she becomes proficient at her job and soon mixes bags as quickly as Lydia. On her down time, Jahren visits the blood bank to see if they need her to carry any to the emergency room. There she meets Claude, who develops a crush on her. As the months wear on, “[her] confidence ripened into boredom” (49). Having worked there for almost six months, Jahren quits the pharmacy job when she receives a higher-paid work-study position at a professor’s lab.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Jahren asserts that “no risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root” (52). Once a root “anchors” (52) in the soil, it can never relocate. Its odds of survival are a million to one. However, if a root finds what it needs in a location, it can develop a taproot, which is “an anchor that can swell and split bedrock, and move gallons of water daily for years” (52). Even if everything above the soil is torn away, most plants can still grow back if the root is intact.
The author recounts the story of workers discovering the roots of the “gutsy acacia tree” (53) when digging the Suez Canal. Into the ground, its roots “extend[ed] twelve meters, forty feet, or thirty meters, depending” (54) on the botanist.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Jahren’s professors advise her to pursue a Ph.D., and she does so at University of California, Berkeley. In the summer of 1994, Jahren works as a teaching assistant on “what felt like an interminable field trip through the Central Valley of California” (54). During this six-week class, students dig holes, study them, and complete a taxonomy of everything they see.
During this trip, Jahren meets Bill, who later becomes her research partner and close friend. Jahren notices him when he digs “his own private holes” (55) away from the other students and completes meticulous evaluations. The two strike up a rapportand “began to casually seek each other out”(57), staying towards the edge of the group and having their own conversations. When the class draws to a close, Jahren tells the class professor and her advisor that they should hire Bill in the lab as he is the “smartest in the class” (61). Bill accepts the job offer, and the two begin working together.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Once a seed is rooted, it focuses energy on “stretching up” (63), which includes forming leaves. A leaf is built using just “a vague genetic pattern with nearly endless room for improvisation” (63). In this way, Jahren asserts that a new leaf is a “new idea” (63). It has the potential to become something different than what it was. For example, over the course of the last 10 million years, a plant might have shaped its leaf into a spine instead of spreading the leaf out.
Jahren also points out that plants are the only thing in the world that produce sugar from inorganic matter, and leaves are the parts of the plant that produce this sugar. Without glucose, humans will die.
Part 1, Chapters 4-7 Analysis
Jahren continues to use figurative language to imbue her experiences with greater drama and emotion. When she works as a runner at the pharmacy she notes: “We were being paid to trail along behind Death as he escorted frail, wasted bodies over difficult miles” (34). Here, she personifies death, and, in this way, adds to the gravity and intensity of the experiences in the hospital. In reference to Lydia, Jahren remarks:“Watching her sort, clean, and inject was like watching a ballerina defy gravity” (44). This simile summons up imagery of grace and acumen, thus emphasizing Lydia’s skill and the way in which it captures Jahren’s imagination.
These chapters give the reader more insight into Jahren’s character as an adult. When she works in the hospital, she has “endless energy […] which seized [her] in ferocious spurts, keeping [her] awake for days at a time” (36). This type of energy and enthusiasm carries Jahren through many experiences. It also hints at her manic-depressive disorder, which will surface in later chapters. Despite initially enjoying her work in this hospital, Jahren becomes disillusioned when she considers it on a deeper level. She goes from believing she is“doing the most important work in the world to ruminating over how pointless it was to be part of a pharmaceutical chain gang producing a mule train of medications to be hauled upstairs every hour of every day forever without end” (50). She feels she cannot advance in this type of environment, and she makes the choice to start working in a research lab. There, she is promised enough money to complete her degree, and she is happy that she will not have to drop out of school like her mother. This represents a significant choice for Jahren.
