Lesson Learned: Do not Greet Professors in the Hall Unless you Want to Feel Like an Idiot

She confused me with two other people but still managed to make ME feel like an idiot.

"Oh so I am using your lab now"
"Really?" (I was confused because I hadn't seen her in there)
"Yea, well actually two of your lab mates.." (Weird....I just have one lab mate)
"Really?"
"Yea, J and M"
"Oh, that's not my lab"
"Oh that's right. I thought you were going to go to Friday Harbor this summer. What happened?"
"umm.....no, that must have been J. you were thinking of."
"Oh. So what are you doing?"
"Just staying here, running experiments on my water striders. Remember?"
"Oh yea! How is that going? Is it working out?"
"Yea...kind of. Remember that I was running the water striders to see if the water conservation hypothesis was supported when looking at discontinuous respiration.."
."..right..." (nodding)
"Well, I did see DGC in one adult, but now that I am running the nymphs they aren't responding. I have been running them with different variables, but still I have no clue. It might be the developmental stage they are at, but....."
"So, are there different instars available?"

Damn! I heard this word like 3 months ago, and I was going to look it up, but I didn't...and know here it is again. I thought it had something to do with developmental stages......but I thought maybe it only dealt with larva vs. pupae, and water striders don't go through those stages...instead they belong to the Exopterygota division of the Pterygotas, which means that they have young which resemble the parent, except they lack wings and are smaller.

"Umm.....no, well....umm....there like...I forgot the word....but the nymphs I have are just smaller than the parents...and that's what I have been running all this summer..."

Immediately I saw that look. The She-has-no-freaking-idea-what-she-is-talking-about-how-could-they-have-let-her-into-the-program look.

"Good, well good luck"

I immediately knew I had messed up. I walked away shaking my head and covering my face. God I'm such an idiot.