An Epiphany

Salaam'alaik and a very good evening. 

I am scared of rats. Rats, mices, cencorot ( I don't know what is it called in English), basically everything and anything from this rodent's family.

Still in the end, I could visualize myself somewhere in the future, wearing a worn out lab coat (checked!), with a thick old-school glasses (checked!), and a not so presentable ensemble of clothes, working in a lab, with RATS, injecting them with a list of drugs (muahahaha!). 

I love doing research in the lab. I feel happy when I'm in a lab. I don't like to write lab reports though. I don't like to write a GROUP-WORK lab report. I hate to do any lab practical of which I am forced to come and perform. 

I want to carry out research works that I have interests in. I wish to have my own private laboratory. I wish that I would not get scared of rats and that I will befriend them and that they will not bite me (yikes!). 

I wish to pursue my studies in something related to drug discovery. But I need to learn how to work with rats, to overcome my fear towards rats and anything that bites (@__@). 

Here is how it goes:

My labmates and I were performing lab experiment on rats. The aim of the experiment is to measure out the efficacy and potency of the anaesthetics by injecting them on the rats of which they were previously being inflicted with pain such as a) having their tail clipped and b) putting them in a hot plate (cruel, huh? That's life). 

I didn't dare to touch any of the rats because they were so freaking aggressive! One of them went on spinning like the ceiling fan when my friend brought it out of the cage by holding its tail. This incident resulted in me running like mad towards the left side of the lab, another friend towards the right side, and another to the front of the lab. 

And then it was my turn to inject the morphine into the rat's peritoneum. I was extremely scared, my face pale, my mind imagining about the worst case scenario of what will happen if the rat suddenly released itself out of my friend's clutch and climbed over me (no!!!) and well, I did a bit of zikrullah, relying fully towards Allah, keep on praying "Please help me, Allah!" and Alhamdulillah, the rat offered its allegiance towards the experimenters. Most likely, it offered its allegiance towards Allah the Almighty. Yes, I have strong faith in this. 

I later realized the bitter truth: How am I supposed to pursue my studies if I am scared of rats??? T__T. Our lecturer told us that she had been experimenting on 1000 mice while carrying out her research on cancer. ONE THOUSAND!!!!! ONE FREAKING THOUSAND!!!! I'm scared of ONE RAT/MICE/RODENT!!!

GELI SIOTTT!!!!

When I got back to my room, I called my mom and lamented "Mak, I'm scared of rats la, how am I going to pursue my studies in the future?" (Please pray that I could pursue my studies, ameen!).

The my mom said "This is something that you have to overcome. You should not be scared of rats. You are bigger than the rats!" This is not at all convincing. My mom is scared of rats too. At home, the only female who is not scared of rats is our Indonesian maid. She is the 'Rat Hunter'. 

But still, it could bite la emak!!! >__<

So, I found a list of  several factors on what makes a rat bites from this website. The number one thing that makes a rat bite is due to: 

FEAR

 A rat that has never been handled has also never had a bad experience with people, so they tend to just be squirmy and difficult to hold rather than actually aggressive.
But a rat that has been handled, and handled cruelly or roughly, is more likely to bite, because it strongly associates humans with unpleasantness.
Rats will put up with a lot before they resort to biting, particularly once they are bonded to a person, so a rat that is so scared it feels it needs to attack all the time has very likely had past abuse.
This can be overcome with gentle handling and teaching the rat that humans are no longer going to hurt him. Scared rats tend to come around pretty quickly when handled by knowlegeable, gentle, calm people.

SOLUTION: I NEED TO BE CALM!!! AND NOT PANIC STRICKEN!!! I NEED AN ANXIOLYTIC PRONTO!!!! 

Another solution is that I need to perceive those lab rats as these cute ones:

Cute ke? PFTTTTT

And also, I need to pray A LOT to Allah, I need to play ayat-ayat al-Quran next time when I'm handling rats. I need to perform zikrullah to soothe the rats. 

Please pray that I will overcome this fear towards rats in this short time period!!!!! 

Wassalam.