The silence of the labs

I am the designated DJ for my lab. It’s not a position I asked for. In fact, I frequently ask my lab mates to take my aux cord privileges away from me. And yet somehow, for the past two years, I have become basically the only person who uses the speaker system that our PI set up.

I have the power to make my lab mates listen to whatever earworm is currently inhabiting my mind, but I also feel a great deal of pressure to choose music that will be universally pleasing. It fills me with a strange tension every time I go to queue up music on Spotify. I would rather have all my reactions fail than accidentally torment my lab mates with music they don’t enjoy.

I try, subtly, to suss out everyone’s music preferences. Our PI likes late 90s alternative rock. One of the grad students has a fondness for Queen. One of my fellow undergraduates always wears headphones, so I assume her music taste is Norwegian death metal or something equally earsplitting. She refuses to tell me.

My Spotify profile now contains several mixtapes created specifically for the lab. Their names vary from the short and simple ‘lab hype’ to the slightly more self-aware ‘jams for chem nerds’. I try to keep the music on them upbeat and energetic without being overwhelming. Sometimes I’ll sneak in a few songs that are my own inside chemistry related jokes, like ‘Atomic Number’ by Neko Case or ‘Chemicals React’ by Aly & AJ. If someone mentions that they like a certain song, even in passing, I add it to the list. It seems to be working – the other day, one of our grad students went out of his way to compliment the playlist of the day. It was the highlight of my week.