Somewhere I read that the average number of readers for a scientific paper is 0.6.
-- Narrator (Part I)

Importance: This observation demonstrates the narrator's skepticism of how worthwhile a career in chemistry would be, even if she were as skilled as her lab mate. Academics are judged by the number of papers they publish; the narrator herself has published one. She is not proud of this, and her invocation of this statistic shows this; however, the irony in this quote -- chemistry is so erudite that the average number of readers for a paper is paradoxically less than a whole person -- also targets her more accomplished colleagues and the field as a whole. The narrator is torn between her desire not to be a failure, and her dubiousness as to whether success in chemistry is even worthwhile.

If alchemy doesn't work, I will move on to desalinating all of our oceans and providing freshwater...
-- Narrator (Part I)