WOOO! NEW BLOG!

OK, so the desire to record my transition through the biomedical pathway, as they sometimes like to put it, has spilled over into the internet. With any luck, this will blog accumulate into something of a scientific scrap-book, which at best will document my ongoing development and achievements as a budding young scientist, and which at worst may provide a source of chuckling in years to come. Onwards with the first post...

So last month or so was pretty hectic:

First there was setting up the LMU Life Sciences Society, which was more paperwork than anticipated (why did I not anticipate lots of paperwork!?). By early January most of it was done and I’d successfully pressured some peers into becoming members. Some were already asking about what events I had lined up, which was a problem because I didn't have any. Still, I had a cunning plan for getting speakers in. Last year I attended a series of talks hosted by Pint Of Science; an international group that aims to popularise science by putting on cheap events in pubs. In all they put on over 50 events in 3 days in London alone. The schedule on their website thus provided me with a cornucopia of locally based experts who I knew were willing to speak on subjects ranging from cancer to caterpillars, from Mars to microbes. I began sending out emails like a virus-infected computer. All of this was less fun and a much longer process than I had imagined, but the upshot of the whole thing was that the activity of designing the brand-spanking new logo (below) did give me something to procrastinate over as the inexorable march of exams and deadlines loomed ever closer. More on that later.

Last month I also started work experience at the LMU super-lab, where a group of London Met students were taken on after a recruitment process late last year. The scheme demands a minimum of fifteen 4hr shifts over the year and the technicians and lab assistants hope to gradually train us up as a supplement to the work we already do in the lab as part of our course. So far the tasks have mean menial; stock checks, apparatus calibration, health and safety checks, preparing benches for practicals, etc. Hopefully I will be able to find time to give regular updates on the more exciting things we get up to.

I don't want to admit it, but January exams were frustrating. Aside from the step-up in workload from last year, which itself was something of a shock, the exams weren't exactly a walk in the park. After all those hours revising for my Blood Science module (~35hrs since new years), the exam bore nothing on anaemia, no FBC case study, nothing on leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma, leaving lots of rooms for some tricky questions on RBC transmembrane proteins. For Infection Science, which was based on a single URTI case-study, I had been telling everyone beforehand that I'd bet hard cash on S. pyogenes coming up; but then you start having doubts, don't you? What if they ask about Bordetella pertusis? I'll be screwed! As a result I spent a lot of time reading up on rarer conditions; time I probably could have risked revising the usual suspects, Staph. aureus and Strep. pyogenes, but hey-ho. I think I got most of the information down. The marks will tell. Tissue Science went like clockwork, covering apoptosis, necrosis, inflammation, IHC, stains, complement system etc, and Bioanalytical Techniques would have been fine if it weren't for running out of time, leading to a panicked last few minutes trying to scribble an answer to a ridiculously weighted dilution and %age recovery question (worth 1/5th of the whole exam!). The relative simplicity of the question made it absolutely excruciating. Note to self: don't waste time writing in full sentences in future!

Anyway, the message is clear – don't expect to get those easy +90% marks you got last year – consider these socks pulled up!

On top of all this was my usual voluntary weekly sampling of the Thames river, my obligations as both Student academic representative and Study Mentor, the laborious commonplace tasks to keep from perishing, such as foraging for food, cooking, cleaning, washing, etc and to top it all off; endless hours spent editing my CV and application forms as I try to secure an industrial placement for this September. 

...It's also nice to occasionally see friends or catch a movie. Needless to say, the end of the month was very welcome.