Today is Saturday. The weekend. Yay!
What with it being "reading week" our timetable was a bit depleted last week so managed to get pretty much up to date with lecture notes and stuff in the time that would have usually been spent in lectures. That means today I've finally got round to starting going over notes from the early lectures in the year in an attempt to learn things! Progress is slow to say the least. I'm writing this now because having spent the last 3 hours writing 3 (A5) pages on palladium chemistry my arm has entirely given up!
Having found out I got onto the work shadowing scheme, I am now in the process of sorting out doing some volunteering in the same place, they encourage everyone that get's onto the scheme to volunteer to do a project in their auditing department; having spoken to them about the various available projects it has the potential to be quite interesting (and of course is something to add to my CV!), unfortunately due to the nature of the organisation there is an awful lot of paperwork to get through first! Plenty of time to sort it out though so the organising will be put on the back burner for a while as Monday marks the start of 3rd year labs for me this year!
Much of 4th year is a research project, so labs this year will be the big factor in deciding whether I want to to do 3 or 4 years (no I still haven't decided, although I am getting close to making a decision now!), realistically I need to decide not long after Christmas because if I'm doing 4 years I need somewhere to live next year; this means this project will be the vital one in deciding my fate! The project my group and I will be doing is about the salen ligand, and how the coordination at the metal centre is dictated by both the metal and the ligand. We've got 1 week to plan the experiment, 3 weeks in the lab (with 1 and a half days of actual lab time each week) and then another week to do the write up and presentation. We don't officially start our planning until we have our first group meeting on Monday morning but I've already done a bit of thinking and research so I can go in armed with a few ideas (hopefully everyone else will have done the same).
My plan is to let this run for a couple of weeks, have more of a think and then go and speak to my tutor and see what he thinks. If I'm honest, I've already made my decision but I don't want to do anything about it in case its the "wrong" choice!
Back to today, the weather's been pretty good today (not that I've been outside), so in-between working there's been a lot of day dreaming going on. Yes bike related! As well as contemplating various possibilities for new bike builds (get a bursary from uni next month so some of that may well go on something shiny and new!), I've been planning some big rides, and some not so big ones too.
I'll have to play it by ear and see how it goes (I'm assuming I'll be able to ride sooner than the hospital have predicted but don't want to risk more damage/rush into it before I'm ready), but lots of turbo training over the Christmas holidays should get me back to some sort of fitness. Then it'll be a matter of testing the water and getting back on the bike outside! All being well 2012 will be a year full of cycling miles and races. And then I intend to use some of the Easter and/or summer holidays to do something big. Really big. Not sure exactly what yet (have a few options I'm considering) to have some fun but more importantly work hard and raise some money for charity. If anyone has any interest in joining me, let me know...
It's still early days and only November so more details on my riding plans shall come nearer the time!
Just thinking about all that has put a smile on my face, its far more exciting than the work I should probably be doing...
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