1/3/12

It may be a day late but a new month is here, officially spring as far as I'm concerned too! And what a lovely day it is too, except with 4 hours of lectures this morning and an afternoon of lab report writing ahead this is about as much of the sun as I'll be able to enjoy!



For those who are regular followers you'll know that a "secret mission" has been in the pipeline for a few days. Due to the outcome I'm afraid it's still going to have to remain behind closed doors (was going to say closed curtains then...). I did as planned and plucked up the courage to speak to the relevant person (although perhaps have left it a bit late). I'm not quite sure what I was hoping for, but the given response wasn't it.

Things could still go OK, but I suspect it's going to make labs on Monday (and beyond) "interesting", but hey - these things happen. (it's really difficult trying to be vague about these things but I don't want to turn this into a rant because the internet really shouldn't be the place to start complaining about people!).

Really need to get on with writing my lab report, and modifying our lab plan but neither of these can be done until the university network fixes itself (unless its just me that can't on!) This at least means my most current spell of procrastination is justified...

Before I leave you for the day I'll just share the latest addition to the collection...

29/2/12

Today most definitely hasn't felt like an "extra" day!

Once again I was up nice and early, despite not having to be in uni until 10. Just as well 'cos I did my physio exercises and pushed a bit harder than usual and it hurt!

First lecture wasn't actually a lecture, it was a workshop and the lecturer had already said he wasn't going to teach us anything and just kinda leave it to us to teach ourselves by each answering a question on the board...

I avoided getting up and answering cos writing on the board is even more difficult that writing on paper at the moment! Although I wouldn't have minded getting up and doing it for once, given that I had actually done the questions in advance and so vaguely knew what was going on! Next was an hours gap (formerly the hour of nucleic acids lectures!), despite only typing with one hand I succeeded in getting a big chunk of my lab report written. I have one document which is almost at the word limit for the report but is just a jumble of paragraphs and points I should be including, so I actually started writing it "properly" today - it's looking good!

Finally was a synthesis lecture, I was a bit worried because from now on there's not going to be any handouts and it's all going to be copying down from the board. My friend, fellow chemist and housemate offered his notes for photocopying afterwards should I need them though so all was good. Turned out I didn't even need that - the lecturer had photocopied his hand written notes for me specially! Made me smile to know someone had thought about me and made an effort to help even though they didn't need too! :-)

Next mission for today was shopping. Not having the car this year I've been avoided it but I could hold out no longer so off to Sainsbury's I went. Made an effort to only buy the essentials, and leave things that could be bought later on from the little Sainsbury's (which is a lot closer!). Think it was the quickest dash round the shop ever! Not sure I have a very student like basket - no alcohol, no pot noodles and no cake!


Was certainly interesting carrying home (once again - stupid arm!), I nearly stopped to eat my carrots on the way back as I'm sure they were the heaviest thing!

Got home to find an e-mail waiting for me. Not the one I've been waiting for (might have to be "brave" and speak to one of the academics tomorrow cos I don't suppose it should wait much longer...), but from the place where I'm doing work experience over Easter. I'd almost forgotten about them to be honest! Just got to sort out the dates that I'm doing it now (and how on Earth I'm going to get there, no parking and I can't cycle!). It's a voluntary thing so they've said I can do as much or as little as I'd like. I obviously want to do as much as possible but I suspect with my new level of re-brokenness I'll have to be careful seen as I don't want to over do it, especially when I should probably be revising for last ever chemistry exams!

It has given me a new burst of excitedness about the work experience (even I really would like a holiday instead!), I shall of course keep you posted...

28/2/12

Presentation day! (again!)

In an odd stroke of confidence, as a group, we decided to open with a joke - this could have gone badly for us, but thankfully it went down quite well! With the current popularness of memes, we went with Bormir: "One does not simply align the laser" on our opening slide! I also opted to wear my para-dox t-shirt (another chemistry joke), so at least our audience was in a good mood when we started!

Surprisingly for us we were a bit outnumbered - 3 of us in the group, only 5 other students watching but 5 academics and a PhD student all there to mark us! But I think it went OK, and they didn't ask any particularly mean questions either (I think there are many gaps in our knowledge so we were probably lucky!). Anyway, all over now, just one more presentation to give and that's not for aaaages!

So with that done it was back to hard work. Despite the world conspiring against me (we had multiple tea bag splitting "issues" earlier), I've been remarkably productive. Just about finished the biosynthesis workshop questions ahead of tomorrow. Was hoping they'd all be easy so I could have an extra couple of hours in bed tomorrow morning, I mean an extra couple of hours to do other work. But there are a few gaps in my work (even if you ignore the bit where I was fed up and decided I wasn't going to draw out the million step mechanism...)

I did manage to come up with an answer for this though, whether it's right or not is a different matter though...




The "thing" that I've been trying to sort out for the last few days has now, at least in part, been sorted. Just waiting for 1 of 2 people to e-mail back for part 2!

Right, I should probably get back to this lab report, it hasn't yet worked out how to write itself - must I do everything? :P

27/2/12

Apathy has reached a dangerous level and I'm still somewhere in an ocean of work so I'll keep it short again today.

Continued sorting out what I began on Friday, should be easy right? (well at least when you send an e-mail to the right address). Unfortunately the levels of bureaucracy are deep, and also entwined with other things! I think progress has been made though so fingers crossed! (sorry I'm being a bit vague - there are somethings that need to be kept away from prying eyes, at least until it's actually been sorted out! I will say that it's uni related and not some top secret government thing though so really shouldn't be this difficult!).

For the first time today, I had a chance to sit in our new building and just sit, and not have to do work. It really is an odd building, and far too much wasted space...

Sitting completed it was time for presentation practice. Having done a presentation less than a week ago I'm not that nervous about the actual presenting bit, but the fact my section of the talk is about something I'm not all that sure of, and I'm presenting to someone that not only knows a lot about the subject, but thinks that we know a lot more than we do! This is leaving us open for some horrible questions but there's not much we can do about it now!

Our presentation does at least look quite good though...