Sunday 30 March 2008

Progress At Last!

Finally... my supervisor sent me some results. Unfortunately he didn't send me the protocols for the assays we used, so he's only been half useful, but at least it's a start. Amusingly the email to which my results were attached was filled with praise. To summarise it basically said:
"You were the sole driving force behind this project and you should be very pleased with the results you have. You are amazingly wonderful and I worship your studenty researchyness" (clearly I have paraphrased).

It is obvious he's realised that with his almost total lack of help I am so close to making a big complaint about him and his ignoring me!

On a side note I've really enjoying being back at work this weekend. I forgot how much I enjoyed working behind a bar and all the nice people I work with. Even my near-death experience with a bottle of sambuca falling off a high shelf and onto my head didn't dampen my spirits. My most amusing story of the weekend was that one very drunk man proceeded to call me ginger (I'm strawberry blonde!!) and then ask if he could check if my hair colour is real (i'll leave that to your imagination) after taking me out for dinner. Surprisingly my answer was "No, but if you ask the doorman the same question I'm sure he'll show you something." Yukky man! Amusingly my dad was standing about 3 people along at the bar at this point and decided to introduce himself, and talk all about his collection of sharp chopping knives...

Lily xXx

Saturday 29 March 2008

Revision Day

Today I decided, being 3 weeks behind my revision timetable, that I should maybe try to make some more revision notes. Stupidly I picked up the worlds longest and most boring lecture on lipids. 2 and 1/2 hours later of frantic scribbling and I finished making it into notes. My hand now feels like dropping off. I can't decide if I've just got incredibly slow and useless or if it really was a huge lecture. Fingers crossed the rest will be easier otherwise i'll be making revision notes months after my exams!

I realise a day is 24 hours, I've been revising for less than 3, I'll be at work for about 5 this evening and I'll probably try and sleep for 8... so what have I been doing for the other 8? Making a list. A list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. Truthfully I started the list a few days ago because it took a surprisingly large amount of time to think of 101 things which didn't all either involve eating or sleeping.

I also spent a large portion of my day listening to this cute little Irish girl ring up various buisnesses. I'm not naive enough to think that she doesn't get some guidance from various adults in what to say, but she is SO funny. I have quite literally been crying with laughter for hours listening to these clips. Now I wonder if she can get someone to demolish the labs with my supervisors in? Hmmmm.

Still haven't got my results off my supervisor. He emailed me yesterday with a vague, "will send them over the weekend". Unfortunately he probably means some weekend in 2011. I think I'll have to go and just sit outside his office on Monday morning and demand my results/cry until i make some headway.

Lily xXx

Friday 28 March 2008

Abandonned...

I think my project supervisor has forgotten i exist again. He was supposed to email me the rest of my results (because he wanted to finish off the assay) last week. I've been emailing him every day since they've been overdue and I've tried calling him, but no luck. I'm starting to get stressed because I have a presentation in just over a week and I haven't even seen my results let alone thought about what I'm going to say.

I'm also annoyed because neither of my supervisors have bothered to read the introduction to my write-up yet, and they've had it since November. It's not as if I haven't been reminding them, I feel like I'm turning into an awful nag, but it's due in in less than a month. Grrrr.

Excitingly I've finally managed to get a copy of Statistics at Square One, apparently this will solve all my statistics issues. Fingers crossed. Now if only I had some data to analyse...

Lily xXx

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Take the Good with the Bad

Well I've had an interesting few days. This blog post was going to be really cheerful and was going to happen last night, but then a certain not-so-young man made me really upset. So firstly I'll start with the cheerful stuff, sandwich the miserable in the middle and end on a high note.

The end of the weekend was great. Not only did my Dad buy me an Easter egg for the first time in 5 years, I had some very fun evenings. I hadn't realised how much I missed hanging out with my non-uni friends until I managed to spend a few days with them. They didn't even look strangely at me when I threw on a pair of spotty welly boots and spent half an hour running around in the snow wearing just a t-shirt.

Yesterday I was back at uni for a whole day of lectures which don't really have anything to do with my course. On the upside we got free tea and biscuits and I got to see my BSc lot. It's a shame that we don't see each other now because of research. It took a good term for us all to get to know each other properly, and then once we did we were all cruelly torn apart by research. Fingers crossed we'll keep bumping into each other over the next few years.

Last night was really strange. I got home and my boyfriend (who lives "oop north") said he'd be online. He's never online. So I turned on MSN and he said,
"I'm not coming to see you this weekend, I don't think we should be together."
This was completely 100% out of the blue. We started to talk about it, and I realised that although it's upsetting he's perfectly right. He wants children now, I don't want children for another 8-10 years. He wants to move in with me or for me to try and get transferred to a different univeristy, and I really want to stay where I am. He's 33 and getting a beer belly and losing his hair, I'm not even 21 and will hopefully have my hair forever. Needless to say, because I was all alone with everyone else being home for Easter I sat on the couch and sobbed for 3 hours, but I feel much better now I've thought about it rationally.

Unfortunately before he dumped me, I'd spent yesterday evening cooking him an amazing birthday cake. At first I was really upset at all the effort I'd put into it, but now I'm rather glad. My comfort cake and I shall be spending the rest of the day staring aimlessly at the beginnings of my dissertation.

Lily xXx

Friday 21 March 2008

Eternal Hangover

Is it possible to have a hangover for this long? I'm now on day 3 of my hangover and it is no longer amusing. Not only am I incapable of doing the work I really really really have to do, I also can't drink and it's Easter Weekend.

Luckly for me Easter Weekend in my home town means a huge hockey festival. Apparently these "athletes" perform best when drinking snakebite and black, so it's usually a whole weekend of giggles and tipsyness. Unfortunately for me, as I can't bring myself to drink, it means looking after lots of far too drunk boys vomitting everywhere. Yuk yuk yuk. Fingers crossed by tomorrow I'll be back on form and they can look after me for a change.

I know I should probably not be thinking about my research project while it's easter, but my supervisor hasn't sent me the end of my results he did like he promised. Grrrr. Probably, knowing him, 3 weeks after my deadline he'll finally be reachable again. Stupid scientists!

Lily xXx

Wednesday 19 March 2008

Hey Big Spender

Yesterday I bought a flat. I've been flat hunting for a while and all I've seen are really really grotty places. In some cases I saw 1 bedroom flats with familes of 6 living in them and all of them had pretty horrible kitchens and bathrooms. Then yesterday I looked at 1 flat and it was such an improvement from the others I made an offer straight away. Its got a lovely new kitchen and bathroom and apart from the hallway is in a really nice state decoratively. Its in an ex-council building and the communal areas are a little rubbish, but otherwise it's really good. I'm so excited.

I was so excited, that I went out to celebrate. My current flatmate and I went a little OTT and I have since spent all day throwing up out of my nose. Classy. I need to master the art of declining cocktails. I'm going back to bed to recover now.

Lily xXx

Monday 17 March 2008

Sudden burst of motivation

Today I actually managed to get some work done. In the morning I had a project presentation meeting which went better than expected. Worryingly one of my supervisors doesn't think I'll have enough data, which is a huge pain the bum, but i got some useful tips on stats to use. He's also going to read over what I've done of my introduction and method. I know my introduction is too short at 2800 words but I'm stuck with how to make it any bigger. I'm also hoping I'll get some guidance on my method as I totally don't know where I'm going with it. As I haven't done the actual assays I don't know the reagents used or if I'll even have to include them in my write up.

When i got home i wrote up 2 lectures into my big revision note book. Even though I'm still a good 2 weeks behind my revision timetable it feels pretty good to have a bit of motivation to start writing up more lectures. Reassuringly, according to the course supervisor not many people have started revision so maybe I'm going to do really well or maybe it'll just take longer for me to absorb the information because I'm thick?

Tomorrow I've been told to go to a meeting about presentations. Annoyingly, not only do I not yet have the results to put into my presentation, but I also have no idea where it's being held. Because I'm tagging along with another group of people they all know where it is, so no doubt I'll be wandering around the corridoors lost. It's very tempting not to go. I managed to go without help for the last presentation, so surely this one can't be that different?

I guess I'll see if my sore throat and ear ache gets worse in the morning, and decide if I'll go or not then.

Lily xXx

Sunday 16 March 2008

Little Miss Naughty-No-Work

Today I am being Little Miss Naughty-No-Work. I got up early with the plan of writing revision notes and it's now 4pm and I've done bugger all. I think it make be the fact I'm freaking out on the inside about being 2 weeks behind my revision note writing plan, but something is causing me to be very very lazy.

Instead of work I went to tesco, which in all fairness had to be done. I then spent an hour cooking and eating a lovely leek and ham stovetop pasta, from a magazine recipe I've been meaning to try for weeks. It really was delicious, but unfortunately won't help me pass my exams.

Since then I've been time wasting online and I have 2 hours until I start preparing dinner. I'm trying out recipe that calls for some resting and chilling, so I have some revision note writing gaps and I'm hoping to get 2 or 3 lectures written up, but the urge to nap is almost too much.

To make things worse its freezing cold in my flat, and I'm getting texts from the boyfriend who has just landed in majorca telling me how warm and sunny it is. Maybe if I turn the heating up and the lights on I can lightbulb-bathe in the living room, it has to be almost as good as sitting in the sun.

Lily xXx

Saturday 15 March 2008

Apparently I am a "Morning Person"

This is going to sound a little weird, but I actually enjoyed getting up that early in the morning. With the lack of cars and people London was like a totally different place. The air smelt fresher and travelling on the tube didn't make me so angry my head wanted to explode.

Everything went surprisingly smoothly today. I picked up my samples on time without having to wait hours to find someone to let me in the freezer. The tubes ran fine. I arrived at the labs at 7.32... only 2 minutes late. I then spent the next 4 hours putting test tubes in racks and learning the boring parts of lab work until the nice people let me out before I lost the will to live. There was a really nice surgeon lady who is starting her PhD there too, her enthusiam and exciting sounding research project has made me think that research maybe isn't THAT bad. Not that I'd want to do it again.

Unfortunately my addiction to naps kicked in when I got home and i slept for 3 hours... So much for getting any work done. As of tomorrow i really need to give myself a kick up the bum and start writing some revision notes and getting my head around stats for the project. Not fun.

Lily xXx

Friday 14 March 2008

Who I am and why I'm here

Here's another try at blogging and this time I'm actually going to stick with it. I feel the need to blabber on about my uni days and general life, and thought that a bit of blogging will give my poor flatmates' ears a rest.

I'm an intercalating medical student at a London medical school. Unfortunately I feel that intercalating was a bad bad bad bad bad move, I seem to have picked the least organised course and my project has had soooo many disasters.

Tomorrow the evil project is making me get up at 5.30am!!! I didn't even know that there was a 5.30 in the morning. All so i can pick my samples up from one hospital and rush them around to another hospital on the other side of London. Madness. So now not only am I a medical student, but im a courrier too!

On the plus side I remembered to buy some milk for breakfast.

Lily xXx