Author: ajb210

And now for something completely different

I considered writing this post about the trials and tribulations of the second year of my PhD, how data collection is finally ramping up in a meaningful way and how daunting the upcoming presentations and assessments are. That sounds pretty boring though, and someone else will do that over the next few weeks anyway so I’ll let them write something more interesting about science. In the interest of work-life balance, I’m going to write about my holiday last week instead with some nice pictures.

So I went to Las Vegas last week (the above is the view from our balcony).

Magnets!

Whoa, Torben really raised the bar for the scientific rigor and quality of this blog. A bar that I will happily swoop well under without it even grazing the top of my head.

The last couple of months have largely focused around preparing for our Early Stage Assessments, which entails a short report and a viva consolidating what we have been doing since we started and what our plans for the next two years are. Sounds fun right? It’s actually not. It is however a good opportunity to think about what has worked, what hasn’t and the direction our research is going in.

High-Octane Science

My turn again eh? I really can’t believe it’s been over 2 months since the last blog post I did. The time has really flown by, with all the experiments blurring into one and every paper I read just starting to jumble around in my head like alphabet soup. The funder’s meeting came and went, and now we’re all working on our 9 month early stage reviews, something I’m sure the other Stratigrad students are looking forward to as much as I am…

I’m spending more and more time over at the IRDB building at Hammersmith Hospital, where I’ve been carrying out all of my tissue culture work.

Adam’s first blog post

I’m going to be honest, I’ve never blogged. Or tweeted. So if this comes across as a bit rambling, I apologise. I also spent all of last night moving, so am a little exhausted and all over the place.

It’s been nearly 6 months since we all started our studentships, and everything is  finally  starting to feel a bit less overwhelming. Working at the SAF building really feels like a big deal (especially coming off the back of working in a tiny kitchen at minium wage for a year just before it), and starting in the section in a group has been a real benefit, as we have all experienced everything at the same time and been there to help each other whenever we need it.