All gone!

Hello,

I wrote up my project last weekend and just left spaces for the photos, and then on Wednesday I went to copy the photos from the lab computer so that I could add them in. Unfortunately, someone had deleted all my results photos so I now have none! There was a chance that the computer had been backed up before they were deleted but I've just found out that they're definitely gone. I still have all my results in diagrams and written up but the photos proved that the results were accurate and showed that my marking technique was successful. I still have 2 weeks until the end-of-term deadline but my supervisor is away at the moment and not back until Thursday so I'll have just over a week to do as much as I can to replace the lost photos. Actually taking them doesn't take long but getting specimens at the right stage at the same time as getting a slot on the camera is a bit hit-and-miss and it has taken me all term to get the camera to work so it would be very frustrating for it to all have been a waste of time. I'll take copies of my photos straight away next time instead of listening to the lab people who told me to only do it at the end!

It's also annoying that I have an essay to write for a tutorial in a week and a bit but I can't get it done now to give me more time to work on the photos because I haven't got a title or reading list yet. And one of my lectures has just been moved to last thing on the last Friday of term, meaning that I will have a whole new reading list to somehow get through that weekend, when I will be revising for my chemical pharmacology supplementary subject exam, which is on the next Monday.

The good news is that I went to watch my friend playing football against Cambridge this morning and we won!

Hi,

I've finished the practical work on my project now. There's one more photograph that I'd like to get but it's not essential and my supervisor is away next week so I'll try to get it the week after but if I don't it doesn't really matter. In the mean time, I'm adding my results to my write-up (at the moment I'm drawing lots of little diagrams showing how the carbon marks moved). I haven't got an essay to write this weekend so I'm going to get as much as I can done while I'm free from other work. I'm also going to a birthday party tonight and another one tomorrow night.

This week was the last week when I have two "themes" (i.e. twice as many lectures as normal). And next week is one of the themes that I'm not doing in detail so I will have less reading to do as well. So I should have time to work on my project and, if I get a title soon, to start my final essay of the term. I've also got a seminar that I have to prepare a short presentation of a paper for. Our seminars tend to be either min-lectures or smaller groups where we present papers in pairs. Yesterday I had one of the mini-lecture type, which actually turned out to be more like a big lecture crammed into a small room. The seminar was given by a neuroscientist called Tim Bliss, who discovered a type of change in the brain called Long Term Potentiation (LTP) about 30 years ago. Since LTP is one of the most important things that keeps coming up in our course a lot of people went to the seminar and it was pretty overcrowded. Generally, though seminar numbers are limited by the online-booking system to about 12 people.

Back to work now before the birthday fun!

Hi,

Finally, I've got the microscope camera to work! I have taken some picture of my experiments and will get a few more next week - it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to get 'before' and 'after' photos, which would be ideal, because the bright light dries out the specimins, but that's not critical at all. The trickiest bit has been going into the lab at the right time to get photos at exactly the right stage - I just got away in time yesterday to go out for a friend's 21st bithday! I'm aiming to complete the practical work next week so that I'll have plenty of time to write up the project over the next few weekends.

I had a tutorial yesterday on neural plasticity (changes in the brain). It was less useful than most tutorials because a lot of the tutor's questions were of the "guess what's in my head" style - i.e. a very vague question requiring a very specific answer. In general, though, tutorials this year have been very helpful for getting a really good in-depth understanding of the topics. I'm writing my depression essay at the moment for a tutorial later in term, and I have one on addiction next week. The brain disorders theme has been very popular amongst the medics who chose the neuroscience option, not suprisingly, but with a bit of emailing around its been possible to get the tutorials I wanted.

Tomorrow I'm going to look at the house that I'll be living in next year with 2 of my friends and a mystery 4th person who we haven't found yet. If I finish this essay off now, it could be a nice relaxing day!

2 more essays, 2 less lectures

Hello,

Tutorials seem to be like buses - after waiting ages to book one I've now got two more. One is on mood disorders and the other, which is more iminent and therefore the one that I'm working on now, is on changes in the adult brain during learning. I've only got one more to book now and I'm not in any hurry to do that now that I have two essays to be getting on with.

I was supposed to have a lecture on the spinal cord today but the lecturer didn't turn up so it will have to be rescheduled. I also had a chemical pharmacology supplementary subject lecture on drugs used to treat brain disorders, which I went to to pick up the notes but didn't stay because they were identical to a lecture we had by the same lecturer last year. Most of the chemical pharmacology lectures seem to be repeats for us, which is good because we get extra credit for learning the same thing twice but a little unfair on the chemists who do the same supplementary subject but haven't done anything like it before! It's also a bit unfair on the medics who chose to do history and philosophy of science as a supplementary subject because they've been working hard and writing essays for their extra marks!

I still haven't been able to use the microscope camera, but I've been in to work on my research project every day this week and I'm slowly but surely getting closer to some conclusive results. It's taking quite a long time to do the experiments so I've done as much as possible this week when I didn't have too much reading to do, and I hope I won't have to spend that long on it every week.