crazy times!

Hey guys,

It's been two weeks since I wrote my last entry, as I've been completely rushed off my feet recently with all sorts of random things... let me bring you up to speed with what's going down in Cambridge at the moment!

The Monday before last I had a 21st party, which kinda made waking up on Tues a slightly bigger chore than usual... Wednesday I was DJing at a party and on Thurs I was involved in an alternative careers fair, advertising the teaching-English-in-Romania project I did last summer! Friday was a recovery day, but then on Saturday I had a black tie Medics' dinner, which was good fun all round!

All week I was in the lab pretty much, doing some more 'Western blot' analysis as part of my project. I've now done most of my practical stuff, so it's just the long-and-boring write up and data analysis left to do!

Last week was much the same, but I also had to make a visit to the pregnant lady we've been following for a few months as part of our PfP course (preparing for patients). We have to submit a coursework essay about what we discovered on pregnancy as an experience, which I can't wait to write... or not!

Anyhow, other than that things are rushing by as usual in Cambridge - we're already mid-way through week 5, and only have 3 more weeks left of term - crazy isn't it - so it's all down to making the best of the weeks left ahead, because next term is going to be crazy with exams!

I'll keep updating this blog with posts till the end of term,

Kief

back into the swing of things

Hey guys,

This week I've been pretty busy, with both my academic activities and social life stepping up a bit! On Monday I had an audition to compere for a Ball, and got in (!) so now have been told to write my own script and get practising! It's quite a nerve-racking thing to do, but hopefully if I get some decent jokes in and get my timings right it should run smoothly... I've got 2 weeks to sort it out anyway so that's plenty of time!

On Tuesday afternoon I did some more lab work - my project is looking at pregnancy in hypoxic conditions and its effect on fetal rat tissue, and basically involves analysis of the amount of different insulin proteins expressed in the hypoxic samples and the controls, using a process known as Western blotting. You may have heard of gel electrophoresis, and this is what I've been using to separate my proteins, before using specific antibodies to identify the proteins present (sorry for the jargon)! Anyway to cut a long story short, last week the gels I ran didn't come out well, and it turns out that there was a problem with one of the antibodies, so this week I was pretty nervous about getting some good results, but luckily we did get some interesting data (overexpression of some proteins in the hypoxic samples) which at least gives me something to write about in my project!

Doing Physiology this year is at times challenging, but is definitely enjoyable as you really get a good look at how 'real' science works. The lab work's quite fun, but at times pretty knackering - on some days I've got back to my room at 8pm! Hopefully I should get some more good results, so will be able to use those in my write-up.

Apart from work, I was also busy sorting out posters for the summer project I did last year (teaching English in Romania) - every year it's down to the students who went in the previous year to pick next year's bunch, so I've been making posters and will soon be interviewing people!

Didn't do much else apart from going out for a curry on Thurs and ending up in 'The Soul Tree', a rebranded Cam club which plays decent RnB/Hiphop/Garage music (compared to the cheese you get at almost every other Cam club)!

At the moment I've got some papers to read, on the topic of acute renal failure, which is all pretty clinical so quite interesting! Will let you know what I've been up to in a week's time!

Kief