In your honour - week four

Monday
Today I had some marvellous thing called a committee meeting. It includes my supervisors (PD and PB) and two other members of academic staff (MH and DG). MH is someone I’ve never encountered before, but in telling people that he was on my committee, have been offered condolences.

DG I thought was safe, as I’ve actually worked for her and met her and chatted to her on several occasions. So what happens when I walk into the room? “Hello, Louise.” Damn it.

They asked me a lot of questions and I felt rather concerned by the end. PB tells me I did well, I just need to learn to speak louder (I would later learn he was praising me to another Hons student in another committee meeting).

Then I went to the Commonwealth Games. Jason (FIND A LAST NAME) is my hero.

There was quite a mess getting out of the MCG. It took me 45 minutes to get from my seat in the stadium to my platform on Richmond station. Think about it.

Tuesday
Today I had a meeting (in addition to department meeting, department seminar, lab meeting) with all the people who are studying the same organism as me. There ain’t many of us.

Me, one of my fellow honours students, the RA I do a lot of work with (Alex), the guy who never gives me primers no matter how many times I ask him and a population geneticist (shudder).

Population genetics is the reason I hate the Applied Pest Meetings. They look at genes to guess which way bugs are moving. It’s all statistics.

PB called the meeting as he believed t was a good idea. He was at the Games. That was a small error in communication. Not to worry. We all gave the population geneticist our e-mail addresses (he’s in a different lab) and got on with our lives, event to be re-scheduled.

Wednesday
I picked up some little maggot guys and froze them. They’re now sitting in a box in the minus 80 degree freezer. I don’t even need them because I borrowed Alex’s when I did that experiment.

Then I went to Ronald McDonald House. Yay.

Thursday
I don’t actually remember this day, and didn’t write down about anything I did.

At the very least, it meant I could continue with lab work.

Friday
Another meeting with the Phils (PB and PD if I haven’t said this yet). They are apparently very happy with the work I’ve done. That’s nice to know.

I’m not so hot when it comes to the literature research unfortunately. All the facts are just too messed up in my head.

I managed to avoid going to the waste of time “Applied Pest Meeting” today. Only time will tell if I actually get away with it.

Meanwhile, I spent the afternoon cataloguing all the papers I’ve read and fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

PB recommended some guys who did some great work that I should read. They did such great work that they felt satisfied they’ve solved the problem and gave up researching any thing I care about 15 years ago. What this means is I can’t get copies of any of it, because online journals didn’t exist then.

Conclusions for the day: I don’t know a single useful fact in the world.

Weekend
Everything I’ve read so far is useless.

But at least it’s organised now.
Fly count: