In your honour - Week 10

Monday
Return Lee’s laptop to him before going to collect virgins. Return to Bio21 to open up my essay and read it a few more times before printing out four copies (17 pages each – it was a fair wad of paper). Mo and I wander over to hand in the essay at about 12, when it’s not due in until 4. We are told that we’re abnormal.

I start working on my presentation which I am to give to the department on Monday (the next one of course).

At 3.30 we head over to Genetics because one of the PhD students in my lab is giving him final presentation. Good on him, he spoke very well, but I slept every badly and it’s hard to pay attention to anything for an hour.

I felt bad about the fact that my attention was slipping but I caught one hons student and a RA asleep, one of my supervisors playing silly games with another hons student and the head of department was resting his head against the wall.

Play soccer. I actually kick a few goals this time (woot). Managed to get a soccerball pattern bruise on my leg that as of Saturday still hadn’t healed. After soccer I do my flies and return to Bio21 for my stuff. It’s pissing down with rain so I have a fairly fun time getting home.

Fly count Do you have any idea how hard it is to fill this in a week late? I believe I picked up some DB flies today. I have to try and breed them up, which should be interesting because they don’t survive too well. But they have curly wings and are really very cute.

Tuesday
Stupid Meeting Day!!!

One of the meetings is cancelled today and another isn’t compulsory, so I don’t bother. I do my flies and walk to Bio21 (1). I sit at my desk and attempt to do slides for a while before being dragged to the stupid non-compulsory meeting (2) by someone who thought it was worth going because of the lab meeting afterwards he didn’t realise wasn’t on. Idiot.

Meeting runs late and then we do the quiz. I need to go back to Bio21 (3) to get my lunch. On the way back to Genetics (4), Jeremy decides to show the rest of the Bio21 hons students the “secret underground tunnel” that I’ve been hearing about since October last year. This thing has been a rumour for so long for me, and it’s taken THAT long for me to find it.

What a waste of time. The thing goes for MILES! It’s ridiculous and meant we were late for the seminar so I couldn’t sit next to Sarah. Boo.

Walking back to Bio21 (5) I’m talking to a PhD student who tells me that he’ll watch the honours talks for the same reason he watches the Grand Prix. Because you want to see the crashes. That was encouraging.

Back at the lab I check my e-mail and find that I’m in trouble for not handing in the form I didn’t get given at a meeting I wasn’t supposed to attend. Figure that one out.

Return to Genetics (6) for a careers seminar in which we have a not very useful speech from a Genetics Counsellor and a very interesting chat from David Heckel, who is currently playing a cameo role in our lab. He’s from Germany and visits occasionally because he still has students here. Brilliant speaker at least.

After this I do my flies and return downstairs to chat to some of the PhD students hanging around after the speeches (there was food and drinks). There is apparently a rumour going around that I have a boyfriend (I don’t).

I honestly believe I spent an hour walking between genetics and Bio21 today (6 times – I counted for you). I think I did the trip 7 times on Monday.

Fly count: I collect my first fly that’s supposed to have mutated. It hasn’t. Keep it anyway and collect more virgins.

Wednesday
Today Sam helps me buy a new computer. I send off the order but don’t get a reply.

I suspect I spend most of the day fretting about my presentation, as I don’t remember anything else happening.

I also wash the dishes, as I’m on that duty this week. Keep splashing myself with the water, which sucks a little given the bottle is covered with labels like “Warning, do not contact skin” whoops.

Tonight though is a post-grad society meeting. Cool. I rock up and the Dean of Science is sitting in the meeting room with a bunch of important people. Ok…I’ll do something else then.

I hand in some chocolate money and wait in the PhD room for a bit. This is followed by speeches by two PhD students, one on scientific fraud, the other on the IgNobel awards. Very funny.

I do some flies and go home.

Fly Count: Have stolen more flies of Alex now, set up 7 matings I think.

Thursday
Do some flies and get a hot chocolate with some other people before heading to the room we booked to practise our presentations. All four of us, only Jeremy ain’t around. All three of us then.

Some silly receptionist double booked the projector meaning we didn’t get it, it went to the other person who booked it. That’s fair.

We wind up booking the auditorium in Bio21 instead. I go first, jump up and deliver my little speech, which is probably just about the right length of time. I get told a whole lot of changes to make and a whole lot of new things I need to say. Time is going to be a problem (you’re supposed to speak for 15 minutes and then answer questions for five). It feels like a lot of criticism at the time, but they’re just trying to help (it was in private consultation with PD and Sam later that the words of encouragement came).

So I get given a lot of advice, which I write down and disappear to lunch. Here I meet Carl, who is on exchange from Canada. I didn’t realise you could exchange in an honours year (or something like that).

Return after lunch and change all my slides, send them to PD for more words of wisdom.

At some point during the day, I’m sitting at my desk and PD sticks his head into the room and says “Do you have those flies?” Yes, flies. In any other work place you’d have to spell it differently.

Sam gets bored and chats to me for about an hour, meaning I don’t start my evening fly work until 6. Fly work takes a fair while as I’ve got to move flies from vial to vial and etc. This was supposed to be my going home early today. I run through Melbourne Central on the way home and pick up a KFC kids meal (the free toy I wasn’t given, unfortunately, as it was a PC version of a board game, I might have actually used it). It’s the first time I’ve eaten dinner this week.

Friday
Rock up first thing and do flies, before killing a few minutes before the Honours Talks start. Find myself a seat and then just sorta pay attention for some time,

Return to Bio21 briefly, eat lunch, watch more talks.

Sarah presents her thing. I kept thinking about the funny things she found out while researching her essay and struggle not to burst out laughing for a fair part of her presentation. Whoops. She did well, good girl. Everyone asks me where she comes from, as no one can place her accent. At least they aren’t accusing her of being kiwi again.

Return to Bio21 to watch Jeremy practise. Get an e-mail from the computer guy. “Call me.” Eep. I do so and Sam helps me sort out the fact that we’ve chosen a poor combination of parts to chuck in the machine. Whoops.

I wash the dishes again, do flies and then meet up with Gemma so we can go to comedy festival to see Lano and Woodley perform. They were fantastic. I laughed very, very hard and wound up in pain over it.

Return to uni at 11 to check for virgins. This means I can sleep in Saturday. Yay.

Saturday
What a shit week I’m having. I picked up the computer and attempted to install Windows. That didn’t work. I’ve taken the computer back to the shop and even though the guy I was waiting on a phone call from should have been back at his desk half an hour ago, I still haven’t heard a word.

Meanwhile, I’m currently at uni, waiting for flies to emerge. Well, just waiting until it’s late enough such that 16 hours later it’s an hour I consider plausibly involving me being back here again.

I WANT MY NEW COMPUTER! After all this damn effort in ensuring that I’d have power point working over the weekend and I’m stuck using the shared computer in the honours room.

Fly Count: I just morgued those guys that I’ve been collecting the past few days. So a few less, but I also found me some white virgins. Woot.

Later Saturday
YAY! They called, I can pick it up!!!!

Well, I can’t pick it up, Mum will. But YAYAYAYAY!
Fly count: I have 19 vials of white virgins, each with 1 to 2 flies in it. I have 22 lines of flies that are currently trying to breed. Then there’s a bunch of stock vials to get more virgins from. My tray is almost full.

Sunday
Arrive to find all the flies that are going to come out today have already done so.

Yipee! I can go home and make it to stick class.

In your Honour (Week nine)

Wednesday:

I do my flies and run a gel to see if the stupid restriction digest (cutting up of DNA) worked last night. I’ve almost forgotten how to run a gel, it’s been a while since I’ve done one. Despite this, I notice that I’ve become far too efficient at setting up gels and these things. It used to be I’d make the gel and in the time it took me to prepare everything else, the gel would have dried and I could continue with it straight away. Today I sit around for five minutes waiting for the gel to dry.

After getting my gel results, I throw out two of the samples as I’ve screwed them up good and proper. I continue to make probes (this involves a lot of putting enzymes into the mix and waiting for them to do their thing) with the remaining six samples.

As I’ve just handed in my essay draft, and need to wait until 2pm before I can get feedback on it, I’ve got very little to do. I spend a lot of the day e-mailing people and trying to arrange for buying tickets to see The Living End in a few weeks time.

I finally get to speak to PD and he is encouraging, we can’t deny that, but he gives me a LOT of work to do before the essay is going to be ready for submission (mind you, it’s due Monday). My chances of getting more feedback from him are slim, and the offer is he can do it again Thursday night if I get it to him before then. Deal.

Return to the lab to do more probe stuff, running out during incubations to research the gaps in my essay.

By the end of the day I get to run another gel to test if making the probes work. I’m even more efficient at preparing the gel this time. Sit around for ten minutes waiting for the gel to dry.

The probes didn’t work.

Fly count: a few more virgin whites, otherwise the same

Thursday:
I suspect I have enough flies to set up matings today, so I do so. Turns out I don’t have enough flies (it’s hard to count them while they’re flying around) but the crosses should be fine with four girls to each boy (if only Andy could read that).

I spent the entire day on a massive adrenaline rush trying to do my essay. I eat lunch at my desk, despite the fact that I said I’d eat with the Biomeds. I’m going crazy.

At 2.30 I attempt to buy tickets for the Living End. General Admission. Sold out, my arse.

Henry asks me how the probes went. I show him the photo of my gel and he promises to try and help me fix it after the essay is handed in.

Continue with my frantic attempts to finish the essay. Lee helps me find the title to a chapter of a book I’ve had since day one, just with no idea as to what it was.

PD informs me at about 5 o’clock that he’s got enough to do for the night and he’ll read my essay tomorrow morning. Deal.

Go home and open my essay on the computer. The computer crashes. Try again “there was a serious error last time you tried this, are you sure you want to try again?” Uh oh. It works though.

Fly count: a lot fewer white virgins and five matings set up

Friday
Set up another mating and decide to let the white flies build up over the weekend. It looks like some might come out over the weekend. Bugger. Alex agrees to collect them for me so I can still visit my grandparents on Saturday. Bless him.

Send PD my essay.

Run around looking for other people who want to criticise my essay. Find them and get thoroughly beaten into submission. I didn’t do the experiments, don’t tell me they’re crap.

Meet up with the Biomeds to celebrate someone’s birthday with lunch.

Come back to the lab to find PD has given me feedback on the second draft of my essay. Ok. Start working through three sets of comments on the essay.

At four I meet with the Phils to get more feedback on the previous version of my essay. A lot of what he said doesn’t matter any more, and it turns out I could have gotten real feedback on the most recent draft by sending it to him straight after lunch. Whoops.

PD and I run around for a while to locate a laptop I can take home rather than trusting my computer with my precious, precious essay that is currently 500 words over the limit. Whoops. Manage to fix Lee’s so that it’s workable. Lee is my new best friend.

Fly count: Six matings, two white adults and a lot of larvae

Weekend
It’s nice sitting in a warm room while I’m working. I’m plonked in front of the TV surrounded by drafts of my essay and notes and comments and all the papers I’m talking about (bar one – manage to get Lee’s laptop onto my internet so I can download it again) and have the football on in the background. Richmond v Carlton was a pretty cool match.

Saturday Night
My essay doesn’t actually make sense. E-mail PD with concerns, hoping he checks his e-mail tomorrow morning so that I can continue work on this tomorrow.

A day in the Life (Hons Week 10)

Tuesday – Anzac Day
9am
Arrive at close-to-deserted Genetics department. Walk into the smelly, smelly upstairs fly room and take my tray to the fly lab. Also locate some smelly fly food from my tray in the cold room. I find I have three virgins to collect, all of which are my white-eyed strain. I incorrectly sex two of them, Chris tells me when he eventually rocks up.

Put my flies away and head to Bio21.

9.50
Arrive at Bio21 and sit and chat to Lee about nothing in particular for a while.

10 am
Turn on my computer to find that the bassist (Pauly) from Magneto (band from Firday night) has e-mailed me. That’s kinda cool.

10.10 am
Decide it’s going to be a low work kinda day and that as such I’m going to keep an account of the entire day, just so you guys can see what it’s all like. This has nothing to do with the fact that I’m reading Jeffrey Archer’s prison diaries for the second time. No, nothing.

10.12 am
That stupid song “Apple Eyes” by Swoop is playing on my mp3 player. I have 2251 songs on this damn thing, yet it’s always playing Apple Eyes by Swoop. I may have to delete this song.

I am now turning my attention to finishing my essay referencing. I’m so sick of this essay.

10.26
It occurs to me I forgot to rant about the agriculture library last week. I never went to the place in undergrad, but found myself headed over there three of the four days last week to photocopy junk from “Bulletin of Entomological Research.” On the Thursday (I think) I arrived in the morning before the librarian. Now that is service.

10.33
I just found a reference that I have been searching for for AGES. The paper happens to be in the world’s most hard-to-access journal, but I only mention it briefly so I’ll live without it.

I seem to have a never-ending supply of easter eggs in my drawer. I consider this incredibly cool.

11am
Wander into the lab as I’m bored of the computer. I leave a little note for Alex before deciding I may as well stay in the lab and set up for DNA concentration determination.

This involves taking samples from the massive DNA extraction I did the other day and diluting them in water. Easy, right?

Well it was.

Although, I think I’ve been out of the lab for a while as Henry and Adrian have spread their stuff all over my bench (three to a bench, I’m in the middle). Not only this, but a whole lot of my stuff has been “borrowed.” Fortunately, it was all labeled with my name so I simply “borrowed” it back.

I edited my essay before going into the lab, which means it will be easier to find the reference I was, as I don’t have to get them to say exactly the same thing. It may mean I have to read all the things I already said and see if they’re useful in the new context. Damn.

I should save this document, It’s starting to get long…

11.43
I’m eating carrots. I’m a hungry girl.

I’ve filled in another reference point. I gave up on trying to find one article to say what I wanted it to say, and wound up putting in three. Much easier.

That leaves one I’ve got and I’m not sure if I need to reference it, and another where I know who to reference (ironically enough, it is WHO) but I don’t know how to. I need Sam.

I’m just about out of carrot now.

11.56am
I have just closed the document that contains my essay. I put in that reference I wasn’t sure I needed. So I’m happy.

I just gotta wait for Sam to do the last one, which will probably be tomorrow.

A few people have shown up now, so there’s a little more noise. It’s now me, Lee, Tamar and Ariadne. In an office that holds 17. None of the people with more lonely offices, or no offices are here. The only person who isn’t a student is David, a visiting academic from Germany I think.

I need to find something to do…I think it’s going to be something very un-geneticsy.

12.06
Keep getting texts from Se so we can arrange lunch.

12.15
Wow. The phone’s ringing in the other room, which is essentially this room. There are desks in the middle with pin boards and overhead lockers, so you can’t really see over them.

12.34
Ariadne wanders in to make a hot drink. The lab is normally more exciting than this, I promise. I continue to work on my art journal.

12.46
I give up, I’m going to lunch.

1:45
I turn on the UV spec lamp to let it warm up

2pm
I return to the UV spec machine and realize I don’t remember how to use it

2.15
Turn off the UV spec lamp and use a different machine (one that Chris knows how to use) to check my DNA samples.

2.50
Return to Bio21 with $40 worth of chocolate and results for my DNA concentration. Spend some time in the lab doing calculations and checking calculations to make sure I do my later experiments properly.

3.20
I fill up the chocolate box with my newly acquired treats. It’s a full three minutes before one gets purchased.

3.26
Go to the park and play Frisbee for 40 minutes. Come back and prepare DNA digest.

5.26
Finish preparing the digest. I have been given some shoddy advice on picking enzymes and as such had to go through the process again. That took sometime. It involved me running from the lab to the office about ten times, keeping in mind that nearly everytime I did this I had to take off my labcoat and gloves.

That got annoying.

That should have taken me 10 minutes to prepare, for the record.

5.30
Check my flies. There’s a few new ones. Nothing to be excited about. Go home (finally).

Fly count: A bunch of white adults, 6 isolated transgenic survivors and a few vials full of babies.