I thought I’d fit in a quick blog entry while I waited for my lab supervisors to turn up. Getting used to a lab very different from the one we were based in over our iGEM-ey summer is a weird experience: I’m not sure I understand the concepts of fitting lab work around lectures and not working nine til five with as much squeezed in as possible. I enjoy it, but I don’t think it will ever give me what iGEM did.
Amsterdam was fantastic. We didn’t get to the Boston finals but we know we did very well, and I think we all feel quite proud of the group as a whole and very grateful to Tom for deftly and patiently shepherding us there without getting directly involved in our choices and work output. I sometimes wondered how he stopped himself wrestling the agar plates from our hands and carrying on himself.
An undergraduate degree is all well and good, but for someone like myself who still doesn’t know what to do with themselves when it’s over, I just don’t really have anything to aim for beyond a number. Last Christmas holiday, while I was supposed to be revising, I sort of lost it and ended up reading Sherlock Holmes novels instead. I attempt not to sound trite: I probably would have been stuck if Nic Harmer hadn’t advertised iGEM to us and I hadn’t been in a peculiarly impulsive and confident mood the day I decided to apply. To put my new-found (quite minimal) web skillz to use-
<overemotional>Where would I be without iGEM?!?</overemotional>
I’m currently investigating methods of avoiding the post-iGEM feeling of deflation, and I think the answer is another project which means something to me (it’s going to have to be my third year project). I frankly do not understand why, after the past two weeks of late nights in bed and a workload which took me by surprise, I can’t manage to be happy that iGEM is over. Then again, the team spent several months living in each others’ pockets (I feel like I’m related to Freddie having spent so much time in the lab with him) and mutual enthusiasm for a goal spurs you on.
I might put some Amsterdam photos up if the mood strikes me. Life feels very odd right now.
Mary B.