«The apple experiment» is finished
Since the little bugger wasn't moulding after a considerable time-span (5 months!), I eventually ate it last week in a peculiar hunger attack [1]. Luckily, I was smart enough to collect photographic evidence about my mission, as «some» folks have taken my alleged secretiveness as a serious affront.
About the culinary experience: admittedly, it was a little to sweet for my taste, but what do expect after somewhat more than 5 months of ripening?
[1] I can see the next Sun headline: «Poor student had to eat decaying apple! Authorities are shocked!»
Labels: fun, mike's random life, random science
10 Comments:
Good on ya mate, showing us that apples left sitting in the fridge can still be eaten after they are long forgotten. Haha!
Good luck for your thesis-writing (or you have finished it, I suppose?). After all, it's thesis-writing season in the southern hemisphere too...
6000 words was the word limit you say? Sounds reasonable, if that's just for the intro.....If not, I will conclude that
(i) UK Honours theses are piss-easy
Or
(ii) I've been screwed over by the Australian system.
Which I think the correct answer will be the latter.
All the best to your viva/thesis-seminar. Give me a holler if you happen to be down-under. : >
-Alvin
Hey Alvin,
Any news from EMBL for you?
I'd say you'd been screwed by the Aussies. I could easily write a book for the introduction, considering that I tried to analyse purinoceptor heterodimerisation, but I presume it's not the purpose of the coures to review a subject - there are plenty of more comprehensive reviews out in the scientific aether.
Good luck with your thesis, I gave mine the last touch today.
Ah, a real scientist.
I'm wondering whether there's a connection between having to write a thesis/a grant application/an article and a tendency to risky behaviour (like selfexperiments with apples, alcohol, too much coffein...) .
...
Oh, well, maybe it isn't really a question.
Made a word count on my thesis: 32006 (Germany). Bummer.
Hi Mike and jlt,
Word Counts in the thesis world of Australia (Honours) are
5000words (intro), 5000words (everything else)
Also here in Kangaroo land, as part of assessment, we have to freaking write our own grant proposal (as to why we need to get $ out of them) and animal ethics (to justify why the little critters are gonna die in our hands). I presume the UK and Germany doesn't torture their uni kids this way, hey?
No news from EMBL. And since I haven't heard of the same person interview-ing at that place twice (have you?), then I guess I have no fate with that place. Oh well, at least I dun have to climb the damn slippery hill up to do labwork in the immediate future then! Haha.
Meanwhile, have you heard from the instituitions/unis that you had replied?
- Alvin
Sheesh, jlt I hope that was your Diplomarbeit.
EMBL, oh well they are a story on their own. I keep getting "invitations" to write applications to all kind of other places since I've ended up on the waiting list. One of which was actually quite nice, as a new unit was launched recently in Grenoble and my visit was appealing. Haven't heard from them yet though.
My American applications all failed, expect a post about my experiences at some point during my exams.
How much lab-time did you invest on your thesis? We officially had only 6 weeks.
Actually, that was my PhD thesis. What are you talking about, your Master thesis (maybe I should have read some more comments before chiming in...)?
That's about the same here in Ireland (where I'm working now), 6-8 wks lab work and 40 pages max.
Cheers,
JLT
Ordinary Bachelor-thesis. For most of my collegues that's the first-time proper lab experience. Sometimes I think the system is a bit ridiculous, but on the other hand, it saves a lot of time and experience can be better acquired in a PhD programme anyway.
Hi Mike and Jlt,
Your honours is quite akin to the 3rd-year project over in kangaroo land, with minimum 12hrs expected from your supervisor to be in the lab trying-not-to-set-the-lab-on-fire.
Honours, Aussie style, is best served with no minimum hours. Yup, as long you produce something to the supervisor, you can live away from the lab and not come in for a very long time. But since my supervisor is despo on publishing, his slave (aka me) is living in the lab as long as I can. Haha.
Hey Mike, since I expect you to cream the exams and get ClassI anyway, do u wanna head down south to sunny Aussie-land? There is good science being done here, while you shouldn't have a problem landing a scholarship though :P
Good on you that EMBL still appreciates you. As for me, I'm destined to enter the thrash-heap. Haha!!
-Alvin
I think I got a little carried away by enthusiasm, as I started altering the whole project design from immunoblotting to a fluorescent approach. My supervisor acted very insightfully and she almost granted me free will, and supported me with advise. I suppose I was very lucky ("yey" for Andrea!).
Ace-ing my exams is now the next goal, but therefore I'll have to endure some sleepless nights until Thursday and Friday. I'm almost sad that my undergraduate career alreaddy ends in the beginning of June. Those three years just flew by.
Aussie-land? Let's see, perhaps for a post-doc. The inverted seasons would confuse me a little though.
At least the news is not that bad as the one, once seen in a film (think it was "Airplane!"):
"Boy trapped in refrigerator eats own foot!"
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