Preparing for final year

Just in case life wasn’t hectic enough right now (I’m currently finishing all my practical work, thinking about how I’m going to structure my report, and did I mention that Lindy wants me to do a talk in front of hundreds of clinical experts at the Australasian Symposium of Medical Research in May?), the deadline is almost upon me to choose my final year units for next year at Bath. I hadn’t invested too much time milling it over until now, but I think it’s about time I did, as it’s hugely important. Unfortunately, the way my degree is weighted means that I’ll still have the majority of the work to do when I go back in September; first year and placement year are worth nothing and second year is only worth 32%. To think I’ve done three years of hard graft to still have two thirds of the marks to get makes me quite irate; silly Bath!

With this year being make or break in terms of the grade I end up with, I need to make sure I choose wisely. In a nutshell: A total of sixty credits are to be taken over the two semesters. Each unit is worth six credits and the dissertation is worth eighteen credits. You can’t do the dissertation throughout the whole year; it has to be completed within one semester. There are two compulsory units in the first semester and one in the second, then the remaining credits are to be chosen from a list of units as long as my arm. The choice is overwhelmingly huge. To complicate things further, us placement students get zero support as far as making these decisions go, whereas second year students not doing a placement get a nice seminar where they give you advice. No pressure then…

This being said, I suppose I do have a vague plan. Firstly, this placement has been very helpful in identifying the areas I want to opt for; I aim to choose as many neuroscience related units as possible because 1) it interests me, 2) b I’ve spent this year learning about it and 3) it’ll look great if I want to go into that kind of career. Writing the report has also caused me to do a complete 180 in terms of the way I like to be assessed. Before this year, I would have preferred final exams to coursework (mostly because I wanted to party the whole time and worry about studying later), but now I think I’d rather work on deadlines throughout the semester and have less relying on exam period. On Monday, when the list went live, I provisionally chose the following:

Semester one
Genes and genomes
Protein synthesis, folding and turnover
Molecular and medical neuroscience
Cell membranes
Sensory and signalling networks in plants

Semester two
Dissertation (god help me)
Bioinformatics
Modern methods of researching neurodegeneration

Judging by our discussions of this topic, it appears that next year will be the first year that my twin Chloe and I aren’t taking all the same units, as our placements have caused us to take interest in different things. I have no idea how I’ll cope in hungover lectures without having her by my side, telling me to struggle through for a few more hours before I can go to sleep! It’s of huge benefit to be living with someone doing the same modules as you, even if it’s just for tea breaks to bitch about how hard an assignment is, so fingers crossed between four Biochemists we’ll be able to help each other out. It definitely makes a difference.

My upcoming Bath life may be a little doom and gloom at present, but my Asutralian life has been the complete opposite this weekend. With Pete still having a blast on the Gold Coast, Jess and I have had the most wonderful girlie weekend together. On Friday night, we went on a mission to Blockbuster and the bottle shop and enjoyed a quiet evening curled up on the sofa with Ben & Jerry’s, cider and The Hunger Games. Saturday was quite chilled in the daytime (running, food shopping, then trying not to distract Jess when she wrote her essay), before we got dressed up and ventured out into the city for cocktails. We went to Andaluz and The Greenhouse in the central business district, both of which served up some amazing alternative cocktails. In The Greenhouse, which is covered with tiny plant pots of greenery on the outside and has a rooftop bar, I had an “Apriscotch”; Scotch, peach liquer, lemon juice, whiskey bitters and apricot jam. So delicious! It wasn’t too late a night, but it was lovely to get out in the city for what felt like the first time in ages. 

Andaluz: Chic library meets late-night booze

Apple and vanilla martinis by candlelight (yes, the clientele was us and couples)

On Sunday morning, Sian paid us a long overdue visit on her way back to Dunsborough after spending the weekend in Perth with her boyfriend. We chatted about her recent decision to pay Cornwall a visit with Jess this summer (Yay!) and the small matter of what we’re all going to do with our lives. I then took a little walk into Cottesloe for a browse of the shops, before Jess and I took the opportunity to head to the beach, considering the weather was particularly warm for April. It was a little windy, but we sheltered behind the spit and had a swim in the calm (but freezing) lagoon. I had a lovely catch up with my Mum on Skype, then wound down with dinner at rubbish TV in the evening before starting my last week at work before my east coast adventure. Roll on Sydney!