Well hello! It may be (late) November, but I've got to catch you up from way back in September. So let's start (although I DID fill you in about Oktoberfest, and that's one of the most epic things I've done since then...):
I was doing SO well with exercising and being healthy. Like REALLY well. But then, the gym closed for 3 weeks (throughout August and September). Around this time, it also started getting dark at a ridiculously early hour. So, needless to say, I've fallen out of my exercise routine. There is really no excuse for this, but its hard for me to get back into the motivation once I've fallen out of it. Which is ridiculous; because even though my actual weight didn't drop, I lost 1-2 inches on all my measurements over only a couple months. And that's pretty epic.
Early September brought in much stress planning for the poster presentation I had to give for the postgraduate Research Colloquium at the University. There was much rushed experimentation and last minute poster-making, but it all turned out fine in the end.
I also got asked to do an experiment for my co-supervisor to try and help out with a publication. It started as a quick experiment and turned into an extremely difficult and in-depth project. We are wrapping everything up now. Now, this is pretty common for research- you think you know how everything will go and then you have to pick apart each step to figure out what's going wrong. I actually really liked going through the whole process. It was a great learning process and really made me triple check my science (and learn new biochemistry that I hadn't known before). I'm pretty excited for the experiment and paper to be finished and to get my name in a publication!!
September also meant the new school year started back up- which means Journal Club is back on and so is teaching discussion sessions for the intro Neuroscience course. The big new change this year, though, is that I have 3 undergraduate students doing their final year projects with my helping them as one of the PhD mentors.
I also did a last minute conference attendance at the Royal Chemical Society. It was a little over my head (it was a chemistry conference....) but it was awesome to have an excuse to spend the day in London!
In non work-related terms, we went to Stanmer Apple Day to enjoy all of the local fall harvest. Best part of the day? Drinking pear juice from France. Actually, no, the best part of the day was watching Ben try apple cider vinegar (TWICE) and not realizing he was eating vinegar.
The most exciting things happening in my life are when we go travel. And those adventures always get their own special blog post. Sorry that the ones in between are a bit boring...
