I’ve had some free time recently away from everything. Specifically I spent a couple of weeks on holiday in the obviously sunny and ever prospering midlands of England. That being said I have now arrived slap bang into my final year of university. I use the phrase “slap bang” for a reason. It’s only day four and already I’ve been busy. But with what?

Final year is rolling in thick and fast at this stage ladies and gentlemen let me tell. I’ve returned from a pleasant summer break and had my comfort blanket torn away from me already.

The Research Project

Day one of semester involved a four hour lecture. The first hour was about our final year research or “dissertation” as most of us call it. Turns out that as of 0900hrs on Monday the 24th of September I had only ten days to select some project ideas. That isn’t a lot of time at all especially given the format of how this works.

The university puts all of it’s final year projects up onto a final year projects database. Each student is then given access to this list so they can have a look at what is available for them to do their research on. The project titles come up in a list form, which you can read through. If a title tickles your fancy, then you can click on it and this will bring up a brief text on what the project involves; Information on why it is a relevant topic, what you will be doing, who the supervisor is, whether it’s a wet (working at the lab bench) or dry (literature review or similar) project etc.

Essentially what we have ten days to do, is to read all of the titles that are interesting to us, make sure the supervisor is someone we are interested in working with, have a quick research of what the topics involved actually are (research topics tend to be much more specific than general teaching topics. So whilst you may understand the generic overview, you may not be familiar with that single protein and its actions/interactions so it can be a good idea to have a look and see!) and then we have to shortlist ten titles. After your ten titles are selected the computer randomly assigns you one of these. If you select less than ten, the database will allocate you random titles to make your list up to ten. So even if you only like five or six of the titles it would be beneficial to pick your own ten rather than get a nasty surprise where you’re allocated a title you really don’t want!

On a brighter note, I’m in a positive mood about a lot of the titles available. A lot of them are in areas of great interest to me and seem to offer a great array of invaluable laboratory skills. Some of the techniques involved such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), mass spectrometry or next generation sequencing aren’t things that undergraduates get too much exposure to. So an opportunity to work with these techniques would certainly be a CV builder!

However, dissertations shouldn’t necessarily be a “comfort zone project”. It can also be an opportunity to branch out and explore and avenue of studies that you have disregarded recently. A good student is always aiming to expand the horizons of their knowledge and a dissertation is a fantastic way to do so. Why not pick a topic that you would usually dismiss? Of course, i’m not advocating that you find a topic you really dislike and do that just for the sake of branching out. Yes you want to gain knowledge but you also want to enjoy your project. It is going to be a years worth or research for you, on top of the other modules you have to complete so it may be wise to pick something you’ll at least have a decent interest in. When assignments are coming in and you have notes to write and exams to revise for etc. etc. you are going to want to have a research project you don’t dread doing. Otherwise it may be very difficult for you to get it completed on time and most importantly, to the high standard you want it. 

The Modules

So at this stage, it probably sounds like a research project is all I have to do given the writing space I have dedicated to it above. That is unfortunately not the case. For this semester I have to complete three modules:

1. Research Project
2. Clinical and Molecular Genetics
3. Pharmacology and Evidence Based Practice

The research project doesn’t just encompass the project. There are other tasks that need to be completed such as a poster presentation and a journal article critical appraisal. The two other modules for this semester are actually of great interest to me so I am looking forward to getting into them. We studied genetics in second year of the course however this final year module is an advanced module so it will go into much greater depth on a lot of the topics as well as providing us with knowledge of other relevant genetic concepts of a higher level.

At this point, my first pharmacology lecture is tomorrow and there hasn’t been any prerequisite work loaded onto our online learning environment so I haven’t had anything to do for it. Clinical and Molecular genetics has been a different story. Although my first lecture is later on today, there have been a few tasks uploaded for us to work on or familiarise ourselves with. So the way I’ve worked it is by allocating myself a daily task to stay on top of it. Each day I will aim to get through one of the pieces of work that are required and  on a day that I don’t have any assigned tasks (that’s a hopeful statement) I’ll make sure to look over lecture material and keep up to date. Later in the year all of my spare time will be taken up by my dissertation no doubt so it’ll be vitally important to stay on top of time management.

I also have to bear in mind that the dissertation is a year long project, so when the other two modules above are finished and I’ve done my exams in January for them, my dissertation will still be ongoing. So then when next semester begins and I’m assigned another two modules (yes, more) i’ll still be factoring in time to get my dissertation completed. I’m certainly not looking forward to the end of final year. I’ll have exams to revise for, assignments to hand in and a dissertation to finalise and hand in. And of course, lets not forget that everything I do this year counts towards my final degree classification. No… I’m not freaking out at all…

So the premise of the blog posting this year, is student life and times. I will of course still be factoring in relevant scientific news amongst it all. Suffice to say I’ll be a busy man this year but I’ll be bringing you all along with me.