A Spoonful of Sugar- insanipi's PharmSci journey

[readiii]

Hi insanipi,

I just found your journal and I would just love to say that it has been nothing but a pleasant read. I literally spent 45 minutes reading from the start of your journey to now haha. As a nurse now, a lot of the things you've said somehow resonates with me a lot. I also love your vlogs.

Can't wait for more. Thank you for making my night

[sweetiepi]

update

Hi insanipi,

I just found your journal and I would just love to say that it has been nothing but a pleasant read. I literally spent 45 minutes reading from the start of your journey to now haha. As a nurse now, a lot of the things you've said somehow resonates with me a lot. I also love your vlogs. :D

Can't wait for more. Thank you for making my night :)

This made me so happy to read, but no, thank you!!! :)

[sweetiepi]

Been a while!

Here's a quick update, featuring tired me!

[sweetiepi]

So I got kinda bored on my 6 min walk to the station this morning, so have a ramble featuring me in my fave hoodie

Hope all is well with y'all <3

[sweetiepi]

Just posting my rest of semester to-do list here, to keep me accountable, because ...I'm in a real bad slump. It's worse than a reading slump, I'm telling you. At least it's all over in now under 5 weeks, I guess! :')

This is a mix of stuff that is kinda urgent, as well as final assignments, and a bit of exam study- as my exam timetable is not ideal and doesn't give me a lot of time to really study for anything during swotvac lol.



I'll report back at the end of the week (hopefully), love y'all!

[sweetiepi]

Just posting my rest of semester to-do list here, to keep me accountable, because ...I'm in a real bad slump. It's worse than a reading slump, I'm telling you. At least it's all over in now under 5 weeks, I guess! :')

This is a mix of stuff that is kinda urgent, as well as final assignments, and a bit of exam study- as my exam timetable is not ideal and doesn't give me a lot of time to really study for anything during swotvac lol.

(Image removed from quote.)

I'll report back at the end of the week (hopefully), love y'all!

Reporting back in!
I actually managed to do a whole metric butt-ton of stuff in the latter part of the week, after I slogged through my lab reports, which makes me really happy- I completed a lot more tasks than I originally planned!

Things I managed completing lol

Things left to do before my first (of my last set of them) exam:


I'm honestly scared that I finish up at the end of this week, but also kinda sad. I had my last chem lab today in the teaching chem lab, and I only have 5 lectures and a computer lab left. D:
I still have nfi what I'm going to do with myself after this year tbh -nervous laugh-

[caffinatedloz]

I'm curious as to what "fluffy snake" on November 5th entails?

[sweetiepi]

I'm curious as to what "fluffy snake" on November 5th entails?

It's just a timeline that I've had to make for one of my units, that my lecturer calls the fluffy snake aha! 😅 I'm planning to use scratch to make mine kinda interactive and will be actually doing all the scratch stuff during Swotvac (next week), I've been working on the "avatars" and info I need to add all semester aha 😊

[sweetiepi]

So, I just finished year 3 of pharmsci, and I did surprisingly better than I thought I would have this year, which is amazing! I'm glad that I don't ever have to work on that Fluffy Snake assigment or do another 3 hour long Dr Orlando quiz ever again haha!

A couple of highlights this year include placement, winning "Ms PharmSci" at the grad ball (which I scored a $50 giftcard for. Pretty much spent that on uh... books haha), and the annual student union ball where I spammed the phootbooths a little too much :').

... So what's next?
Well, I direct applied to Monash for honours in 2020, and I got my offer for that this afternoon- so I'm highly stoked! I'll be focusing on a project that involves lipid gene delivery in one of my favourite lecturer's labs in the Drug Disposition, Delivery and Dynamics (D4) research theme! (Formulation Science is the baby form of D4, so like ...this'll be fun lol).

This means I'll be back at Parkville next year, and I'm excited (and also v terrified) to see what adventures the next year takes me on!

Have a safe holiday period everyone!

[sweetiepi]

Given that I'm back to uni late next week, I'm actually terrified- where'd my summer break go?! (Admittedly, my summer break has been really long imo this time around as I had my last exam very early in the exam season aha)

I feel like I'm ready, but also not ready! Given that my project has a molecular biology background, I've had to do quite a lot of reading in the past month (and not of my usual fictional books- even though I've read 18 of those already this year haha) on the topics including CRISPR and base editing (alongside other aspects of molecular biology because I got so lost reading the journals my supervisor initially sent ). It honestly feels weird not knowing what I'm really in for, and mildly terrifying that I'm not entirely expected to know what the heck my supervisor's on about from the get go and having to actually go look stuff up all the time.

I'm probably going to be so amused reading back on this post in October, as rn I'm internally screaming haha.

Anywho, I'll report back any interesting tidbits as the year goes on!

(EDIT: I made an oops and had a typo)

[AngelWings]

I got so lost reading the journals my supervisor initially sent ). It honestly feels weird not knowing what I'm really in for, and mildly terrifying that I'm not entirely expected to know what the heck my supervisor's on about from the get go and having to actually go look stuff up all the time.

That's the Honours life for you! It's one of the biggest learning curves and it's absolutely OK to not fully 'get' anything until like a month into your actual project (I didn't). 

[sweetiepi]

Given that I'm waiting for the library to open, I'll give an update!

Yesterday was officially the first day of honours- and tbh I was BORED. I had nothing really set to do yesterday aside from reading journals and doing that for 5 hours yesterday was like listening to nails on a chalkboard 😂

My supervisor is always hella busy so I was really lucky to check in with him v late yesterday- so I now have a focus and hopefully won't get as bored 😅 (considering I'm expected to read thoroughly on CRISPR for the next 1.5 weeks 9-5 M-F, we'll see how I hold up haha)

Today was off to an okayish start- I got to uni at 8:30, which is wayyy too early for the library to open haha (I'm always early to things- a habit I've never been able to shake haha).

I was going to make myself tea- but the hot water tap's down, so I ended up getting a coffee- maybe the caffeine will energise me enough haha!

Also I learnt that I have a meeting every second Friday from 4-5pm. That's brutal

Anyways that's all for now, I'll keep y'all posted!

[sweetiepi]

Morning y'all!

Today's a bit of a late day for me- I only just left for the city (because I need to visit and bookstore and get my most anticipated book of the year first before going to uni)!

I met my PhD mentor (Tom) late last week and he's super helpful, given that I feel like I know squat (and feeling v much like an imposter still haha). Tom was super impressed that I grasped CRISPR within a week, so that was kinda nice! I also sat in on the main research group meeting on Friday and found it really interesting, even though I was pretty lost for most of it- but that's okay, I don't need to know everything- plenty to learn!

Today's pretty cruisey for me- I'm just going to be reading papers for most of the afternoon before meeting my supervisor Colin at 5 (yes- 5pm!) to see what my next steps are and then hopefully not being late for bookclub tonight! 😊

Whilst it feels super lonely being at uni and not having v many people around that can understand my research topic, I've found that having lunch or studying/focusing on journals whilst with some other honours pals has really helped pass the time a lot more quickly!

Have a grouse day y'all!

[sweetiepi]

The past week has been a blur, let me tell you!

I've been doing a little bit of journal reading, but I've also started looking at designing my fluorescent protein experiments, which is actually super exciting (even though I'm 100% certain Tom and Colin are way more excited than me- but I'll soon start understanding why (I hope!))

Most of the past week has been meetings and inductions as well- so now I can access the main lab (under supervision though- I'm missing one key induction that got postponed til April thanks to Monash's coronavirus precautions), and the tissue culture lab- which is exciting because I can now grow cells when the time comes! I also had the gas cylinder and cryogenics training yesterday, so now I can roll gas cylinders around and freeze stuff with liquid nitrogen, even though I'm not actually sure why I needed to do this one (yet) tbh.

I also finally got to have a proper lab session yesterday afternoon, learning all the basics, and it was so nice to be back in the lab doing things, after not being in a lab since October(?) last year, so that was a thrill and I'm absolutely here to have more fun with that soon!

I better stop procrastinating and actually start writing my research proposal slides (due to be presented on April 3, but my supervisor wants a draft by Tuesday afternoon, eek!), so catch y'all around later!

[sweetiepi]

Aside from uni, I've been doing some napping, some general book blogging/bookstagramming, and occasionally writing an article for the super blog, The Nerd Daily (with my latest review here that I was super excited to write!)

Hope everyone stays well during this CRAZY time! <3