Rotherham? ROTHERHAM!?!!!?

We all know where Rotherham is. No? Well it's north of Sheffield, and that's in Yorkshire, nearly Scotland. And Rotherham is where they're sending me for my 4 weeks clinical placement in August, despite my preferences being for Northampton and Leicester (they aren't anywhere near Scotland). I'm a bit pissed off.

Apart from that, everything's going quite well. It was a serious Biochemistry practical this morning, where we did things that scientists do. We took bits of DNA and 'ran' them on a gel and then looked under UV light to see the distinctive 'bar code' pattern. While that was running (it takes about 2 hours) we did some other stuff to analyse a mixture of a large coloured chemical and a small colourless one - they mix them together in the prep room, we separate them out again in the lab. Such is the life of a first year student, nothing ground-breaking, just learning to use a fancy pipette to measure in microlitres.

My draft essay passed muster with just a couple of suggestions, like the inclusion of pictures. Not of fish, unfortunately, so now I've got to find or draw something that resembles an omega 3 fatty acid. I bravely offered some of my fellow students a session on how to use the referencing software for their essays, and they seemed to be pleased with how it went.

While I hope this all sounds quite interesting, I haven't dwelled on the less thrilling aspects, like the talk yesterday from a recent graduate who's been working for Northern Foods. I thought it would be fascinating and an insight into how food is designed and produced commercially, but it was more a summary of her career and the different jobs she's had and how well she's done. She seemed pleasant enough but it wasn't what I was hoping to see.