Tag: cell biology

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Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Guess who finished her exams this week guys… IT’S MEEE! I am so happy to have finished for this exam season. I had a great Christmas at home with the family but studying and having a horrendous cold at the same time was kind of sad. Last Thursday I sat my final paper for this exam period which was Genetics. I was expecting an absolute nightmare of a paper but it ended up being much better than expected so I’m very happy with that.

One thing that can be hard about starting university, especially at Imperial, is that you basically lose your holidays.

Labs Labs Labs

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Now that I’ve finished my biochemistry and microbiology course, I’m no longer performing endless protein assays which require so much pipetting that you leave the lab with your hand seized up in to a crab claw because you’ve been holding a Gilson for two and a half hours. If you study biology, you will no doubt make acquaintances with Gilsons fairly early on in the year. This, my friends, is a Gilson pipette.

They come in a few different sizes and use very fine pipette tips to measure very small amounts of liquid (usually less than a millilitre). They have a dial on the top which you have to turn to set the volume you want to draw up and you have to depress the plunger before you put the tip into the liquid and then release it or you end up sucking stuff in to the barrel.

It’s Already February?!

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Time seems to have flown by. It’s kind of strange to think that I’ve been back at uni for three weeks and I still haven’t started lectures… Due to the generous amount of study leave I’ve had, I’ve pretty much been sat at my desk for the past two and a half weeks trying to learn the order in which primates evolved and get my head around Michaelis-Menten kinetics. I can’t lie, I haven’t massively enjoyed my courses so far this academic year and it’s been tough. BUT exams are finally over and on Monday I’m starting my favourite thing ever, the main reason why I chose this subject… cell biology and genetics. 

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