My summer

After having tirelessly constructed lengthy cover letters and applications to companies for the best part of my second term, oftentimes wasting precious time I could’ve spent studying, I was finally lucky enough to be offered a two month-long internship in Mary O’Connell’s lab at CEITEC in Brno. Before leaving Glasgow I managed to wrap up my year as the Treasurer of both the Karate Club and the Kelvin Ensemble, but not before I was voted in as the Captain of the Karate Club and Treasurer of Kelvin again. Although I had been looking forward to a restful summer, it was simply not meant to be. My only luck is that I narrowly managed not to get a role on the committee of the GU Malt Whisky Society which I offered myself for in a haze induced by exceedingly plentiful and rather fine free whisky on their annual general meeting. I also managed to squeeze a trip to Mallaig with my friends from karate into my busy pre-flight schedule, where I took the most beautiful picture of a sunset I will probably ever take on one of the rare sunny days in Scotland. I also experienced the joy of Scottish midges while camping and prolonged contact with freezing seawater on my bare feet, after which I felt appropriately rejuvenated. 

  I’m already at the end of the fourth week of my internship at CEITEC and I’m already almost causing stuff to catch fire, hence my new nickname ‘Baker’. Sometimes I have a gnawing feeling that I was simply not meant to be in a lab, usually after making an utterly silly mistake due to inexperience, but I try my best to learn from each failure and improve. I’m surrounded by people who are on a much higher level than me both when it comes to knowledge and skills, being the only undergraduate currently in the lab. It’s a great motivation to learn more, but man, is it gruelling. It has taken me one whole month to be able to find things in the ‘building of unusual shape’ that CEITEC is defined as, and I still have so much more to learn. I’m very grateful for being accepted into the lab, however, and still have a month to try and get results from my short period of research at the institute.

  I have huge plans for the summer, and I hope to complete as many of them as possible in the rapidly dwindling amount of time I have before I start my final year of my bachelors study at the university of Glasgow. I aim to improve my physique by jogging uphill to CEITEC with a heavy backpack every steamy morning in preparation for the September Predator Race in Pilsen, and by hopefully getting myself to go to the gym again. I’ve also finally started writing a cooking blog, which should be online within the next month or two, and I hope to create an Android app for beer tasting that would fit my expectations. I need to complete all these projects before my fourth year at university, as the tempo is picking up and my studies are becoming increasingly difficult, and I have to try hard to balance out the slightly disappointing results I had at the final exams. The only indulgence I plan to allow myself is cooking and experimenting in the kitchen; I have set myself the task of brewing at least 1 batch of beer over next year. I’m quite looking forward to next year and will do my utmost best to perform as well as possible!