Hello hello! It’s been a while since I last put up a blog post - I’ve had a much-needed break where I went away with family and since then, I’ve been back at it and my oh my I can’t wait for the next bank holiday to arrive.
I feel like I am on the right track with my PhD, having had a strategy meeting to discuss my work and starting to write up my first year continuation report. Now to take it day by day with the experiments, collect my data, and maintain the momentum with things in the lab as I stay busy with a purpose! I also met up with the other first-year MBPhD candidates and it was great to speak to other people with similar experiences to me.
Things have been very busy with my extracurriculars too. For the karate club, our coloured belts did their grading recently (I’ve taught most of them before so they’re technically my students, proud mum moment for me) and we’ve sent a squad to three competitions. I ended up winning 1st place in one of the competitions and on top of that, I also successfully passed my Instructor Qualification!
There is still more to come for the club, with the current committee handing over the reins to a new committee and us doing the Purple Wave (a 10K/half marathon run) where we will be fundraising for Re-write Cancer. This is a cause that is very close to my heart given the subject area of my PhD project so if you’d like to donate to our cause, please visit our fundraising page!
For the Association of International Medics UK (AIM UK) which I lead, we have been working hard on an international med student guide and we have restarted our social media activity now that members on our core team are done with their finals. We’re also starting to look into recruitment for the next academic year so if you’re interested, please feel free to get in touch with me to find out more or follow us on social media! We can be found on our website, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
On top of all that going on, I’m also (finally) learning to cycle, working on getting my UK drivers licence, and getting back into leisurely activities that I enjoy e.g. reading. I realise how busy I have been over the past 2-3 months after writing this blog post and wow, it’s been intense. I’ve definitely neglected writing on here as things got busier but I am back at it now so more blog posts coming your way!