Hey guys!
Hope you’re all well! :)
I’m sure you will all be just as relieved as I am to hear
that I’ve finnaalllyyyy sorted out my final year project this week! It all
feels so real now that the dates for when I can go to labs and actually start
collecting my data have been booked...I just can’t wait to begin!!!
I have been assigned a Biochemistry based project, I’ve been
told to have had very little work done on in the past, so is all very new and
exciting stuff in the field of Biochemistry! To explain it in short, the
project focuses on the study of specific families of amino acids (i.e. amino
acids as a single monomer, as a dipeptide and in their cyclic form) in order to
gain a better understanding of their chemical properties and potential uses in
industry. It involves a lot of new techniques I have never used before, such as
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA),
Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Hot Stage Microscopy. As the project is heavily based on concepts in
chemistry which are either very new to me or what I have learnt three years ago
during my A levels (so bound to be a little rusty in) and involves techniques which
I know I've already mentioned are very new to me, I do feel completely
out of my comfort zone! I am really lucky to have a wonderful project
supervisor who will no doubt support me throughout the project and a good
friend of mine who is currently doing her PhD in the same field who will be
helping me in labs, so I know I'm in very good hands! I just need to stop being
so nervous!
I haven’t quite decided on what the exact title of my
project should be yet…but I guess I’ll be in a better position to think of the
perfect title once I am well underway with it all. In the mean time, I better
prepare myself for an exciting week of labs ahead...research around the topic and the techniques involved a
little more...and make a start on the intro of the actual write-up (the earlier
the better right?)
Wish me luck!
