I’m pretty open about stuff, and if asked, generally I tell. But why are some other people so guarded normally but willing to kiss and tell in a game? Surely it can’t all be down to drink.

FUCK, I thought, I have been an idiot. Then I reassessed and worked out that if I spent all day every day in the library revising, I should be able to cover everything and be ok for the exams. SO I DID. First day back, 12 hours in the library with some time taken out for lunch and breaks. BRILLIANT.

Now. Here’s the thing about Hartley library: it’s not big enough. Every year, Uni has to open up additional space to work in because there are never any spare seats. Hence, I was in the library for 8.30 or 9am at the very latest to make sure I bagged myself a seat for the day. And when I say bagged myself a seat, I mean that I put my bum on it and didn’t really shift apart from to go to the loo, find a book or grab myself a rapid lunch. The first week went without a hitch, it wasn’t yet too busy. The next week was something else though. That Sunday, some boy bagged a seat for his friend. His friends did not then show up until ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON. *1*P*M* Can you believe it? In the meantime, he was turning other revisers away. For FOUR HOURS. FOUR!! Bastard.

The next day was the same, I tried to get him to let someone sit there, but the poor guy was too scared of incurring the wrath of Dickhead Boy’s absent friend. It all came to a head on Tuesday. By the time I got to the library, Dickhead Girl had put text books on 5/6 tables, and was using the 6th herself. So I simply moved one and sat down in that seat. There were other unsaved seats, but I wanted to make a point. Dickhead Girl then did everything in her power to make the tables look like they had people working at them. A pencil case here, coat over there, then her notepad on one, sat in the middle seat on her laptop, and all her pencils and other revision detritus on the next one. COW. One friend did the decent thing, and arrived at about 9ish.

I spent most of the morning being ANGRY and tweeting @thelongtallally and @GentlemanAdmn who were also in the library, but on another floor. We decided that @thelongtallally would be the Sheriff of Hartley Library, and I would be the deputy (thereby saving myself from being shot, phew!). We would make a proper jacket with SHERIFF across the back in sparklies , and a badge and a hat, at she could sit with her boots up on the table and occasionally go on a prowl. However, by half 10, I was so annoyed I decided I had to challenge Dickhead Girl, because it was simply not fair on all the people that actually wanted to work and use the tables. So I did. I asked her what time her friends were arriving because I didn’t htink it was very fair blah blah blah…. “Soo(n), soo(n)” she replied, in the most annoying squeaky chinese accent I’ve ever heard. I told her I hoped they would be because the past two days nobody arrived til 1pm, not very fair blah blah… Basically said she had half an hour then I was effectively going to go tell on her.

I sat and stewed for about an hour getting increasingly pissed off. One friend arrived, and Dickhead Boy moved from his seat to shut me up, but one seat remained resolutely empty though so well disguised as a working person’s desk that even the nice man who works in the library (who @the longtallally told about the palava) couldn’t tell it was being reserved. At around 11, I was getting so little done I decided I had to go sit somewhere else so went to try and find @thelongtallally and @gentlemanadmn to sit with them. Unfortunately, the seat @thelongtallally had just vacated was snaffled up too quickly so I headed back down to my old seat. On the way back down though, I encountered a chum of mine from home who had just been kicked out of her seat (apparently you can now officially reserve some seats!) and was pretty upset/worried about finding another space. I solved her problems, and she solved mine. I took her down to the free seat and made Dickhead Girl move her stuff and let my dear chum sit there.

LNT 1 , Dickhead Girl and Boy 0

The next day, Dickheads were nowhere to be seen. This made me happy, but also sad because chances were they’d only moved to another section of the library that didn’t have hard-headed me in it. However, my exams were the next two days and I was panicking so just cracked on with my revision. I know lots of other people would just quietly seethe about such a thing, but it made me question all the times I’ve wandered around the library, not sitting at empty seats because they looked like they were being used. Were they? Or were they just being saved by another variety of dickhead? It’s just so bloody inconsiderate: everybody else manages to get to the library at a sensible time to get a seat. If people can’t be bothered to get up and get their own seats, they should have no entitlement at all.

I now fear for my life. The triads may be after me (cultural stereotype ftw…)

Cunts. That is all.

Some people think their heart has been broken. Maybe they are right. My heart has never been broken. Nothing so melodramatic.

The heart is a stone. And life is the ocean. And over the course of thousands of mornings and afternoons and nights, the tide of life, the ebb and flow of disappointment and expectation erodes the heart, until it hardly resembles a heart at all. It’s a smooth, flat stone; a lozenge of indifference. It remains whole, intact, a miniature version of its former self, a poetic afterthought.

It happens so softy, so slowly, that we hardly notice. There is no moment of truth; no epiphany. There is no fracture, just the inevitable dimming of hope. The featureless surrender to the everyday. It is a small thing; a bored afternoon, a misplaced laugh, an anonymous evening. It is a small thing lost in an ocean.

But I think he is wrong. I think the heart is a bone.

It is strong and yet fragile. It will bear weight you didn’t think it could hold, and it will stay strong. When you fall in love, you increase the load on it, trusting that it will hold, and that the weight will not break you. Sometimes, the weight will be placed wrongly: too much, or at the wrong angle and the bone will break. It will twist and shatter and you may feel like there is too much pain to lift your head and carry on.

For some, healing  is easy: the fracture is only hairline, and takes a few weeks to heal. For others it is difficult, and the healing can take not months but years, but how you deal with it defines you. You can either leave the damn thing hanging and painful, or you can strap it up and hope it heals straight and firm. You may have a weakness where the break occurred, but it will heal. Slowly the bone will knit itself back together until it is complete again. Only when it has healed should you attempt to try more weight: too much too soon and it will break again. Particularly difficult break(ups) can leave a person with bones joined imperfectly, the lumps and bumps although no longer painful are a reminder of that snap.

The heart is not a stone, it is a bone: solid and strong but a break can be your undoing. The heart is a bone, and mine is bearing weight.

All my good friends that were in my year have graduated. Sure I have my housemates (who are lovely), but I don’t have people I can whisper to during lectures and share in-jokes. Nor do I have all my flat-mates from 1st year, they’ve all buggared off too, and although I’m still friends with them, the fact that I took myself out of the picture for a year means that I no longer have anything much to talk to them about. The same is true with Skunks: the club lost a lot of players last year, many of whom were my very close friends. I forced myself onto the new players, so they know who I am, and I’m friends with them, but there are very few I’d give a hug to or discuss problems with. They’ve all been together for a year so have their own social groups. I can flit between them (I’m pretty good at this), but I don’t feel like I really belong in any of them. And the freshers? They’re LOVELY, but they all seem so *young*. I know HOW to socialise with Skunks, but I find myself not wanting to. I’ve lost all my friends from GSK to the distant bits of the UK they lived in before we all rocked up in Stevenage. I still get to see some of them, but it’s not the same.

Work: Last year pushed me forward, I had autonomy, trust and respect. This year I’ve been shoved back into the heap. I have no chances to show what I can do: I can’t just go to the lab when I want/need and just DO IT. I have to be told when to arrive, what to do and be patronised with questions about “how many microlitres will this Gilson dispense?”. Lectures are a joke, there are people who are PAID to teach me, yet they can’t teach for toffee!! I’ve spent the past week bashing my head against the brick walls that are metabolism and cancer because the lecturers didn’t think about what they were going to do. The powerpoint slides are jumbled and in no coherent order, and I have no idea what I’m meant to be drawing from what I’ve been told! I’d almost rather they just gave me a list of key papers and what I need to draw from them. It means I have no motivation to learn. The content is fascinating, but in delivering it so badly, I’m having to do double the work to decipher it. THIS ISN’T WHAT I’M PAYING FOR!! I guess I’m just annoyed that I came to university to get an education and be taught about a subject I think is fucking fantastic. I thought it was great until I did my placement and now I feel like I’m being given information but no skills. My subject is a PRACTICAL degree, yet the lab projects we do are a joke. Push me! Give me a chance to prove myself!

I have been so lucky to have been offered a placement. It’s making my last year a pain in the arse and actually not that much fun, in terms of people and with work, but my god is it going to give me a boost when I’ve finally *got* the degree.

The train stopped. The girl gave her boy another kiss and hopped off, grinning. As she went to the next platform, she began to wonder though, so texted the boy (her phone had very little battery, so time was of the essence). What ensued was a tangled mass of texts, where the boy said that it was of course “I miss you”. The girl felt stupid and small and disheartened, then thought “fuck it” and told him she thought she loved him. She then heard nothing and panicked: had she scared him off? would those three tiny terrifying words break them? She asked him to please please text back (the battery situation was getting pretty awful). Finally she got a reply. She had misheard him, but he thought he loved her too. Just as the girl had not expected that particularly feeling, nor had the boy. It had rather crept up on them both.

The girl had made two connections in the intervening time and was on the long train south. There were no seats, she was soaked and shivering and sitting on the floor by one of the doors. She should have been elated, buzzing, ecstatic at this point, but all she could do was cry. She thought she should have kept her stupid mouth shut, no matter if he felt the same. It was too early, there was too much at stake. She felt like an idiot, and she felt small and unworthy of the word. She was also terrified by the thought of it. She’d used the word before, but after each relationship realised it was false hope. She was scared of it this time – did that make it true? It was a relationship the girl had not wanted, but the boy had snuck up on her and gotten under her skin. She didn’t want to jeopardise her relationship with someone so irritating and infuriating and bloody wonderful. She also didn’t really believe that he would want to use such a word, and surely not about her.

She eventually managed to stop crying and slept (her phone had died after a few more texts were sent). The boy made it east, and the girl made it south. The next time they spoke, they didn’t mention it. They still haven’t spoken about it, but things did not change as a result of those words they way she feared they would. Once he called her “my love” and she finally had that buzz of happiness. They don’t get to see each other as much as they’d like, as they are both very busy. They both feel good about the relationship though, and there are no clouds in sight.

Do not say “I love you” like this.

I’m rather excited about my project, it’s on signalling pathways involved in cancer. I didn’t previously think I was that interested in cancer, but following a lecture on Thursday about it, I have changed my mind. It is phenomenal. Did you know it takes 6/7 mutations for cells to become cancerous? I might be sitting here with two mutations I am completely unaware of. They could be anywhere. They could be in my bowel thanks to my Grandpa, or in my breast thanks to my Grandma. Or they could be in my skin thanks to my own frivolity and blase approach to the sun. You never know what will cause a mutation, and you never know which will be the straw that breaks the tumour’s back. Only 1 change and you go from benign, non-invading tumour to malign infiltrating metastasising cancerous horrors. AMAZING. And we’re pretty much ALL going to get it!!

I have also sent off some e-mails about PhDs. I am excited and terrified by the prospect of a PhD: it has to be original, I’ll have to write a thesis, I’ll have to start my life again in a new city. AND I’ll have to do it with The Ginger One in Leeds (probably). The idea is gasp-inducing and exhilarating. Wish me luck y’all, I’ve got to do it to have the career I want.

In other news, I have operated on my soft toy bunny, Bernard. He had some wiring in his ears that were very uncomfortable to sleep with. I created one small incision in each ear, snipped the wire as close to his skull as possible and pulled it out. I couldn’t get it all: some is in his brain, but he is recovering well.

On the first day, we spent the morning in lectures about ethics, and the rise and fall of in vivo research. Then in the afternoon we watched a video on how to carry out some of the techniques we would be doing in the remainder of the week, and then we practised on rat cadavers. For Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we were doing it in live rats. They were kept under terminal anaesthetic (no way any animals were going to be allowed to suffer) which we had to induce and maintain. Then we had to use blunt dissection (no scalpels or sharp scissors – too easy to cause severe damage quickly) to reveal the trachea which we cannulated for maintainance of anaesthesia and to keep the animal stable. Then there was cannulation of the carotid artery (fucking terrifying) and of the jugular artery (fucking impossible) to measure blood pressure and administer drugs. Friday we saw a phenomenal operation on a pig, where a stent was placed in its coronary arteries, all from an incision in the inner thigh (this was part of PROPER research, and the pig was recovered after  the operation), the afternoon was a literary review, and results discussion.

I wanted to do this course for 3 reasons:

1. To challenge myself, I used to be very anti-in vivo but have come to understand its necessity now.
2. To find out if in vivo was going to be something I could/would want to do as a career.
3. To learn more about the techniques involved in in vivo research.

I achieved all those things. I was hugely challenged – technically and psychologically, I decided that although the work is interesting, I’m just more interested in the smaller, more cell signalling stuff, and I definitely learned a lot about the in vivo stuff.

I think the most interesting and useful thing I came away with though, is the reason I’m writing this on a publicly viewable blog instead of staying silent and keeping it to myself. As part of the lectures we had on Monday, the point was raised that so long as the in vivo community stays quiet about the research they’re doing, for fear of castigation, the more people will think that they/we are doing something wrong. On the other hand, the more we talk about it, about why it is necessary, and what controls are in place, then the more people will understand it and become happy with it. There will always be people who will rail against it, and whilst I was previously quite scornful of these people, I now see that they too have an important role to play: they make sure we are always being questioned, is this the best method? is this still ethical? do the outcomes outweigh the methods?

So my conclusion:

• In vivo work is interesting, necessary, and exceptionally well controlled;
• It’s just not for me, too much gross anatomy, not enough cellular signalling;
• We shouldn’t bite our tongues about testing in animals, nor should we shout about it, but discussion is constructive and helpful.