The Leslie Winkle experimental methodology

Okay so as I write this I am tucked up in bed with the flu, I have my lemon, honey and ginger tea next to me, on the other side is the work I brought home with me that I have yet to pick up yet.  Very hard script is on top of the pile mocking me with its brilliance - I made a little progress on understanding it - upside is I have realised I will have to learn how to script in python - although I am told once I know how to script in it - I wont ever go back - bit like the dark side really.  Any who I was reading Juniper's blog, about her current trevails and trials in her pathway to become a real scientist, and I thought to myself damn - how can it be so hard?   Then as I do in my slightly drug-induced fluey state I thought - things happen for a reason and sometimes we dont get what that reason is until we get to a place where we do.   

For me I wanted to do science when I left high school - but due to a mixture of severe lack of intellectual self esteem and generally propensity to take the easy way out (when I was 17) I enrolled and completed a very average BA and then took up the only career I believed was open to me.   Turned out I was good at it but I felt like my true potential was being smothered and I just couldnt do it anymore - so I stepped outta my comfort zone a long way outta my comfort zone and found the confidence to do what I wanted to do in the first place, science.  I thought of doing medicine so I started there and my undergrad was focussed on that goal - but in the end I decided Micro was where it was at and battabingbattaboom whaddya know here I am.

Course it didnt happen all nice and neat like that - when I said I wanted to do science, my then partner basically laughed and fully expected me to fall flat on my face and go back to doing what I did before within a year of starting my undergrad.  It felt good to show him the straight A's I got in my first year - I didnt give up I worked two part time jobs and was a full time student and a mother.  It wasnt easy and I have to say the first year of my MSc was the most stressful year I have ever experienced in my whole life - I wouldve lost the plot completely had it not been for a very good friend of mine who I love dearly.  Needless to say my relationship with my ex didnt last, but my relationship with science is still going strong.   When I think about it now - if I had of tried to do my science straight out of high school I would have crashed and burned majorly - I didnt have the motivation or the self confidence to do the work that had to be done.  I couldn't see that at the time.  I do now - I had to go through a shit load of growing up to realise I had a brain in my head was useful for something other than sleeping and breathing.

Juniper sweet cheeks - I almost feel like you need to take a time out and center yourself and make a plan.  OMG I am such a control freak - I am such a planner - I like to know what to expect - go figure.   You need to focus your efforts, don't disperse them left right and center - get a piece of paper out - write down what you want, what you want to do and how you are going to get there.  Find places that are doing what you want to do - then ring them up and explain your situation - could you intern for them? Could you do an MSc with them?  You never know your luck - and believe that half of the science opportunities start because some is in the right place at the right time.   You are a kick ass writer - your blog shows that - figure out what you want to happen and then make it happen - you are the only person who can do it for yourself and you are the only person who can stand in your own way.  Focus chick focus.

E.

PS:  Still fluey  gotta love viruses - they are little pieces of God's own glory they are, they are.  Mmmmm I have M&M's as well - purely for medicinal purposes you understand.