I spend anywhere from one to six hours in the lab when I’m running experiments, and any time in between work (biology involves a lot of waiting for things to incubate!) I will spend at my desk, either reading journals, writing up my experiments or analysing data.

Sometimes I’ll have meetings to go to, so I may need to prepare a presentation for those, and at some points during the year I may have undergraduate project students to help. I also help in lab demonstration classes sometimes too.

I have two great supervisors who I have fortnightly meetings with (or more often if needed) who are experts in their fields and can provide lots of constructive advice when I’m planning experiments or writing for my thesis. There are also technicians and other research scientists in our office who are always happy to offer advice!

The Doctoral College offer some really helpful courses and workshops that cover things you’ll need to know from the start, up until your exam and even to getting a job after graduation.

Whilst I’m not in any societies, the other students and staff in our office often plan social activities together (at least we did pre-lockdown). There was a pub quiz we’d go to regularly and we’ve had nights out to the theatre in Nottingham to watch some musicals.

The Doctoral College also run several events to show off your research during the year and I’ve attended several of these while I’ve been at Loughborough. These are really interesting because they are University-wide so I see a range of projects from other departments and get to see what other people are doing outside of my field. I’ve taken a poster to one of these before and getting to talk about your research with new people is always interesting as they often have an entirely new perspective you may not have considered before.

I also won £20 for a cake I baked! I entered a ‘Bake your Thesis’ contest as part of the University’s Summer Showcase. I made a foot shaped cake with a wound on it, and I got an Amazon voucher. It was a lot of fun to make, and was great to be able to do something outside of the usual poster or talk.