We are starting week 8 next week already and there are only 3 more weeks left until my project wraps up! Everything is moving so quickly! Since getting the diamond-like structure I mentioned in a previous post, I have been trying to get a similar structure using other metals. More recently I've been using some lanthanides...like neodymium, samarium, gadolinium, etc. I haven't gotten anything super exciting recently, so I'll just leave it at that.
It has been great interacting with people in the group though. There are no formal group meetings like back at home; everything seems to be a lot more casual. Professor Abrahams will drop by in lab usually once or twice a week to ask people how their projects are going and chat a bit.
Two members of the group just returned from holiday, Jess and Keith. Jess is working on her thesis and Keith is a postdoc (actually my project started as an extension of his thesis work). It was nice to finally have another girl around the lab and Jess is really friendly! She invited me to go out for drinks with her and some of the other grad students/master's students/postdocs. She bought me some cider and said when she was doing Chemical Research Project, other grad students had bought drinks for her! It was really nice and reminded me a lot of summer group outings at the Athenaeum.
The group also does this daily thing at around 4 pm called "Tea Time". Essentially people gather in the kitchen/common area for 20ish minutes and go over a daily trivia quiz from one of the newspapers. After, someone describes the Fred Basset comic strip and everyone tries to guess what the last panel of the comic says.
Everyone is just really nice and friendly! It's great to be working in lab and have lab mates who make the experience even better!
Stephanie
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