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Manchester Gold

By Anonymous
Or, how I accidentally became a member of a research group.

Back in Spring, I signed up for the Manchester Gold Mentoring which is there for students to improve their CVs.

I was assigned Samuel Purkiss as a mentor who is a MPhil student in Reinmar Hager's lab and he offered me and the other mentee (Marco) the opportunity to gain some lab experience by helping him with the work that he was doing with Mhd.Shadi Khudr (the lab's postdoc who designed the experiments) on aphids and daphnia.

Initially, I was a bit reluctant to be in the building long or to do work on the group's computers but after some time I got used to it but throughout the summer I grew more comfortable and by July, I started coming in every day, as early as possible. I also have my own little desk space now.  It has a folder where I collect data and papers, a book about Epigenetics that I bought but wanted to leave available to everyone. some blank paper and other stationary and most importantly the coffee cup that my parents sent me for my 19th birthday. Yes, a coffee cup is one of my most cherished possessions. That's research for you. Also, I have my own lab coat in the laboratory upstairs.

It is incredible fun. For the Daphnia, for example, we wrote little inspirational messages on their beakers and we did some great experiments that you can read about when our papers come out one day.

My favourite part though is the data analysis and the writing. Yes, I am an author of fiction but academic writing will always be my favourite.

Over time, it kind of got established that I worked primarily on the Daphnia though that might change in the future. Yes, I say future. I don't want this to only be a summer experience so I will continue to volunteer whenever I find the time.

Not every thing is perfect but that wasn't to be expected. Since research results need to be new, there are a lot of things you aren't allowed to talk about. For example, I spent 150 h sitting between Harry and Mariana but I was not allowed to tell them what I worked on, I understand why though. It also makes coffee breaks a bit confusing.


Apropos coffee: The coffee machine that we bought and share with the other people of our little write-up area is a blessing and a curse at once. One one hand, I get to spend my coffee break with amazing people (shout-out to the entire group and Will, Miguel and Richie here) but on the other hand, I consume about 1l of coffee a day.


All in all, I had the best summer and I am grateful for the experience. Below. a proof that we occasionally leave Michael Smith building:

Figure 1: About half of the group (plus Miguel who's in the same write-up area as we are) after the summer lunch at the Christies. taken from the group's website (from left to right: Miguel Gomez, Mariana Villalba de la Pena, Harry Potter, Samuel Purkiss, Marco Giorda, Reinmar Hager and me) 

Fun fact: I calculated how much time I actually spent in Michael Smith: 30h a week (excluding all the times we went to Morrison's to get some lunch).
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