Sophie's Socks and Stuff

During the bank holiday I have been thinking that I really have very little in common with any of my friends (including the boyfriend). They are all nice enough but I never have anything much to talk about with them. I think that is probably the main reason I don't have many friends. I'm not particularly interested in anything much, maybe that's my main problem.

One of my all time favourite hobbies was morris dancing (I know, I've been called a freak many times over when admitting this) but I've never got on especially with any other morris dancing people as I'm really not into folk music. I did morris dancing because I loved the dancing but for most others it seemed to be just an extenstion to their all pervading love of folk type things.

I used to really love listening to music but I've got out of listening to the music I used to love (classical type stuff), not been to a concert in years and years. Music is a particular sticking point as the boyfriend is big, big into his music and bands. I appreciate that he's got me into various stuff that I would probably never have got into but rock type stuff just doesn't push the same buttons as more traditional stuff. I'd rather spend £30 hearing a really good orchestra play an interesting symphony than pay £15 to hear a few blokes and guitars jumping about on a stage.

Fortunately there is one hobby that I still enjoy and which is best done alone. Shopping! And with that I'm off to join the clamouring hordes in primark.

or lack of them. I'd probably describe myself as quite a friendly sort of person. I like meeting, chatting and socialising with people quite a lot but I've never actually been friends with many people. I get on quite well with people at work but they are very much work friends and not people I socialise with other than maybe the very odd pint after work on a friday. Anyway this post comes from sophie no mates who is now off to mooch around town alone, watch DVDs alone tonight and then watch the cricket alone tomorrow.

Can't be arsed, at all with my PhD at the moment. Don't really want to write it, read stuff for it or talk about it and certainly don't want to do the last experiments for it. The PhD is all a bit poo really and I only have one month of funding left.

I spent the past year re-doing GCSE maths (10 years after the first go) and got the exam result today. I got an A which I am totally chuffed to bits with. I can't say I will ever be a pro mathematician and enjoy doing anything which involves maths but I am getting better at understanding it and am pleased that all the mildly unpleasant work paid off in the end. Just enrolled on AS maths for this coming year so more fun to come.

Self motivation isn't exactly one of my major skills and is pissing me off quite a bit at the moment. I'm an awkward little so-and-so at times. I hate being prescribed things to do, I like to do stuff which really interests me and that I can do on my own terms but if given too much freedom I just end up totally arsing about, doing things very slowly and a bit half heartedly and get really disappointed with myself for not doing something to the very best of my abilities.

I was dead chuffed with myself for having had an extended bout of thesis writing over the last few weeks and even though I'm finally getting the hang of some of the electronic theory I can't actually be bothered to write anything properly in the thesis at the moment, things like shopping, going to the cinema, sleeping, watching tv, eating and swimming are all far, far more interesting. I really, really need to get some motivation back to start writing again. I want to get submitted as soon before christmas as possible which means about another 40 000 words, lots of pictures, diagrams, references put together in 2 -3 months. Eeeek!

Hmmm, just re-read this. I did actually mean to write more and stuff but unsuprisingly I ran out of motivation. Ooops.

I was doing so well with the thesis writing but I'm now starting to lose heart a bit. I've made a really good attempt so far at writing up all the different introduction sections and have finally got onto the hardest bit of the whole thesis; writing up the electrochemical theory. It really is absolutely mentally impossibly hard and there are so few decent explanations of it, especially relevent to the stuff I have been doing.

Yet another post to blow my own trumpet. I've now broken the 10 000 word barrier in the thesis (still lots, lots, lots more to go though) and already got a response to my research article saying what a good paper it is.

Quality GM timber spam, not the luncheon meat variety fortunately. Possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever read, where exactly have they got permission to plant GM timber in the wild, I'm intrigued.

Thesis writing is very slow. Am managing about 1000 words a day, I hope I manage to speed up a bit otherwise I'll never get done in time.

As well as my first ever research paper coming out I also gave my first oral presentation at a conference. It was only a fairly small national conference but still quite an acheivement. I was very much the token electrochemist and even then I'm right at the fringes of electrochemistry so even people with a good understanding of electrochemistry find my stuff a bit random and mad. Anyway I was all on my own and knew that the potential for nasty, difficult questions was a real possibility and I couldn't rely on my supervisors to bail me out. As it happened everyone seemed to like my stuff and I didn't get any difficult questions and I was dead pleased that lots of other supervisors and group leaders came up to me to say how good my talk was, a real boost to my self esteem. My talk was quite mental, I knew that it was going to be really irrelevant and difficult to understand some of the concepts so I decided to be super enthusiastic. I have sat through so many talks where good work has been spoilt by dry, dull and seemingly uninterested speakers and I always find it so frustrating and such a shame. I'd far rather sit through a not very intersting science talk with a clear and enthusiastic speaker than a really interesting science talk with a rubbish speaker.

This is my lovely kitty that lives at home with my mum and dad and albert.

I've finally got my first ever scientific research paper published and I'm the first author on it (this is important as it shows you did the most work on it, which is true, I worked very hard). It's so briliant to see a substantial pile of paper on the desk with my name on. It's so cool to see data that I'm so familiar with all printed out properly and presented for everyone to read. I have finally found a research paper that I actually understand to read.It was so cool going out and speaking to other people outside work who had heard about my paper and congratulating me on it. It was funny having the boyfriend congratulate me and tell me I really was clever and should make more of myself as mostly people see me as a bit vacant and dozy and more interested in fluffy pink things than proper hard, technical science stuff.