Review: May 2017

May was pretty busy! I was locked away until the 17th studying for and doing my college exams, then did some antibiotic resistance workshops and went to Berlin for the T20 Summit: Global Solutions for G20. I also worked on a website to bring my various open science projects together, Lablinn.com, and on my books.

EXAMS

I had 6 exams, two each for Chemistry, Physics and Maths. I had a difficult time with them -- I panicked at the start of Maths I and didn’t do myself justice, and then for some of the others I just hadn’t studied near enough. I’ll know I definitely need to up my game for next year, and will try to do some study over the summer.

SECONDARY ABR

The day after my exams finished, I went to Kildare to talk to three classes of 5th Year Biology students about antibiotic resistance. It was fun delving into the research literature again to refresh my knowledge and learn more. I was so tired after exams and that, so I spent the next few days chilling with Leon.

PRIMARY ABR

I talked to 4th, 5th and 6th class students in Togher primary school about antibiotic resistance and public participation in science on the 22nd. It was awesome -- the students were super engaged and asked loads of good questions. I saw on my way out that the school has a banner on the wall saying they prioritise health and it was great to see they walk the talk.

LABLINN WEBSITE (lablinn.com)

I wanted to combine my open science projects and spread the message to more people, so I made this website.

I bought the domain name and made the basic website a while back, but this month I did a lot of work on the website. I was using wordpress but hated it because it was a massive pain in the ass to use and really user-unfriendly with the free version, and wouldn’t let me add custom javascript elements (like, for example, Blogger does). It made me not want to work on the website, it was that bad. So I switched over to Weebly, which has issues inserting photos but is otherwise much better for me. I really like the clean layout of the theme I found eventually.

WRITING & READING

I’ve been working on edits from agent about my citizen science book, changing the chapter topics slightly and personalising it (i.e. fighting my tendency to write like an academic and being a real person). I have a little bit of time now we’re into June to focus on that, so that’s cool. I’m also hoping to make time this summer to work on novel-writing -- I read the first half (the only part I have in cloud storage) of a novel I wrote three years ago recently and actually really enjoyed it.

I read Oasis by Éilis Barrett on the plane -- review soon.

T20 YOUNG GLOBAL CHANGER

I was chosen as one of 100 Young Global Changers from 1400 applicants between 18 and 40 from 140 counties to participate in the T20 Summit: Global Solutions for G20 in Berlin, to come up with solutions for Germany’s presidency of the T20. I’ll have a full blog post up about it soon, but to summarise:

• Cool speakers included Nobel Laureates George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, Sweden’s Minister for Finance who was awesome, and other big economists including Jeffrey Sachs and Lord Nicholas Stern
• Berlin was HOT. The minimum night-time temperature was 18 C.
• I met so many awesome people from all around the world there and learned so much about different cultures. Such an incredible learning experience. For example, here’s a photo with five people from five different continents: Europe (Ireland), Asia (Vietnam), Africa (Ethiopia), South America (Venezuela) and Oceania (Fiji).

FUN

There were some pretty intense times this month, so after I got over each of those hurdles I got to relax with Leon and he managed to teach me how to have fun and not feel guilty about it. We played board games (Pandemic, which I love because epidemiology, and Carcassonne, which is relaxing except when he steals my pieces) and he collected me from the airport again. Impressed we manage to still stomach the sight of each other after spending 10 hours a day studying beside each other coming up to the exams.

I’m happy.

Looking to June, I’ll have at least two more antibiotic resistance talks in primary schools, starting my summer job, working on my books, reading and working on lablinn.com, and some chilling too I imagine.