Again, mental week. I'm waiting for the train to depart Edinburgh Waverly station back to Glasgow so I can enjoy some leftover Valentine's curry and catch up on some much needed sleep. As I am sure you all remember me mentioning, I have had a crazy week of travelling all over Scotland fulfilling various extra-PhD commitments.
First of all, last Wednesday, after I wrote to you, I went off to my Gaelic class. The university is offering conversational Gaelic free in the evenings to anyone who is interested. It is coming along nicely and I sadly have to miss class this week due to my travels. I now know how to say my name, say how are you and say where I am from in a full conversation. I also know some basic adjectives and sentence structure but not to any comprehensible degree. I still enjoy it though and it is definitely worth going to.
On Friday, I got up bright and early and frantically packed for the weekend. We were going away with the second year Astronomy students for a dark-sky weekend to try to get them excited and hopefully sign up for Honours Astronomy. My friend was leaving for a month, so it was a pretty relaxed day of getting in, having group Friday doughnuts then going out to lunch at Tennent's with her to fill the steak-pie shaped hole in my soul. I made it back to the department just in time to grab my bags and meet the students in the foyer of the Kelvin Building. It was a group of 35 total people heading out and we all left the department at 1:30. A coach arrived at the university to take us all the way across Scotland, through Dundee and to Glenesk, home of The Burn House (link provided here).
The Burn was built in the 18th century as one of these mansion, manor houses for a fairly wealthy family. More like Netherfield then Pemberly, but still completely acceptable. It was a family house for years until World War II when the son of the family who lived there was killed in battle. The family could not bear to live in the house any longer and donated the house in their son's name to a trust. This trust donated the house to the universities of Scotland that it would be used primarily for educational purposes. Since then, it has been used for universities to take students up for weekends and retreats. It is still decorated as a family home and has that feel to it.
We drove through the tiny gates with the label of "The Burn House" and up a drive that took two minutes to reach the top. The property is 190 acres and the house looks over a large beautiful field. It definitely has the feel of a manor from the old regency era. I spent the entire three days half expecting Mr Darcy to walk over the hilltops and out of the fog. One of my favourite ambiances that the staff of the house ensured was the face that they rang us all for dinner. In keeping the familial atmosphere, they require that everyone eat in the dining hall at the same time. The staff were great at ensuring first-name basis and approachability. Since I cannot eat dairy, the chef made me a separate meal every day. He would pull me into the kitchen to discuss his menu and to check that I was okay with it. But getting back to the meals, they still had a large dining room and let one of the students ring the gong on the hour for each meal. Like I said, it added a lot to the atmosphere.
Upon arrival, the head of the household met us in the drawing room with a roaring fire and introduced us to the staff, explained the rules of the house and allocated us all to specific rooms. Being the only female "in charge" aside from the main professor who was their with her husband, I got my own room. Consulting old floorplans for the house, turns out I was sleeping in the "dairymaid's room" which was very very pink. A nice single bed, though, and a television that did not work as well as a lovely tea tray for my use.
We had a lovely supper before heading out to the grounds to star-gaze. Oh! And I forgot to include the fact that we had a 'bar' which was essentially a really old guy, in his last year of servicing the house who we could summon between the hours of 6:30 and 10:00 at night by ringing the bell to his room (a la Cinderella) and he would come out and sell us booze. Anyway, they had fairly decent whisky so we stocked up on that and headed outside into the freezing cold. Now this is what I always wanted as a career as an astronomer: bundled up outside at night, in Scotland, in front of a mansion, holding a single malt whisky and trying to identify constellations. We brought lots of telescopes from the observatory so the fact that I at least knew where the Andromeda Galaxy was as well as the Orion Nebula, I was able to help provide some nice experiences for the students. In all honesty, I have never seen skies that dark since I was camping in the Kakadu National Park in the outback in the Northern Territories of Australia.
Once the clouds inevitably came in (to be fair, we got clearer skies than I thought we would) we retired to the library to indulge in the original Star Wars films projected on a screen. There were some students in the drawing room playing rummy and playing the antique piano, but I settled for the 'less classy' approach of curling up with chocolate Hob Nobs, some Australian Shiraz and the Empire Strikes Back. I think I made the right decision, regrets the next day aside.
The next day we woke up bright and early to be summoned for the 9:00am breakfast. Now, I despise the sausages here. Jimmy Deans they be not. They are bland and without any flavour whatsoever. However, the sausages at The Burn, recommended by the professor herself, were homemade from the local butcher and absolutely phenomenal. I would have had a plateful of handmade sausage links if I had no self-respecting bones in my body.
We basically had the entire day off (this is an Astronomy trip, after all; implying nighttime work...brilliant!) so after breakfast I decided to take some photos and head out on some of the country paths around the estate. The Esk river ran through the property and there was a lovely walk both up and down it. As I walked away from the manor, I really got the Jane Austen chills, which of course was sort of life-fulfilling (as mature as I may pretend to be). Mr Darcy was about to walk out of that river, dripping wet. I saw some amazing ruins from the Jacobite era which though no longer stood were adorned with the Scottish flag, oh bless.
In the afternoon, after lunch, we organised a few interested students and went on another country walk all the way to the local village a few miles away and a good 45-60 minute walk. This walk was not exactly well-worn and we all saw more carnage than was ever comfortable, even for home-grown Glaswegians. We saw a deceased goat in the river in a position that made it look like it was some sort of pagan sacrifice. We also saw a dead cow that most of us thought was a rock at first. Oh, the scenery of the countryside of Scotland; there is nothing like it. We finally made our way to the local pub (where else would you expect), feeling like the local hoodlums in the town of approximately ten people. The Six Nations rugby was on, which I care not to mention and if any of you have any sense, do not ask a Scotsman about the Scotland/Wales Six Nations game. In a word, Hari-Kari was committed, quite brutally and successfully.
We made it back to the manor for dinner and went out again to enjoy a full clear night. Eventually it clouded over and we all went inside for a competition on 'the best thing of Astronomy' contributed by the students (resulting in the most popular professor winning the prize) and an Astronomy quiz that all the "supervisors" entered but did not complete as we wiped the floor with them. Turns out we actually know a thing or two about astronomy; who knew? Overall, I really enjoyed getting to know the students better and it was nice to see them get to know each other as well and form some pretty great friendships.
Oh and the best thing about this trip (James, you'll appreciate this...) is that one of the students came up to me and said, 'Do you ever watch Mythbusters? Because you remind me so much of Kari. When you first walked into our classroom, I thought to myself, Oh my god, that's Kari. Especially when you started speaking with your American accent. I hope you're not offended!' It is funny how the older I get and the more into science I get, the more I get compared with that girl. Anyway, funny anecdote. But I honestly really enjoyed the students and everyone really seemed to get a lot out of the trip.
On Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year (my Chinese-background supervisor taught us how to play Mah Jong the previous night) we piled into the coach after lunch to head back home. My supervisor and myself decided to finally attend our 'local' since I am now living in North Kelvinside and we had not been to the Crosslands yet. We actually sat on the infamous balcony where Bigby throws the pint (there is actually a photo of the Trainspotting cast on that balcony) and enjoyed a pint or three Belhaven Best. I went home and indulged in my standard Valentine's tradition of curry, a chardonnay and Bridget Jones's Diary.
The next day, I had to be up bright and early to catch up on some immediate work before running off to Pacific Quay (pronounced 'key') BBC studios on the Clyde. See, I had signed up for this 'Researchers, research and the media' course that the BBC was offering to 'professional' scientists to learn how to communicate with the general public. Since this is something I would like to do, I jumped at the offer. The people involved got put into groups of 9 a few weeks ago and were charged with producing a 20-minute science radio program. Since all the radio experience I had was in front of the microphone, I opted for the producer role. So for the last few weeks we have been coordinating over Google Docs a radio program. Not having met these people before, I was a bit hesitant, but everyone pulled their weight and seemed happy with me being in charge (which is always nice).
We met at Pacific Quay studios at 11:30 and were issued passes to the whole building (free reign in BBC is pretty fun; I am not going to lie). We were shown to our studio, our green room and the restaurant. We had a few hours to prepare in person then one hour in the studio to get the cues and the music and the microphones all up and running as well as actually recording the show itself. We inevitably ran into a few problems, mostly the fact that one of the presenters talked overly fast due to nerves so we had to pad the ending a bit as we ended early. I have never been that obsessed with the second hand in my entire life. It was great to work with BBC staff who all were professional and extremely helpful. The bloke running this program is the person in charge of the MSci degree in Science Communication at Imperial College London; a degree I actually seriously looked into a while back. Having these connections, in themselves, is extremely beneficial.
After the radio shows were all recorded and we were all in desperate need of a pint, we piled on to a coach and headed off towards Edinburgh to Barony Castle (link provided here). By the by, should any opportunity arise, take a course with the BBC as they tend to put you up in 5-star hotels for a few days. We had the evening to enjoy dinner and get to know one another. This was extremely helpful as the next day we were put with our radio groups again and assigned a recent scientific breakthrough. Our group was charged with the breakthroughs in sequencing the genomic mutations in lung and skin cancer. Between the nine of us, we had to have three experts, three radio people and three television people. We all worked together but we all had our own projects to put together. The experts (of which I was one) had to conduct a press conference with a press release, a opening statement as well as answering any questions to 'reporters' for the television and radio pieces. After the press conference, we (myself and the two other 'experts') were subject to the people running the television and radio segments for interviews. We spent the rest of the day filming and recording discussions on a topic about which none of us knew until a few hours previous. I was 'head of the International Consortium' and on a geeky sidenote, it was the first time I was referred to (goofily) as Dr Erin Macdonald and it certainly motivated me to continue on with my PhD to be addressed in such a way in two-and-a-half years.
After an exhausting day, and believe me, it flew by, we went off for dinner before going through our videos. Oh! And I forgot to tell the best story! Barony Castle is also used for ambulance and paramedic training in Scotland so there were lots of paramedics-in-training milling about. For the television piece, we decided that it would be entertaining to rope a few of them into hovering over a cancer patient. Two of them were so up for it, even though our 'set' was in a hotel room and looked more like a setting for a sketchy pornography film, they were good sports. I had to be the cancer patient and since I was also in the film later we had to hide my face. One of the paramedics just stood there taking my pulse, acting all professional. I was boiling hot under the bed, with an attractive Scottish man holding my arm as well as trying not to laugh and I think he was actually getting concerned at how high my pulse was. He kept trying to give me tips to lower my pulse though it was a futile effort. Anyway, this sequence made it into the final video, thank god, and I will send you all the link once it is given to us so you can at least enjoy the Scottish paramedics.
The last day was all frantic editing and believe me, three hours for video and radio editing was definitely not enough. We were all super happy with how the radio news segment turned out. When we were reviewing them in the afternoon, the rest of the groups were really impressed with ours and how professional it sounded as opposed to the documentary style that the other two groups chose. Our television segment turned out to be a bit of a laugh but that was mostly because we did not know the techniques of filming interviews, but once trying to edit them we got a pretty good sense for it. Given a second chance we could have done a much better job since the concept and the structure was pretty solid.
Anyway after review, feedback and networking, the coach took us back to Edinburgh and back to reality. I am really glad I was one of the few people chosen to take this course. Though I have always been comfortable in front of the television and the microphone, it taught me a lot of techniques useful for my scientific career, such as how to relate to the public, write press releases and such. Definitely a great experience and hopefully these connections and this experience will actually get me into this field. After the last few days, it really solidified that science communication and reporting is my forte and I need to take responsibility as a female, fairly well-spoken physicist to be a strong face for science. Good week all around.
Until next time!
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