(no subject)
Oct. 2nd, 2002 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccScience is all about pretty colours.
I should know. There are large (2L) flasks filled with dye sitting up in the lab, along with some test tubes, some loose gels and a couple of odd lights.
Yes, we're taking photos to update the lab webpage.
I honestly think it would be easier just to get the photographer to come in when there are people around and take some general photographs. It would certainly be more honest than what we are ending up with.
So far we have: an RA looking down a microscope (I'm not sure if she bothered putting a slide on or not), the Bioinformatics person weighing out media (for the first time ever), a PhD student loading loading dye (well, what else?) onto a gel (which wasn't near a powerpack because that area was too dark and it photographed better near the windows), someone pippetting something that looked suspiciously like red dye and some protein gels. We couldn't find a sequencing gel (damn!) just to add to the stereotypes.
Oh, and everyone was in their lab coats (except the bioinformatics person who doesn't have one and borrowed mine for the day).
Shots they should probably have gotten which would have been more representative:
*Two RAs and one post-doc ordering cappuchinos at the coffee bar. Yes, we all buggered off after photo number 1.
*The bioinformatics person coming in and telling you that they've decided that where the exon boundaries were is wrong and they should be 3kb larger. So far it's happened twice - both times just after the oligos arrived.
*A PhD student sitting staring off into space after the computer with their unsaved changes to their thesis crashes.
*the lab meeting. 2 people asleep, 4 people arriving late (the clock in the tea room is 10 min slow), 1 lab head arriving, taking a mobile call and leaving a third of the way through again, 1/2 the lab looking blank because "it's the other project talking this week".
*A shot of anyone trying to deal with the building maintainence man. The look of sheer frustration would just be beautiful.
And what is the purpose of all this photography and webpage updating? To attract students.
I say offer them free beer. It's got to work at least as well as "hey, look at the pretty colours..."
Wanna be a scientist ? Helps if you're not colourblind... ;-)
I should know. There are large (2L) flasks filled with dye sitting up in the lab, along with some test tubes, some loose gels and a couple of odd lights.
Yes, we're taking photos to update the lab webpage.
I honestly think it would be easier just to get the photographer to come in when there are people around and take some general photographs. It would certainly be more honest than what we are ending up with.
So far we have: an RA looking down a microscope (I'm not sure if she bothered putting a slide on or not), the Bioinformatics person weighing out media (for the first time ever), a PhD student loading loading dye (well, what else?) onto a gel (which wasn't near a powerpack because that area was too dark and it photographed better near the windows), someone pippetting something that looked suspiciously like red dye and some protein gels. We couldn't find a sequencing gel (damn!) just to add to the stereotypes.
Oh, and everyone was in their lab coats (except the bioinformatics person who doesn't have one and borrowed mine for the day).
Shots they should probably have gotten which would have been more representative:
*Two RAs and one post-doc ordering cappuchinos at the coffee bar. Yes, we all buggered off after photo number 1.
*The bioinformatics person coming in and telling you that they've decided that where the exon boundaries were is wrong and they should be 3kb larger. So far it's happened twice - both times just after the oligos arrived.
*A PhD student sitting staring off into space after the computer with their unsaved changes to their thesis crashes.
*the lab meeting. 2 people asleep, 4 people arriving late (the clock in the tea room is 10 min slow), 1 lab head arriving, taking a mobile call and leaving a third of the way through again, 1/2 the lab looking blank because "it's the other project talking this week".
*A shot of anyone trying to deal with the building maintainence man. The look of sheer frustration would just be beautiful.
And what is the purpose of all this photography and webpage updating? To attract students.
I say offer them free beer. It's got to work at least as well as "hey, look at the pretty colours..."
Wanna be a scientist ? Helps if you're not colourblind... ;-)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-10-02 12:19 am (UTC)In our lab it would be "Bioinformatics person phoning security to get student parking illegally clamped" or "technician searching for holiday on the internet" or "whole lab empty because chemistry have set off the fire alarm - again."
no subject
Date: 2002-10-02 05:00 am (UTC)would a website really help you make a choice anyway? The naieve bit of me would like to think that surely its about the structure of the course, their results and the offer they make? :) Be much more entertaining to have real life on show...perhaps a live webcam? That'd attract more students surely?? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2002-10-08 12:44 am (UTC)The problem with our lab is that even though we're quite large we're spread over three different lab spaces and so you'd mostly have a picture of one or two people doing something that might or just as easily might not be science. ;-)
And yeah I would have thought the actual projects would be what caused students to pick labs, but maybe that's just me (my Hons project was the only one in the book I went "oh, I get that!" for - that's why I put it down as first preference.)
Apparently there's a free pizza information night for prospective Hons students coming up so maybe we can entice them there. Or at least give them the page URL.
or just as easily might not be science. ;-)
Date: 2002-10-09 02:16 am (UTC)I heard on the radio the other day that 1 in 4 americans have been on TV...surely not! Or even "good grief!?"
Memories
Date: 2002-10-16 03:26 am (UTC)Shots they also could have taken:
* Two post-docs talking behind the back of the team leader.
* The head of department carefully not noticing two senior lecturers returning from the pub at about half three.
* Four lads in white with bowler hats beating up an old drunk.
Actually, that last one didn't happen at my old department, but it was an incident in the film A Clockwork Orange shot in the underpass beneath the main university buildings. The worrying thing is that that scene did attract students, as did the filming of an episode of Blake's Seven in the longest corridor in Europe...