MRes Blog

Isle of Arran

On Wednesday I met my fellow MRes students, Jim our course co-ordinator gave us an introductory talk and reminded us, for those who had forgotten it was so soon, that we were to leave 8am sharp on Friday morning. One lunch together then 2 days later we were off for 7 days intensive training as an induction to a field campaign and meteorology. We had a fairly long journey, once off the ferry onto the Island, we got soaked to the bone the few minutes we were stood outside before clambering onto another coach. The windows steamed up so we didn't notice much of our surroundings.
We would spend the next 7 days together, sleeping, eating, working; in timetable from 7:30 am to 21:45 at night. We were thrust off the grind, on this small windy island, with no internet access or phone coverage.
The 8 of us had come from all different backgrounds and places, some with a geology background, one who already worked at the Met Office, me with astrophysics. We had to learn to work together and pull on each other's strengths to complete the exercises. Team work was very important, not only because we had 4 computers between 8 of us, to type things up. Our team name was ''Why so Cirrus?'', but the best one was ''Did the Goat fall or was he pushed?''.
Our first day we had lecture, after lecture, after lecture. Those who had been in work for a few years, this was a shock to the system. We then got a chance to have a practise with some of the instruments we would be using, before going on a short walk. However, some of the instruments we weren't taught how to use, but luckily we had some meteorologists in our group! The walk was nice and gentle and we were able to understand where best to take measurements. After a bit of a debate between the two geologists in our group we saw Hutton's Unconformity. Hutton's Unconformity is famous in understanding the evolution of the Earth's crust, in Lochranza, the Unconformity shows vertical and horizontal rocks which suggested that the lower vertical rocks had been tilted over millions of years before. (For more information visit: www.castlekirk.co.uk/geology.html ). We took our time making lots of measurements, but we weren't late for dinner which was the most important thing and luckily it didn't rain.
In the evening we had to give forecasts for the next day. On Sunday we were to be climbing a Munro called Goat Fell, so weather conditions would be particularly pertinent. In the morning, a lecture gives a weather forecast, and it had been doom and gloom saying it would be too windy to climb. This gave us an idea of what we should say, however we predicted it wouldn't be quite as windy as previously forecast. This first forecast would not be assessed, and I led the team by presenting first (unfortunately this didn't help me with my second forecasting presentation!).
On Sunday, we were to Goat Fell. The weather still looked to wet and windy, so our plans were scrapped and the groups were told whether they were going to take measurements just on the way down or just on the way down, but nobody would go to the summit. Fortunately we were the latter, and as the weather was in our favour we were able to take measurements on the way up and down. We were also lucky, that as such as large group, we would be taking two sets of measurements which would reduce our errors. It was a good gentle walk, not all of our group was familiar to hiking so, we adapted to fit with them and I think we all had a good time. We ate sandwiches on the lee side on the ledge of Goat Fell to shield us from the wind and Jim rewarded us with sweets! It was a lovely calm (not busy, was breezy) day on the whole, which meant Monday was a bit of a shock.
The schedule was constantly changing, we would be informed initially in the morning, but even then it wasn't set and we had many changes, as some of the workshops needed very specific conditions. Over the course of the week we were educated in Radiosondes and Tephigrams, Surface Energy Balance and Albedo, Weather Balloons, Trajectories and Errors. Every day we learnt multiple new things, and we were in a constant bid to catch up. Luckily we had most of the Wednesday and all of the Thursday to finish everything we did. The deadline was 9pm Thursday evening. Neely, kindly gave us a printer, as the MRes students were in a separate room from the rest of the staff and students. We used up many trees that day. We had a schedule, which ended up getting stretched to the nth degree. Jim at one point came in and gave us all crumpets which was the highlight of the week. There is nothing like a hot crumpet with butter to reduce stress. At first, during the week, we each assigned ourselves different tasks, with the idea of teaching the rest of the group how we were doing etc, to write up in our books, we started doing this, but it took too long so we ended up scratching that idea, and we typed up the main points to print out and stick in our books, as well as all the graphs etc. This meant the floor was covered in paper. Mostly systematic, but there was piles of scrap paper from cutting out, empty gluesticks. Neely came in, took one look, shut the door and then came in with Jim to take a photograph. The looming deadline and the amount of work yet to write up, had affected us in different ways, leading to a rather mad MRes group! We were all really pleased with the result, wished we had more time, but it was a team effort and that made us proud. That night at the pub was a long one!

MRes Cohort and Jim McQuaid

First Official Week

My first week began with a rocky start (we don't get proper timetables) but I turned up to the lecture theatre in time for SOEE3700, Practical Weather Forecasting. This term I am taking just two of my four modules, SOEE3700 and SOEE5515 Ice in the Earth System which is brand new. At the moment just the Practical Weather Forecasting, has computer labs, where we are learning NCL on a linux based system. We start with an introduction then have a list of exercises to work our way through and ask questions. Graphing is very important in any science based work but it is also one of those things which you can become absolutely enravelled in and spend hours trying to move the labels on your graph 2px to the right to align properly. Fortunetly, thus far we have been given a structure for the programming, and the graphs it produces are all aligned perfectly and don't come up with strange quirks, I reiterate, thus far. I have been enjoying these classes, it has been a while since I have done programming so it is good to refresh myself on the nature of work. I have been helping those who haven't used linux before or not done much coding which is really helpful to me to understand the content better. I went home the other night to look over some old python code and I finally understood how "def" function output variables work, (my tutor of python, Graeme, may cringe at this because I used them anyway and nodded away when he spoke about them!). The Ice in the Earth System module was a two hour lecture, the content should pick up, aand a good refresher, but the lecture did feel very long, see how it goes next week.
I have also started on HTML! The proof is in this website. I have been working on the structure and how I want to lay out each page. I have big plans for the Dissertation and Outreach pages where with the former I want a source tree layout of the programming I do, and the Outreach, animations. However at this stage I am just thankful to get the menu bar working and have the hover function (I had "a: hover {" instead of "a:hover {"), coding mistakes like that are a pain to work out. So I don't know if the animations will come in to play or not, particularly as my workload picks up. I have also been reading "Radar Meteorology: Principles and Practice" by Frederic Fabry as a recommended text by my supervisor.

Second and Third Week

In week 2 I felt very overwhelmed. On Tuesday, in our Ice lectures we were set an assignment to write for the following week, this was all fine except we were given about 20referencess to read, which we later discovered we didn't have access to all of them which was very frustrating. On Thursday we had the fortnightly radar meeting which was then followed by a smaller meeting for my dissertation. The meeting made me worried about what I had to contribute and what I could do, however my fears were unfounded. The meeting made it clear what I would be doing for my dissertation project and Jonny and Neely were very supportive. Friday I had a plan of my day, but unfortunately things fell through, which meant I didn't get my Ice deadline written before the weekend, which was when I was moving the rest of my belongings up to Leeds. Come Monday, feeling the pressure of the Wednesday Ice deadline, but that was overwritten by our Practical Weather Forecasting exercises; We had spent 5hours the previous week, stuck on a question, because the variable was called something else and we didn't know how to find what it was called, in Monday's workshops we were finally told how to find out what it was called, despite asking previously. Tensions were a little high after that. Tuesday was dedicated to writing my Ice Essay, I had a fair bit done, but it was just making it readable. Wednesday was spent fighting with LATex and getting the word limit down to 500 whilst still making sense! I finished in plenty of time to go climbing which was nice. Thursday and Friday were spend coding for my dissertation project, I ended up asking my supervisor who was able to send some initial set up scripts to get it working.

Fourth Week

For my dissertation I am using the Chilbolton Big Radar (CAMRa) and FAAM radar for cloud observations. Initially I am plotting up the CAMRa data to use but I couldn't read the files. Over the weekend, my super supervisor Neely, sent me some code to enable me to read in the files, and same sample code for the basic plots which I have explored further this week. We were looking at 2011 data but unfortunately the days didn't match with FAAM flights. So I went through all the days CAMRa was on and matched with days that FAAM flew within 200km (the range of the radar). This was a rather painstaking process but it only has to be done once so that is good.

Into the Blue Festival

Most of my week was spent at Into the Blue festival ( website ), held at Manchester airport's visitor center. Wednesday was my first day, I was up at 5am and didn't get in until about 22:15 despite leaving early. It was a long day. I had a bit of trouble getting, there and the signs weren't good but the festival saw on average 800 people per day which is really good.
I was assigned to helping with the FAAM tours, I would take the group of 8 to the minibuses to the hangar, and then keep track of time whilst the scientists and pilots would educate them about the aircraft. My role expanded to giving safety briefings and discussing the FAAM aircraft which I worked on 2 years ago which made my mornings more interesting. There were no tours in the afternoon, so I was between the FAAM display and NERC welcome stand. As the afternoon was less busy for me I was able to catch up with those from FAAM and I got to see how the CPI works. In the evening there was a stakeholder event, which meant a free dinner, no dessert :( and networking. I caught up with Keith Bower from the Met Office and met some people from Leeds, which made for a lovely evening.
On Thursday Evening was the VIP stakeholder's including Jim's cousin who works for M&S. She was very excited to finally get to see the aircraft. This was the last evening event, which meant an early night which was very welcome. I stayed til Saturday mid afternoon. I had brought my laptop with me to do work but the festival was draining, so it had to wait til the weekend.
I have done my fair share of science festivals, and this was the first one where they asked all the guests to leave the building for a whole hour over lunch, this meant that the stands could have a break and get lunch which is good when there is just one person a stand but here, there were at least two, and it started to get cold and wet so I felt really bad asking for people to leave, having said that I didn't hear many complaints, just felt very odd.

Reading Week

Not much reading got done on this week, nonetheless it was still a very busy week. On the Thursday was the ICAS Conference. I initially went to the wrong Hilton Hotel, but a kind ICASer spotted my poster roll and showed me the way. There was no itinerary for the day given beforehand, so we weren't sure what to expect. I was in poster session three, which was the last session of the day which turned out to be 5-6pm. This was later than expected, and many people left before this, which was a shame but I don't blame them. It was a long day, and more talks than anticipated and not enough seating. The poster sessions were good, although the room was setup poorly and as there was no order to the posters there was clusters which made traversing the room tricky. The Key Note Speaker was good, although I felt like he could have talked for another couple of hours, he felt flustered, in a rush. The room where the talks were happening was very warm, I felt like a frog in a pan of water slowly being cooked. By the time it came to do my poster, I was knackered, but I did enjoy talking to people. Jim suggested we advertise ourselves and put a picture of ourselves on the poster, I was the only MRes student to do this, and unfortunately made the picture too big which was rather embarrassing. At the close of the poster session, we headed over to the pub, where it took 20minutes to get a drink. Just before 7 we wandered back and sat down at the first table. Bread rolls were being handed out and we tucked into them as we were starving as lunch, although good was a long time ago. It was an enjoyable evening, I left before the end of the quiz as I had an early start the next morning. - Upload my poster.
On Friday I had the opportunity to go down to the Harwell Science Park in Didcot, Oxfordshire, where I had a tour around Satellite Catapult Technologies, and had some work experience, building some prototype satellites and soldering solar panels. Although this had nothing to do with my masters, it was a welcome break. I did do some work at Harwell, and finally got my dissertation python code working which was a welcome relief.

Me soldering CubeSatellites at Satellite Applications Catapult Company

Seventh Week

All of the work is due in at once! Ice Essay due Wednesday, Katrina was meant to be done, and then Tuesday turn up to an empty lecture theatre and instead it is a 3 hour practical in a cluster. Luckily I found a geographer who knew where it was. The practical was done on windows :O, on QGIS. It is an image processing platform. This reassured me as I had done image processing in my second year at university. I worked through nearly all the exercises, there were a few odd quirks which were sorted out by a volunteer PhD student. Anna Hogg was leading the session and she was a really good speaker. However her guess the satellite from the image was a bit unfair, although matching the name to the instruments was a lot easier. The week has flown by. I feel like I am just about keeping my head above water. At the beginning of the week I saw what we had to do for our literature review and that was a big gulp. David has sent me some calibration papers to look over which is really useful. I typed up some notes yesterday on one. We have been attending many seminars, I feel I can write up 3 so far, one by Katie Briggs, one on Bores and one on social science from the Priestly Center. I am a little behind on my NCL Katrina work, I want to tidy up my scripts but that is a little bit of a pipe dream for Matthew perhaps. I believe I have run all my scripts, so this afternoon as a group we are just going to discuss the results. I have started writing up my essay including background information. I am a little fuzzy what change was made between the two models, so this afternoons discussion will help. I know there will be a couple of graphs which I will look at and need to alter, maybe next week I will get a chance, although I am headed to Canterbury for my graduation so that may not happen. The MRes students have a facebook chat, earlier in the week Will predicted there would be snow in Leeds, Akshay was less sure that it would settle in Leeds, on Tuesday night (8th/9th Nov) the chat was going off like crazy with notifications; Will, Akshay and Tom B on the snow, and then Will and Jay on the US Election. Next Wednesday is the big ICE-D meeting, which I am attending (I am leaving slightly early to catch a reasonable time train to Canterbury) as a fly on the wall. It would be good to see how the outfall of a campaign works, and if there is good data, that may be used if I were to do a PhD here.

Eighth Week

Wednesday was the ICE-D conference, this was really interesting to see how the science is analysed after a campaign, I couldn't stay for the whole talk as I had to catch as train to Canterbury. On my train I did some programming, but it came up with a very strange error. To see more go to Code Edit.

Ninth Week

This week has kind of run away from me. On Monday we had our usual Forecasting Lecture, we then and did our NCL for the 2 hour gap, then we did our NCL class, then we did some more NCL before giving up the ghost and leaving. Tuesday, 9-12, Ice practical assessment class, which we then continued til just before 1. This assessment has a total of 40 marks, divided unevenly into 4 sections. I worked my way from section 1-3, a few calculations still need to be done, and section 4 is writing the essay due in the final week. The other 2 in my class, did half of section 1, worth 2 marks, in 3.75hrs! I quoted Jim with exertion "Time Management!". Then had another 2 hours of NCL practical class, followed by another hour, I was completely done so went home. Wednesday was a busy day just typing up my Katrina Report, I had a really productive morning writing about 600 words, before discovering some of my graphs were a bit funky. I then happened to open my emails, and discovered we had to attend "all" seminars, so I went to Lindsay Lee's talk on "Learning from Uncertainty" it was a fascinating talk, which I am going to write up. My afternoon then went to pot, it took me ages to rerun my scripts, at the correct cross section, to get the graphs and then type them up. It was a long night. The following morning, I made my report pretty and checked that I had covered all the points before submitting. I wrote a bit more of an essay but I wasn't feeling well on Thursday so didn't do much else. In the evening, I had recovered a little and did some baking for "Friendsgiving" with the MRes and other students on Friday.
Today is Friday, I haven't done the programming I wanted to do, so that is my weekend. I am typing up seminars and reading some papers today.

Tenth and Eleventh Week

I didn't write an official blog piece during this period because it was just so busy. On the positive note, Ben (Pickering, Neely's PhD student) and I got together to chat about gridding which ended up with a plaintive to Axel Wellpott at FAAM, who sent us some very useful code to review. I am looking forward to working on this and hopefully can use some as a base for the FAAM co-incident tool box but we will see. Axel's code is to get data from a specific instrument without having to go through the whole system which will save time, so win win. During this week we had deadlines for Ice and Practical Weather Forecasting, the latter, where we had to do a weather forecast akin to the one on the BBC did not go well, this was down to miscommunication and misinterpretation of information and my incompetence as I still did not know where fronts appear on weather charts and got this very wrong. I think I would have benefited from doing a first or second year module just on forecasting and learning how weather charts work; Arran and Chatmosphere have helped but physics is better. I am off for a week away in Budapestnext week and very pleased to have a holiday and break from things I don't understand.

Review of 2016

Good things: At New Year, we went to my partner's extended family's for our usual dinner and celebration, and I was asked what were my 3 highlights of the year. Panic set in, it was like an interview; luckily I was able to discuss each one which gave me time to think of more. The first was my recent holiday to Budapest. George and I have a bit of a bad reputation for holidays, (however our worst holiday still comes only second of all time worst holidays so maybe it is just me), so this trip to Budapest was amazing, we had great experience and time, there was so much to do but it wasn't rushed and we will go back at some point to do things which we missed. My second good thing was getting the scholarship for this course. At the time, my world was crumbling and everything I worked for had suddenly disappeared unexpectedly. My respect for myself had dropped, yet I was still fighting to keep going in academia. Getting the scholarship was unexpected, but something I will be forever grateful for. I still feel at times, I need to justify being here, and I am working hard to prove that I am good enough. Thank you Graeme Nott for my reference, Neely for taking a chance and Jim for letting me through. My third was "A Wonderful Week of Words". In 2015 I welcomed in a new committee with Matt who just won Headmaster of Hogwarts Society at Kent. I had this mad idea, to do a week long charity event for Lumos, we wouldn't just raise money but we would impact our local community and get underprivileged children from primary schools to come up and listen to authors talk and have workshops in creativity from the author and other societies. This was inspired because we had recently heard that creativity had been struck from the curriculum and the upsetting thing is, it came true. We would host authors for public engagement to raise money for Lumos. The event, took over 30 volunteers, cost around £2000, hosted 5 authors over 300 children, involved 2 schools and we raised just under £600 for Lumos. It was a success, we won awards and some funding, and the children really benefited from it, the teachers were asking for it to be done again. It was a lot of work, which detracted from my degree but it was worthwhile and I am glad to have been a part of it. So that was my third. My fourth, was thanks to my cousin Beth and her husband Denny, they took me in for a few months between universities even though they had a 10month old baby! I love children, and have enjoyed outreach, scouting and babysitting/nannying over the years, but one of the greatest moments of my life was Finn taking his first steps towards me. This year has been mixed but I am glad of it.

First Fortnight Back

Ahhhh. So many emails and things to do. I had a plan. I did not stick to the plan but I am hopeful that most of it will get done. I am doing some outreach next week. I am solely responsible for the content which is a little scary. I am used to working with people I know, and we are familiar with the content. The sort of workshop I am writing was intended for a class between 20-30 students and I have 40 and I am really short a demonstrator. I am changing the content slightly to fit this better but I want the session to be educational and showing that science is involves many different groups of people from all different areas and backgrounds, pulling experience together to create not only good science, but science that benefits the public and science that is communicated through public engagement - as well as exploring different types of observations.
On Friday I got the opportunity to visit Chilbolton Observatory. Darcy very kindly gave us the full tour of the facilities. We got to go right up inside CAMRa. Darcy explained that it used to be an astronomical radio telescope. It uses a really cool piece of hardware called a "waveguide", it is essentially a hollow rectangular tube which physically polarises the electromagnetic wave, either horizontally or vertically, and is rotated as such.

Image of CAMRa at Chilbolton Observatory, courtesy of Drichards2 and Mike Peel (from commons.wikimedia.org, 2005)

Sixtenth and Sevententh Week

I have come from a male dominated physics degree to Earth and Environment, on my course 2/9 are girls, so fairly high to my standards. I was the only female to do Resistant Materials (Woodwork/Metalwork) at GSCE in my year, year above and below. I was the only female in my year to do Physics at GCSE. To walk into a classroom for a group activity and find that the majority were female, was daunting and to work in a group of only girls even more so.
Fact: By the time a girl reaches secondary school she has already decided that science is not the subject they want to have a career in. This was from a study conducted by SEPnet This is scary, boys still have that choice for girls, many have already blocked off that route.
I am part of a group chat, with some friends from my previous uni. Today one of them posted that she was just told by a co-worker that her, not wearing make-up was unprofessional. She is a professional, who dresses appropriately for her job, and she works in an office, where she doesn't have face to face interactions with clients. As someone who does not wear make-up full stop, this got under my skin. I remember having a conversation with another waitress, who said she wore make-up at work because it made her face look cleaner but I was okay because I had clear skin. I take issue with this.
Just like high-heels, make-up is an accessory and should not be a job requirement. I believe in a gender neutral standardised dress code should be fine for most jobs (and I say most jobs because there are some which you need make up for lights in theatre, or steel-toe capped boots for working on a farm etc.). Make-up and heels are not a requirement. My friend's boss did not car that her male co-worker made this remark. This is a problem. Accessories should make you feel good, confident and are a choice, people wear make-up because they like it, it makes them look or feel better, I love my jewellery and have fun picking out different statement pieces when I can, but that does not make it okay for a colleague to say, I should or should not wear something, as long as I look professional, it's not affecting my work and its safe it DOES NOT MATTER WHAT I WEAR and it sure as hell doesn't give a co-worker the right to say anything. What you wear, and how you present yourself, is your choice and it should be you, yes we may have to don a black tie from time to time, and yes we have a different work wardrobe to our weekend and evenings but all those should still make you feel comfortable, and happy and confident. It is so hard for people to feel happy in their own skin and what their bodies look like, remarks like this just grind you down.
I do outreach to inspire boys and girls across the country, I want to help challenge perspectives of what a scientist is, and I don't mind that some people find physics boring, I want them to see someone with a passion for what they do, and find a career or a hobby that they are passionate about. Outreach is also about educating people to respect specialists which particularly at this time, is important. I have been incredibly lucky in the opportunities I have had, and something I want to give back, but I have worked hard and will continue to, as I support my passion for science.
That includes doing weird and wonderful things to promote science such as baking a Radar cake.

Radar Cake designed and made by myself, with some structural help from George Addison (without its base)

Eighteenth Week and Nineteenth

This week was the first week back into lectures. Its difficult because I would ideally like to spend all my time on my dissertation. However I am doing this MRes degree to bridge the gap between my astrophysics background and earth and environmental science career I am looking towards thus the modules are important. During the first week back I got hit with a bad virus, which knocked me out somewhat. This week (19th) I have been recovering, and writing up my project proposal. On Wednesday I submitted my first full draft, Thursday morning I looked on in horror. I knew I wanted to add in a few more paragraphs and science up the language but I noticed a sentence talking about coding as "notoriously fickle", I don't think that is going to make the edit somehow! I had some exciting news this week which was I have got a PhD interview at Leeds! The rest of the week will be spent finishing off and editing my proposal, going to classes and writing up seminars. During my proposal writing stage, I have spoken about some things in detail such as the Nevzorov Probe, but this is too much information for the proposal and will be used in my dissertation instead, so it is great that I have somethings to write in there. I am also contributing some code to produce some pretty RHIs from CAMRa on the NCAS X-Band Radar paper, unfortunately, some of the raw data is a bit squewif so am looking forward to having a play with the code to correct for this, however some of the data is through the fault of the data recording and nothing I can work with which is a shame. It has been nice to go back into playing with python again, I have missed it.

The Busiest of Weeks

This week was one of the busiest weeks I have had since Arran. Tuesday, I was in all day and achieved nothing, a mixture of meetings and lectures, things being moved round, nothing got done. Thursday was the big deadline for our Dissertation Proposal. I had some good feedback the previous week, and had made all the small changes so Wednesday after Monday and Tuesday being lost to the abyss of lectures etc. was dedicated to writing the few extra paragraphs needed. Unfortunately, despite acknowledging and understanding the changes required not all could be implemented in the 8 pages as required. My Gantt chart took up a whole page, which at first seemed like a marvellous idea, until suddenly I was overflowing with words, also the layout meant that my conclusion and bibliography was restricted to 1 page which was a huge mistake. I spent most of Thursday morning battling with Latex, trying to make my bibliography fit onto the last page, I succeeded but some of my academic integrity was lost. Later that day some of the MRes cohort went to the pub "The Nation of Shopkeepers" which is a really nice pub, good atmosphere (albeit we were there early (3/4pm)) and good food, to celebrate. Still recovering from a bad cold, I did not stay late. On Friday I was in from 9:15 to 18:30. I had a 10 minute break and that was it. First we had our practice proposal presentations, thank goodness they were a practice as I forgot the name of CAMRa which completely threw me off. Then I had a practice PhD interview, luckily I did feel more confident coming out of it than going in, David Dufton offered some very helpful advice along with my supervisor. Then it was a mission to secure a computer in our Ice computer practical, as there weren't enough last time, and wolfing down some lunch. Then a 4 hour lab, at 5pm, I ran my DEM, unfortunately after I pressed the button the PhD student helping me with the practical said it was taking between 30-40minutes. I was not impressed. However I stayed wanting to make sure I got it right, and after an hour I shut it down reopened the application and it hadn't worked. We later found out there was a problem with it, and so we are being provided with a DEM for analysis instead, which is great, just meant I wasted a lot of time. Its been a very busy week, and I am looking forward to a slightly less hectic one, but with more deadlines looming, its just another student's dream. ice to go back into playing with python again, I have missed it.

The week of the Interviews

This week I was on a mission to do everything I needed to and keep on track. This week I was on a mission to do everything I needed to and keep on track. It was another busy week but a hopeful week as I had my Leeds DTP PhD interview on the Tuesday and one in Manchester on Thursday. I arrived at uni, on the Tuesday morning and did some work at my desk very nervous, no-one around me had any clue that I was going to an interview which could change my life. Eventually I headed downstairs and met another candidate before being called up. I am so glad I had met Anja, who was on the committee, before, it just helped calm my nerves. However I stumbled over some answers and gave mathematical answers to social questions and vice versa, it was not a good feeling. On Thursday morning, I had printed out some papers to read on the train for my Literature Review. I was feeling pretty good, at the very least could chat with Jonny about some radar bits. When I arrived I went down to the taxi rank but there was a massive queue, I had a map and a vague direction of where I was headed, it was pouring with rain but I had sturdy shoes and my gortex. Ha ha ha. The rain was coming down like a sheet, my legs were soaked through, I could barely make out the map or road signs, so I snuck into a porch of a university building to gather my wits. I warmed up and dried off my phone, and decided to get an Uber, 20minutes later the uber still hadn't shown up, he asked me to meet him at another road, so I asked for directions and went to the road and waited, but nothing and the driver cancelled the ride. I went into another building and brought up another map and got my bearings, but tried to memorise the route. I walked for about 5 minutes and I was soaked, cold and had not made any progress but there was a conference. I walked up to the receptionist, she took one look at me, and asked if she could call a taxi for me, I gratefully accepted. The driver turned up 15 minutes later and drove me to the building, well what he thought was the building. Although it was the wrong building it was the right complex, I found a campus map and walked to the building and to the door. I pulled and I couldn't get in, I tried the buzzer, still nothing. Still confused, I walked around the building, on the fourth and final side was the main entrance and I was about 15 minutes early! I headed up to the room and entered and said hello to the neatly pressed candidate sat at the table, my hair was a mess, I was dripping wet from head to toe. Cheerfully I laid my outer garments to dry and joined the candidates. It was not the greatest of first impressions! Still I had arrived, and I had given myself plenty of time. The day was a good day, I got to chat with Jonny about the PICASSO project and we also discussed my current dissertation, I also got to catch up with Martin Gallagher who I hadn't seen for a while. Also might I add, I am rather clumsy and managed to lose a piece of pineapple under the table and was not very dignified in front of the lecturers I wanted to impress in retrieving it etc. We also got a tour of the facilities which. My interview came off very well. However my journey home was not straight forward. After my interview, I could just leave, so not wanting a repeat of the morning I asked for a taxi number and was directed to a taxi rank, the rain had eased off, and so as the rank was empty I decided to walk back, and got back to the station in about 15 minutes compared to my hour long ordeal in the morning. However at the station due to the bad weather (Storm Doris) the trains were delayed. We were directed from one platform to another being promised trains, it was chaos. And the poor platform station managers and help desks were overwhelmed and they were just not getting the information they needed from the other side, so we were to wait. After a few hours we managed to get a train back to Leeds, else I was going to hell with it and stay with a friend in Manchester. There was a sense of comradery as we waited but I was awfully thankful when I made it back.

Deadlines and Memories

The week of the first was the one of the deadlines, Literature Review was due on the Thursday, my final Ice Essay on the following Monday, which we all found very vague considering the strict marking criteria employed and the Presentations were the following Wednesday we were stressed out.
The first week of March is the anniversary for the busiest weeks of my life. I ran an event through UKC (Unviersity of Kent, Canterbury) Hogwarts Society, called "A Wonderful Week of Words". We had numerous set backs including our original venue double booking resulting in us hosting 300 children in the University's nightclub! I had borrborrowed the astrodome to do "Stories of our Skies" talks and on the third and last day of our children's events, the dome started to collapse, leading to an emergency evacuation, the rest of the days astrodome activities cancelled, and the drama workshop doubling the amount of children it was working with. Our lunch order didn't turn up on one of the days leaving my volunteers very hungry as we arranged alternatives. For the adults events, our advertising didn't work and so we had very limited people at the talks, one evening our drinks reception was cancelled without our knowledge, we had one of our guest speakers stuck in snow. However the feedback from schools was very positive, and they wanted to come back. We raised several hundreds of pounds for the Lumos Charity whilst also supporting local authors and schools. The volunteers got an incredible opportunity which they were all enthused with. We also won several awards for it too. So all in all a huge success despite the perils.

Proposal Presentations

The week of the 10th however were all were able to let out a sigh of relief, deadlines handed in, no more for a few months, all was well. We had our presentations on the Wednesday which were pretty much on time for, 3hrs 3minutes which was impressive, I think they all went pretty well on the whole, and we went out for a drink afterwards which was nice, however most of us left pretty early as we were all a bit exhausted. I am helping organise the Weather and Water part of the University's Festival and Science, so on Thursday I had a bit of a rundown of the experiments with Jim. It was a very productive Thursday, as I determined my next physical steps for my dissertation which was exciting. What I was less impressed with was the difference between the original website we had set up and the new wiki, I was told it would be a simple copy and paste but its a bit more complicated than that which is frustrating so I am going to have to spend some time working through that. A friend contacted me for a few outreach bits to do with cost of space travel which I think I will add on to the outreach part, as it all matters. On Friday I spent some time updating the crib sheets, most of them were fine, I was able to find a couple of video demonstrations and write the 2 new demonstrations. I am hoping that I will get to do a Liquid Nitrogen Experiment at the end of the session to round it off, which will be good. I am now about to focus on my women in science section as I forgot my laptop to do some coding which will eat into my weekend a little which is frustrating.

Decisions of a Lifetime

Everything paled for this week. On Tuesday about 5pm, I got an email saying that I have been offered a NERC PhD but I have not got a supervisor or project and to come in, first thing for a meeting. I knew I was on the reserve lists for both Manchester and Leeds, last years grades were pulling me back unfortunately. I had originally applied to do a PhD at Leeds with the same supervisor this year, so to hear someone else had got that was a shock. The next few days were a bit of a blur of emotions. My supervisor Neely, was amazing and so supportive. I was offered lots of different projects including working with the Ice Nucleation Group, but at the ended of the day I knew the original aims of my Masters project I would not be able to complete, and I felt there was so much more I could do with radar. I eventually accepted a NERC funded PhD with Professor Alan Blythe as my main supervisor and Neely as my secondary supervisor so I could still work closely with him and continue the work I had started. Now the wait for the paperwork...

NCL

For our Dynamics module we have been plunged back into the depths of the murky waters that is NCL. This week there was a fair amount of grumbling. On Wednesday I had a few hours off, where the demonstrators for Weather and Water the following week could check out and have a go at some of the demo's. It went on longer than intended and we covered less than we hoped but it was okay. On the Thursday I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Manchester with the Nuffield Foundation. In 2011, I was one of their interns for 5 weeks at the University of Oxford resulting in a paper and the Gold CREST Award (http://www.crestawards.org/). As an alumni they keep in touch and offered some outreach training "Engaging with Schools and Colleges". It was a great day, I learnt alot and met many interesting people. We ended up writing postcards to ourselves about what we learnt from the day and what we were going to do following the session in terms of outreach to be sent out a month later:

Flamingo Reminder Postcard

Festival of Science and much more

This week was chaotic. My friend Laura came to stay for a few nights which was lovely, and great to catch up but not the greatest of timings. She was here for her masters course, to interview various people but many of them weren't available etc. This week began and ended with NCL craziness but in the middle was the Festival of Science: Weather and Water. Myself and Pre were co-ordinating the Earth and Environment bit, with Jim and Lindsay. We had 4 sessions, over two days, each 2 hours long. So it wasn't that much outreach but we needed a lot of volunteers which we struggled to get. We had an introduction, and a video for the secondary schools and then they were split into groups of about 5 to go round the 6 interactive demonstrations we had. To finish we had a bit of feedback, an opportunity for questions, and a short chat about careers in science. Not much went wrong, we were missing a demonstrator at a few stages, and exploding egg and tornado bottle but all in all it went pretty smoothly. The lengths for the demos were hard to gauge, for some it was too long, others to short but I think we got their in the end. I didn't want to change too much, to see how it runs, but we are looking to improve and add to some of the demos. We shall see where next year takes us.

Back to the grindstone

I ended up having 2.5weeks off rather than 1.5. I had a lovely holiday with friends in Germany and then came home to family troubles. The Friday before I came back to Unviersity, I was in London, and made a stop at the Royal Astronomical Society's Library. I researched Caroline Herschel for my Women in Science project and had a really good morning, I am going back there in June? July? to get some more documents for an outreach project. This week was playing catch up and finishing off NCL. I forgot we still had lectures so that was a bit of a suprise to fit in!

Devastation in Numbers

This week, I came to the devastating realisation that although I had some substance of working code, some of my Water Content Data was invalid - the liquid content was bigger than the total. What ensued was a flurry of emails followed by a long meeting with Neely of numerous back up plans. Essentially it was before the Nevzorov probe had a new vane put on it, it meant that any invalid data could not be corrected for, and also required inflight human calibration which wasn't always carried out due to weather conditions etc. I had some data which looked to be in the right region but most of it was bogus. We decided to carry on with this code using Nevzorov TWC and the JW probe's LWC , and hopefully we would get a flight in next few weeks to use, but if not the code can just be tested and act as an example to be properly calibrated and trialed at a later date. Back up plans, including calibrating between X-Band and CAMRa (which is plan for some of PhD next year, colour frequency has got me hooked!) or use the rains campaign and do it for LWC and X-band data. We had a plan! Now avoid plan, hoping for a new flight and get on with coursework and revision....

Deadlines and Exams

The week of the 10th, I was furiously writing up my coursework pieces, I kind of gave up a bit for the NCL coursework, I had over 1300 graphs created, and I hadn't made all of the ones I needed. Of course I didn't use all of them in the assignment either, pft. I was also informed it was worth 1.66% of my degreeI then focused all my energies on my exam revision. I was quite pleased with my Stone Henge Assignment for the Environmental Impact Assessment Assignment, I did struggle to fit everything in on the tiny word count but I think I produced a really good piece of work. On the following Monday, I had my first and hopefully my last exam at Leeds, making it my last exam ever, really truly this time. It did not go brilliantly. Those famous words "you don't need to remember any equations off by heart", "there will be an equation booklet or they will be written". First question, write down the equation for... I then had to rush from the exam to a meeting, where I am now an official outreach person but not sure of the correct title woop! I had a fairly quiet afternoon. Wednesday however was a fairly wacky day. I was the only non-FAAM person on the telecon, I couldn't get hold of anyone down at Chilbolton to know if the radars were on and pointing in the right direction. The weather was looking perfect for the Chilbolton Run. I then got through to Neely who was up at Arran, we both had a little trouble getting onto the flight comms channel - "Add-ons" are not fun to try and open to use on firefox! I was then mistaken for a different Freya. For reference I am Freya One at FAAM, as I was the first Freya there, they then had a Freya Two who worked their for a year as a student for Steph. Also I know the comms channel should be kept clear for science and this made it very difficult to respond appropriately to chit chat. ANyway. The Flight was meant to be a science tet flight & hopefully they had enough clear air to calibrate the Nevzorov probe too. I was balancing updating my website bits, with keeping an eye on the weather and the chat. WE managed to get 3 Chilbolton Runs in, two more than we were expecting. I didn't say much, as a lowly student, but was very glad that Neely and Chris chose levels for the flights that were appropriate and useful to my IWC work. On some of the RHI snapshots the aircraft is visible which is fantastic as I can use it to check my co-incident code. As the flight ended I signed off and rushed to gather my gubbins to go to the Belgrave Food and Music Hall. I was assisting in some Demos for Pint of Science ( POS ). It was a really good evening (FYI they do excellent pizza, and before 7pm its half price!). Dr Katherine Walsh and Sven Loo were speaking, they both pitched at the right level and were really interesting. I have heard Katherine speak before on molecules in space and she is a joy to listen too. Someone mentioned that they would love to watch a film about giant ants in space if they was one, well there is one about giant bugs in space starring Neil Patric Harris called Storm Troopers ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/) Its a bizarre film but hey! I do miss space and would like to do some more spacey outreach to keep it ticking over. I was on the demo which shows light curves of a star (light bulb) and it had a rotating disc where people could put make and put their planet, to show the dips in a stars light curves which are unique to the planet. This is the best way currently to find new planets. There was a competition for the best planet and someone made a pengiun!

Ice Baby Planet from PoS, Leeds

It is beautiful! I headed home before the afterparty as I was quite tired and had another big day on Thursday.
Thursday I was in Uni in the morning but in the afternoon I headed to Bradford with Lindsay for a STEM event at the museum. I had heard good things about the regeneration of Bradford's science museum and was suitably impressed. We were positioned oposite a hanging globe of the Sun so I was able to talk a bit about space. But mostly Lindsay and I were promoting the STEM ambassador scheme and the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, and our Festival of Science. It was a teachers networking event, and so we also had leaflets of metlink where there are loads of teacher resources. There wasn't that much traffic where we were positioned unfortunately but we did speak to several teachers which was helpful and showed them our demos. We had cloud in the bottle with us. On the first go, I let go of the bottle (by-accident!) but wasn't trusted again to hold onto it, which was probably sensible.

STEM Ambassador Badge