L A B O R A T O R Y ... life

Talk about my study for this 5th semester of final year...

Currently I have registered 15 units:
Microbiology of Pathogen --------- Core -- 3 units
Industrial & Food Microbiology -- Core -- 4 units
FYP (total of 8 units for 2 sem) --- Core -- 4 units
Marketing -------------------------- Minor - 4units

Basically, a total of 15 units is the least amount among the 5 semesters. There are only 6 lecture hours per week that I need to attend, with no tutorials etc BUT many hours of LAB works.

For Industrial & Food Microbiology, basically in my timetable, there is a lab of 3 hours every week. However, I was just told by my dear lecturer that we are going to do some mini projects; which means it's not a lab work that we can finish within 3 hours, but it's continuous. Hence, we are expected to present days continuously for weeks to accomplish a mini project.

Not only for that subject, the same matter goes for Microbiology of Pathogen. Although in my timetable, we were set to do lab work once in a two weeks, we are now expected to work in lab almost everyday, started last Wednesday.

Furthermore, once I start doing my FYP.... laboratory will be my another HOME. and my body will always be covered by lysol + microbes ...


By the way, I want to link some events here.
Many of my coursemates including me who went for Industrial Training (LI) were quite glad that we did attend the LI, especially for us who went to hospital. It's because we had learnt many things/skills which we can apply in the study now, especially in the subject of Microbiology of Pathogen.
For instance, use the samples for isolation and identification of the bacteria/fungus, the different agar plates and their purposes etc.

Now, my lecturer assigned us a mini project where a sample with mixed microorganisms was given to us; we are required to culture them and isolate for the purpose of identification and determine their sensitivities to antibiotics. So, without the knowledge learnt from hospital, I guess I would be very blur of this experiment. For culturing, we were given different agar plates such as Blood Agar, CHOC, MAC, SDA, NA and TCBS. Hope that my group can do it well! hehe...

Is it a good thing that we learnt from hospital (during LI) first or should we actually learn the theory from our course first? I'm wondering if our school know the real situation of our case.
To tell the truth, when I was having my training at the Microbiology unit of Pathogen unit of hospital, at first I didn't know most of the things, it showed how shallow I was. Supposingly, we learn the theory and then only we go for practical right? What I did was telling the MLT (medical lab technologist) there the truth. Luckily the people there were kind enough to teach me this and that.

I hope to do better in this subject (Pathogen's) since I had learnt so much from the LI......... hmm....