I had (or was suppose to have) a lecture on Introduction to critical appraisal (aka how to read journal articles and decide which ones are good and which ones are bad) yesterday. I made sure I was there couple of minutes early so I don't have to try to sneek which is impossible as the doors haven't been oiled since the medical school was built!
Regardless of my very unsuccesful attempts (i.e. I haven't got a clue what they are talking about) of small talk with all the other PhD students I thought I'd try again and starting chatting with this guy who was sitting next to me. He was from Persian and had unpronouncable name so I renamed him the protein guy in my mind.
I am very thankful that I did start chatting to him as it turned out that they could not find the lecturer anywhere and were searching for him high and low. It would have been very boring 25 minutes to wait without having anybody to talk to but fortunately I had the protein guy and we had very interesting conversation with the protein guy about Persia, Finland, England and PhDs.
At some point he turned around and asked if my husband was a scientist too...I wasn't really sure what to answer as I wouldn't class myself as a scientist like him (you can't really compare psychology and biochemistry, can you?) I guess I did graduate with BSc so in theory I am kind of a scientist but my idea of scientist is someone like him spending time in his little lab, testubes and cells.
My other lecture yesterday was on Research governance (aka lots of forms you have to fill in in order to do clinical research). As I have applied for some research governance approvals before it wasn't really that new but the lady had some fun examples of what had happened when people had filled the forms wrong. Some researcher had signed on the wrong line and it turned out he personally (as opposed to the NHS trust) was financially liable to cover any problems that occured in a European wide drugs trial for a new drug...I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.
The research governance lecture was in this obscure medical demonstration theatre that was impossible to find and I nearly gave up (I was late) but then I asked one of the lab people that were hanging around the corridors in their white coats and he pointed me to the right direction.
They got these smart cards and some buildings or areas of buildings you can only get to if you have a smart card that is authorised for that area. As I was getting more and more lost looking for this room I was getting very worried that I was going to get stuck in some corridor where I couldn't get out because my card didn't have the right clearance...before I bumped into this lab-coat guy I had opened quite a few doors with my card and I had no idea how to get back to where I had started from...but I lived to tell the tale and I am not vading away in some obscure corridor of the medical school :)