I haven't posted here for a while. But my honours is year is drawing to a close and today I presented my research to a room of my colleagues and several academic staff. I've always had an issue with nerves and today was no different. Everyone seemed confident and knowledgeable, and there I was, sweating beads and unable to formulate entire sentences. A few people nodded along, though, so I must have made some semblance of coherence.
My talk itself discussed the background to my research, based on cisplatin and several of its analogues, and presented what results I have so far (which I certainly won't be posting here). Cancer is such a huge and massive field that affects so many lives, and I feel fortunate to be partaking (however minutely) in the fight against it. Although many treatments for cancer exist, as we currently understand it, cancer is so overwhelmingly prevalent due to the fact that it is a naturally attractive state for individual cells to attain. Just as many humans aspire to immortality, the cells inside them may have already discovered what it takes to become immortal: becoming a tumour.
It's a bleak outlook to consider that when fighting cancer, we are fighting against natural selection itself.It's depressing to think that selection occurs at multiple levels, and that we are in constant battle against our environment and also our genes. Humans, let alone humanity, cannot achieve perfection, though perhaps it'd be nice to be proven wrong here. I don't expect I'd live to see that day.
Anyway, so far I haven't really talked about honours at all, oops. I suppose I did as well as I could have in my seminar, and since my supervisors have generally been impressed with my writing, it should give me some hope that my thesis would be more well received than my verbal presentation. I essentially completely failed in accomplishing half of my initial project aims, so that's a bummer there too. Hopefully if I stay on to do a PhD I'll be able to make something more meaningful happen out of that. Stupid DNA, get into this other DNA! I should get around to submitting my PhD application though. Sheeeeit I've been busy, all right?
Also I miss my sister.
:3
