"My experiences with the spring research school"
by Ryan Cawood

When I received an email from Jurgen inviting me to apply to his spring school I originally thought two things; firstly, that Jurgen’s work might not be relevant to the field I intended to eventually work in and, secondly, that I was far too busy to give up playing Super Mario Kart between lectures. Both of these initial thoughts were completely wrong. Working in the lab is very different to sitting through lectures and even if you don’t want to work on plant biology you should still do it, I have used almost everything I learnt in Jurgen’s lab in the three labs I have worked in since. In the laboratory you can either get loads of help, some help or none at all. I have experienced all of these since working for Jurgen and I am so grateful for the constant help, guidance and support I received from both him, and his group.
I also found that the time I spent in lab was only time that I would have wasted anyway and could actually get some of my course work done between waiting time for experiments. I actually got better marks in the semester that I worked for Jurgen than any other throughout my degree.

Positives
1) Getting results, I know this may sound sad but to make a unique piece of DNA and then see it being fluorescently expressed on the confocal microscope is quite cool.
2) The chance to present your work or even publish it if every thing goes well. This is something very few undergraduates achieve and the more opportunities you take the more chance you have of achieving it.
3) Being at the forefront of an incredibly interesting field
4) Working in a world class laboratory environment
5) Lunch and/or beer in the Faversham

Negatives
1) Be prepared: not all your experiments will work, this is a part of science and I have really struggled to accept failure but it happens all the time. More importantly, it happens to everyone, even the very best.
2) The smell of bacterial colonies and whatever chemical it was that Jurgen told me to extract protein with.

Your future
If you don’t want to work in science then I would still probably apply for this programme if Jurgen has asked you to, or at least talk to him about what you want to do, because I originally hadn’t put much thought into it. I am now doing a PhD at Oxford University on Cancer virotherapy and thoroughly enjoy my project. I only started four months ago and I will always remember that during my interview for the position I spent more than half my time discussing laboratory work I had done at Leeds, not my degree. I have since spoken to my supervisor about my interview and he said that the fact that I had proven laboratory skills and a fantastic reference from Jurgen really helped my application. I think that if I hadn’t worked in Jurgen’s group I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.

If you want to ask me any questions about my experiences at Leeds or my time with Jurgen’s group then please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Enjoy the rest of your degree.

Ryan Cawood (Oxford, 11th February 2008)
ryan.cawood@clinpharm.ox.ac.uk