mindsayThe children would enter the room and I would ask them to have a seat on the floor whilst their teachers sat at the end of the room on the seats. Once the kids came right up on top of me which I found pretty scary having them all so close to me, arrrg!!!
I would then introduce myself, "Hello, I'm Stephen and I'm a biochemist from the University of Dundee". I would ask them all what school they were from and where it was as though I know Dundee well I don't know it's primary schools as well seeing as I went to school in St.Andrews. Following this I showed them three pictures of local bridges asking them what it was and then what did all of them show? Of course, they were all bridges. This then led nicely into me telling them that they would all build a bridge in a small group using K'nex with the aim of supporting a 1 litre carton of apple juice. Now this is the funny bit!!! Before letting them get started I would show them one more picture. A picture of a very rickety bridge spanning a river in a jungle some where with someone about to cross. I told them a little porkie pie about this picture, "Right guys, now as my bridge builders I don't want you to build me a bridge like this one. You see this was me on my holidays a couple of years ago in deepest darkest Peru about to cross this bridge I came across. When I began to cross this bridge it started to collapse and I was left to run for my life!!!". The reaction on the children's faces was memorable as they were genuinly shocked by my tale and were covering their mouths and gasping! LOL. What made it even funnier was that once the childen had started building their bridges the teachers came across and would say things like, "That must have been terrible for you?", "What were you doing in Peru?" and "How did you survive?". They beleived my porkie pie. LOL. Woops.
Else where in the day I managed to talk to the men from the police forensics labs where I had had an interview over a month ago. This proved most useful as I was able to hear how they got involved in the profession and that one of them had to wait 8 weeks to hear that he had the job. Also what has me most excited at the moment one of them said that they would be happy for me to shadow them for 2 months in the forensic chemistry labs if I wrote to his boss. Thats just so cool!
On the last day I didn't need to do my exhibit as all 8 presenters turned up, which was dissappointing to me though I got an opportunity to see the presentations which I hadn't previously. On Tuesday I get paid so it's all good.
