Another working week in lockdown is over so you know what that means… another instalment in the PhD playlist series!
Each week we shine the spotlight on a student at the Norwich Research Park and ask them to share three songs in a desert island disc-style game; one song that captures their project (expect some very tenuous links), one song that captures their life as a PhD student and a final motivational song, because – let’s face it – we all need it.
This week we decided our wonderful creator and the mastermind behind all this, Millie Stanton, should finally have a go at putting together her playlist for us. She now has a new found appreciation for those who have already done theirs, it is harder than you think! NOTE – Millie’s desk (made of Corona beer) is no longer existent so she has had to move to the living room floor…
Millie is a final year PhD student in the Sanders/Miller lab investigating how plants balance their iron and zinc levels under zinc toxicity. Millie enjoys running stupidly long distances, is still too scared to get in moshpits (but practices a lot at home just in case) and never imagined that she’d be writing up her thesis on the living room floor.
Twitter: @milliestanton
Project song – Just Can’t Get Enough, Depeche Mode
My project is trying to understand how plants balance their zinc and iron levels, and more specifically why are they so bad at it? Zinc is kind of the bully of the elemental world, in that when there’s lots of it, it’s able to push iron out of its protein binding sites and ruin all the great things that iron is involved in, such as photosynthesis. This makes plants panic and try and take up more iron, but more zinc sneaks it’s way in too and just makes the situation worse. It seems that no matter how much iron plants take up, they just can’t seem to get enough.
PhD Life – Real Thing, Turnstile
(Honourable mention: George Harrison – Got my Mind Set On You)
I always imagined George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set On You” would be my choice for this as I thought that was how a PhD should go – you’re patient, spend a whole lot of (grant) money and think purely about science for 4 years. I just kept waiting and waiting for this new hyper-focussed PhD version of myself to appear, and when it didn’t, I convinced myself I wasn’t a real scientist unless I drastically changed. Don’t worry, I kept telling myself, you’ll have a Sailor Moon-style transformation scene, where you emerge with a Nobel prize, and maybe a magical weapon. Any minute now.
Suffice to say, as cool as that would’ve been, it never did happen. However, with lockdown allowing narcissistic levels of self-reflection, I’ve realised that I did go through a slow transformation of sorts – minus magical weapon. I was so busy holding myself up to some bizarre unrealistic standard that I completely failed to appreciate all of the hard work I was putting in, and all of the good science I was doing as a result. Looking back now, it’s so easy to see that I was the real thing all along (see what I did there), it was just my own messy version. Which I think was probably more fun anyway.
Motivational Song – Original Nuttah 25, Shy FX & Uk Apache
This song never fails to get me moving. I’ve got the loveliest group of friends here in Norwich who have definitely helped carry, if not drag me at times, through the last few years and this song always makes me think about bopping about and having a laugh with them. I used to spend Friday afternoons plating seeds and I’d always turn this up to get me through the monotony and ready for the weekend.
Head over to Spotify to step into the archives of the PhD playlist and discover some proper bops to get you motivated for a day at the desk (….or elsewhere). Thanks to Millie for adding her picks and reminding us PhD students that we are the real deal just how we are. Listen to Millie guys (I’m reminding myself too….).
The PhD playlist is the brainchild of Millie Stanton (follow her on twitter @milliestanton for some sweet science and music masterpieces) and has been continued by Melissa Davie (follow me @melissajd_ for very irregular retweets of cute dogs and natural products science).
Hit me up if you want to be featured! melissa.davie@jic.ac.uk