Bambi near-miss and kicking lecturers

I had a cell regulation exam this morning. I like cell signalling and I like the lecturers - my comment on the course feedback sheet was that this subject was a little ray of sunshine in a miserable term.

But I don't like exams.

And memorising regulation pathways is hard. It's a bit like the "...and the knee bones connected to the..." song, only with loads of interacting pathways and 3 letter acronyms that all sound the same (BAD, BAX, RAS, RAF, PKA, PKB, PKC), need to phosphorylated or de-phosphorylated and are up or down regulated by a whole host of other factors. You get the idea.

And the exam was at 9am.

Which means leaving the house in the middle of the night to avoid sitting in a traffic jam outside Lewes for 2 hours.

So I'm driving along in the rain, in the dark (7.15am yuck) trying to decide whether src activates ras or PKC or both, when what looks like a dog runs across the road in front of me. It's a bit of a distance away so I brake a bit (just in case in changes it's mind and goes back the other way). All of a sudden a bigger dog, followed by an even bigger dog run out after the first little one. At this point I hit the brakes hard (being much closer this time) whilst simultaneously realising that they're not dogs and wondering whether the bigger deer are chasing the runaway baby or whether they purposefully send the little ones out first to check if the roads clear.

So, I'm keeping an eye on the left (the direction they headed in) when biggest of all big daddy deer charges across from my right. Emergency stop + fast deer = missing the front of the car by about 2 inches and soaring adrenalin levels (is that the alpha or beta receptors that are making my heart pound?). Oh my god - I nearly killed bambi's dad. That would make me the baddie. The villian. The evil hunter that all children hate. Maddie would have found out and cried. Fuck it - I would have cried. What do you do if you hit a deer? Do you call the police? A deer ambulence? The RSPCA? Do you stand there and watch it die? Does hitting a deer count as mitigating circumstances? Ok Becca - calm down, you didn't hit anything. The deers adrenalin rush is probably matching yours right now. Move on, forget it - think about the adrenalin pathway (receptor, g-protein, ACase, 3'5'cAMP...)

I get to uni by 8.30 (still dark) in time for a cup of tea before going into the exam. I buy tea, I turn around to get milk and sugar. I walk straight into some nutter who chose that exact moment to lean across me to pick up a napkin. DO THEY NOT KNOW HOW CLUMSY I AM???? Ouch, ouch pain ouch ouch hot tea is sloshing all over my hand. Idiot person apologises. I apologise for walking into them (?????? - why - some ingrained training - you've just burnt me because you didn't want to wait 3 seconds for me to move and I'm apologising. God - English people!). My hand has gone red and scalded looking. Does this count as mitigating circumstances? I rinse it under cold water and go into the exam.

I'm late so someone is sitting in my usual place. I like my usual place. I sit in the row in front. I open the exam paper. It's ok. It's hard but I can do it. I start writing. I turn the page. RNA polymerases?????????? Three days ago I (along with the rest of my tutor group) saw our tutor - he's one of the lecturers on this course. He's standing a couple of foot away from me reading the exam paper. He told us that the main questions would be on his and one other lecturers stuff as the third lecturer only gave 2 lectures and we'd already been tested on those. This made sense so I only gave a cursory glance to those 2 lectures during revision. Almost a third of the marks for the paper are on a question on one of those two lectures. Fuck. I give him an evil look and carry on writing.

Times up. We hand our papers in on the way out. Simon (the lecturer) smiles as I go past - "went ok?" he asks questioningly. I give him another evil look "I feel like kicking you" I state as I stomp away. We all drink tea (without getting burnt this time) and complain about unfair exam questions. Everyone else goes home. I finish my chemistry assignment that they all handed in on tuesday, cursing myself for always being becca-last-minute. I hand in the work (it's rubbish. I'm going to fail chemistry). I leave.

I bump into Simon on the way out. Tea has improved my mood. I stop to chat. "I looked at your paper. You've done alright" he says. We talk a while longer I leave. Alright? I obsess. Alright by my standards or by everyone elses? Simon knows that I like 80's and 90's and cry at anything below a first.Alright by everyone else's is a 50 or 60. What does alright mean??????

One exam down. Four more to go. Its not good. I have to listen to Aha the whole way home to make myself feel better.
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