I must apologise for my recent absence, but I have a good excuse: the scourge of students everywhere, exams.

After completing my group project, I allowed myself a much needed week off. The respite was short-lived however, because revision soon loomed.

When I was a maths student, revision was easy. Count up all the questions on the various problem sheets we got given during the year, divide by the number of days until the exam, and you’ve got yourself a revision timetable. With science communication (and Arts degrees in general, I imagine) things are a little different.

I tried adopting my tried-and-true method by setting myself a certain number of papers from the course to re-read each day, but it didn’t really feel like much was going in. A trip to the library rectified this, and I managed to get through a decent number of useful books. Some of them were even interesting.

All this wasn’t helped by catching a cold half way through the Easter holidays, leaving me generally slow-witted for a week and a bit. Thankfully my sinuses cleared up last week, and I had a go at some past papers. This was kind of difficult because the course content has changed quite a bit over the years.

Was it all worth it then? The exams were this Monday and Tuesday just gone, a three-hour paper on each day. The questions weren’t exactly what I had been hoping for, but I think it went all right. To celebrate our freedom the sci-commers headed to Imperial’s staff and post-grad only Holland Club for a good night of drinking. I got quite a few beers in, but I was knackered so passed up on the offer of continuing to a club. The exams were such a major effort that having completed them seemed to have robbed me of all my energy!

I’ve now got what seems like an increasingly rare occurrence - some time off! This term’s practical modules (Radio and Print in my case) don’t start until next week, so I’m looking forward to having a bit of quiet relaxation. Of course, this also means that I’ll have more time for blogging, so expect more regular updates from now on!

Last week was the end of term at Imperial, and we had to present the results of our group project work. The brief for the project was basically an incredibly vague “make something”, with the added proviso that it should make use of ideas discussed in the previous term.

After some discussion my group decided to explore common language and symbolism between religion and science, in particular the use of the word “epiphany” to describe the moment of scientific insight. This idea eventually took shape as an altarpiece, featuring yours truly as both a scientist and a priest.

We wanted to depict the various stages in a scientist’s career and compare them to the life of a priest. I’ve uploaded full size photos of each section, so click on them for a larger view.

A young man decides to become a scientist, and must learn the rules and customs.

The man undergoes a right of passage by getting his PhD and becoming a scientist.

Working in the lab, the scientist has a flash of inspiration.

He must resist the lure of big business and continue with his work.

Having died, he lives on through his theories.

Not being remotely artistic I left the actual crafting to others, so most of my work was done in Photoshop. I had to combine the various photos we took, add objects and sometimes change scenes entirely. I also applied various filters to make the images look more like paintings. I’ve also uploaded my original Photoshop work to give a clearer idea of the images - we intentionally made them look worn for the actual altarpiece. Once again, watch out for large files!

• Learning the Paradigm
• Coming of Age
• Epiphany
• Resisting Temptation
• Life After Death

So, that’s what I’ve been spending much of my time on in the past few weeks. I’m not completely satisfied with the final result as some of my Photoshop work could have been a bit better - particularly the rather dodgy beards - but I think it’s pretty good, and I enjoyed working on it. Now I just have to wait and see what mark it gets…