Like many of the hundreds of thousands of students across our beautiful nation, I have a part time job on the weekend. I've been there for three years so it's a nice little cushion to pad me through until the real world starts. For the past three years, my Saturdays and Sundays have been dedicated to the needs and wants of the outdoor consumer. Sounds ideal, even easy - doesn't it?
Relinquishing my weekends, my free time and my sanity over this period of time has slowly grated on my patience and my will to work academically. Especially in final year, I find I am constantly exhausted and the mountain of work I have been slowly chipping away at has turned into an avalanche. Nonetheless, on one of my many tirades about my stolen weekends at the cost of my pitiful income, my mum brought me back to reality on my way to work. She reminded me how to eat an elephant (metaphorically speaking; see blog 1). You eat an elephant by taking one bite at a time. The moment she reminded me of this I feel I regained some of my presumably lost sanity. There are only so many things a human can do in one day or even 12 weeks of a final year project. Being reminded of this allowed by brain to calm down and thankfully allow useful and insightful thoughts to pass through.
Later on in the same day of my revelation, one of the few rude customers I interact with handed me a fistful of change. While I usually like to incorporate my knowledge as a soon-to-be Food Innovator in my retail job, this is really only in the form of warning my colleagues from eating in the local subway as they refuse to take off their jewellery and properly wear their hairnets. This is really the only time my college education and my life education has interacted; until that day. I started to view the shop like a bioreactor. We have two entrances, closed by a heavy shutter at the end of the day. The more open the shutters are, the less customers come in. Yet, five minutes until closing time when one shutter is down, they're fighting to come in to buy some socks. How on earth does this relate to our bioprocess? By closing one shutter, we are putting more pressure on the entrance, therefore leading to a faster flow. While the flow is faster there is still the same number of employees of when the flow was slow. Picture the employees (1 - me) as an enzyme. Increasing the flow of customers puts me under pressure, leading to a lower quality of service provided. Similarly to the bioprocess, during the enzyme hydrolysis of the meat substrate, the pronase would be overworked and probably less effective with the abundant amount of DNA still present. This is a problem, luckily I like to solve them. Removing the DNA from the meat substrate allows the enzyme to work more efficiently similarly to the reduced amount of customers allows me to work more expertly. Another possibility is to introduce a higher quantity of enzymes (employees) to cope with the flow of substrate (customers).
Extracting this example from an everyday life situation has put the reality of the bioprocess and any possible problems I may encounter into retrospect. Using an example such as this may enlighten our fellow students during our teaching class assignment in a few weeks time. I must confer with my colleague - hopefully she will be of the same opinion as me.
Relinquishing my weekends, my free time and my sanity over this period of time has slowly grated on my patience and my will to work academically. Especially in final year, I find I am constantly exhausted and the mountain of work I have been slowly chipping away at has turned into an avalanche. Nonetheless, on one of my many tirades about my stolen weekends at the cost of my pitiful income, my mum brought me back to reality on my way to work. She reminded me how to eat an elephant (metaphorically speaking; see blog 1). You eat an elephant by taking one bite at a time. The moment she reminded me of this I feel I regained some of my presumably lost sanity. There are only so many things a human can do in one day or even 12 weeks of a final year project. Being reminded of this allowed by brain to calm down and thankfully allow useful and insightful thoughts to pass through.
Later on in the same day of my revelation, one of the few rude customers I interact with handed me a fistful of change. While I usually like to incorporate my knowledge as a soon-to-be Food Innovator in my retail job, this is really only in the form of warning my colleagues from eating in the local subway as they refuse to take off their jewellery and properly wear their hairnets. This is really the only time my college education and my life education has interacted; until that day. I started to view the shop like a bioreactor. We have two entrances, closed by a heavy shutter at the end of the day. The more open the shutters are, the less customers come in. Yet, five minutes until closing time when one shutter is down, they're fighting to come in to buy some socks. How on earth does this relate to our bioprocess? By closing one shutter, we are putting more pressure on the entrance, therefore leading to a faster flow. While the flow is faster there is still the same number of employees of when the flow was slow. Picture the employees (1 - me) as an enzyme. Increasing the flow of customers puts me under pressure, leading to a lower quality of service provided. Similarly to the bioprocess, during the enzyme hydrolysis of the meat substrate, the pronase would be overworked and probably less effective with the abundant amount of DNA still present. This is a problem, luckily I like to solve them. Removing the DNA from the meat substrate allows the enzyme to work more efficiently similarly to the reduced amount of customers allows me to work more expertly. Another possibility is to introduce a higher quantity of enzymes (employees) to cope with the flow of substrate (customers).
Extracting this example from an everyday life situation has put the reality of the bioprocess and any possible problems I may encounter into retrospect. Using an example such as this may enlighten our fellow students during our teaching class assignment in a few weeks time. I must confer with my colleague - hopefully she will be of the same opinion as me.
Comments
Post a Comment