My lab coat, complete with a set of lab gloves, is now a thing of my past. I hope beyond hope that I’ll never need to wear it or the horrible gloves ever again.

I remain completely baffled as to how I came to do a science degree and even more specifically a biology degree. Through a set of flukey events, that is where I ended up and what I found myself doing. I can’t believe that in a few weeks’ time, complete meltdown in my finals notwithstanding, I will have the letters “BSc” behind my name.

Out of everything I’ve done during that time it’s the lab work that’s left me in a cold sweat. I can’t tell you how terrifying I have found doing lab work, whether chemistry or biology-based. Using equipment such as Bunsen burners and fragile measuring or storing tools has given me the heebeegeebees for the last four years. I am so clumsy that I’ve lived in terror of breaking something and this has made me more clumsy because every time I go into a lab, I start to shake.

On my foundation year, my lab partner was a wonderful chap called Bill who was completely fearless so I’d manage the process and reign in his excesses and he’d do the scary stuff but between us, chalk and cheese though we were, we did a really good job together. In later times, it took me ages to find a lab partner that I felt comfortable with but eventually Jess and Sandi fitted that role in different subjects.

I was terrified that I’d end up spending my life dissecting things but fortunately for me, I was only put into the position of killing/causing pain twice – on one occasion a caterpillar (an army worm) and on the other occasion some baby snails still inside the eggs. I wish I’d not had to do either but I had to in order to gain my degree. It does baffle me that biologists tend to fall into two broad groups – conservationists or experimenters – yet all seem to think that it’s fine to kill things.

Now I can hang up my lab coat for good, I hope. I suppose I shouldn’t count my chickens before they are hatched and I could still fail a module or my whole degree and then I’d have to re-sit but I am hoping against hope that that won’t happen. I may be able to call myself a scientist but I feel that I still couldn’t be further away from actually being one!