My first day at a university

This article is part of a series of blog posts written by students from Didcot Girls’ School. All posts can be found under the category STEM Club. 

I will start from the beginning. My name is Nicoleta, I am 14 years old and I am a student at Didcot Girls’ School.  Me and a group of students of my school visited Oxford Brookes University. There at lunch time we met Dr Anne Osterrieder who is a scientist. Her job is to find information about the Golgi apparatus.

The funny part of the day was the question game because my friends asked her different weird questions, but no one asked about science. To be serious, how can you ask a plant scientist if she has seen any dead bodies?

The most interesting part of the day at Oxford Brookes University was where we went upstairs into the microscope room. In my mind I was thinking something like “OMG! These microscopes are so big, how will the girls try to break one?” But in the end we just used them carefully.  There I saw Golgi bodies for the first time and we took some interesting pictures of them.

P.S I can’t wait until I will go again to visit Oxford Brookes University, and yes the university is a bit scary because it is so big and I can get lost there.

Thanks for letting me take part in this project

Nicoleta

Golgi bodies (red) and endoplasmic reticulum (blue) in plant cells.