The Best of Us…The Last of Us?

Trust the Science! Well, at least, our resident OG Biologist, Mr. Carvill, and his lab rats! Our science students’ rate of success is, well, mushrooming! At the SciFest exhibition and competition they won the Senior Life Sciences Award with Charlie Plant’s project on fungal networks, and the overall runners-up prize with the Second Years’ project on mycelium! Well done to Charlie and his lab partners, the dynamic duo of Yubo Wang and Senan Corry. And, only at St. Conleth’s, would you actually have an actual mycelium tradition, as Second Years Elodie Wallace, Emilia Aherne and Robyn O’Hanlon’s project also involved fungus… though they were clearly not just riding on their elders’ tendrils. Cillian Cooke resisted the lure of the mushroom (then again, he has been wearing some funky sun-glasses lately) and impressed the judges with his technology/psychology/biology mash-up. Second Year Aneesh Garg’s project on natural methods of preserving food and First Years Chloe Mullarney, Elsie O’Connell and Alexandra O’Donoghue’s on spotting AI fakes in text according to subjects of different age were both innovative and timely.

Charlie Plant was so excited by winning his SciFest award that, upon return to the school, he accidentally dropped his specimen case and his prized physarum polycephalum has, well, gone missing. It was last seen sending tendrils down the hall from the lab. Charlie and Mr. Carvill have assured us that it is perfectly safe and that they both are now constantly wearing full Hazmat suits only because they are attending a cosplay convention on the weekend. Charlie also told us that the proper name for these ‘tendrils’ is ‘hyphae‘ which made us feel much safer. He did, however, inquire if any teachers have been acting strangely lately… twitching uncontrollably… babbling… making bad jokes. We are keeping a close eye on Gav Maguire.

by Charles Latvis