I thought I'd cracked it.

I thought I had all the balls in the air and that everything was chugging away in a hectic way but with everything getting sorted. I'd felt so efficient earlier in the week. I'd agreed to review Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Brian May (yep, that one), Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott for the Imperial student newspaper. I did it the same evening and wallowed in smugness. My comeuppance wasn't far away. My assignment wasn't coming together, still wasn't coming together, still hadn't come together and the weekend was here with a Bonfire Night party to go to, children to be played with, and friends coming to stay.

As well as my M.Sc., I'm also learning German at an evening class at the Goethe Institut (try this animated German house). We're reading a whodunnit together - the third in a series by Bernhard Schlink (the first is available in English). The plot involves kidnapping and private banking families and I surprised myself by bursting into tears at a newspaper article about a notorious real-life kidnapping case in Germany.

A law student kidnapped the eleven-year-old son of a Frankfurt private banker. He was caught with the ransom money and threatened with violence by the head of the police force if he didn't immediately tell them where the boy was. The police didn't know at the time that the boy had already been strangled. The case led to great debates in Germany about whether the police were justified in making their threats or not. The head of the police force was fined for making the threat. I suppose in a way the debate is similar to the designer babies one – when is it justified to take a life to save a life?

Talking of designer babies, I went to a talk given by the fertility expert Robert Winston on Religion and Science. I think the gist was more or less what he had broadcast in 'The story of God' and published in a newspaper article – that there is evidence that we are hard-wired to search for something beyond and that belief in God helps us to cope with troubles. As a Christian I found this very thought-provoking, and I liked his final point very much. He said that our ethics can only be as good as our knowledge, and showed this picture.

It's a picture of a sperm, drawn by Nicolas Hartsoeker in 1695 after he examined seminal fluid under one of the first microscopes. He believed that he could see a little man ('homunculus') curled up inside each sperm. This gave rise to the view that women were merely the 'field' into which a little person was planted, where they could grow into a baby. In terms of reproductive ethics, it meant that it was wrong to waste any sperm, since it was already a living human being. Lord Winston's point was that now we know more about the start of human life, we no longer regard an individual sperm as human and our ethical view has also changed.

Interestingly, we had been shown the same picture the previous day as an example of a scientific controversy. Nicolas Hartsoeker's theory had been challenged, but the observational evidence had not been enough to settle the matter. Perhaps the rival who couldn't see the little men didn't have a good enough microscope? How much do we see what we want to see and ignore the evidence that doesn't fit our ideas? Perhaps I'm only looking out for the things I want to see?

And the assignment? Teamwork got us through it. My husband did some of my normal chores and I stayed in where possible and worked. It was 11pm on Sunday before it was done, but I handed it in yesterday and never ever want to see it again!

This post was previously published as a student blog on The Times online.