When you are a student at one of the best universities in the world (a.k.a. Imperial) you tend to study. A lot. Basically all the time. You accidentally put down Central Library as your home address and drink more coffee than water… (Seriously, my exams are sponsored by caffeine…).
And while you know all the different types of heat exchangers and the derivation of the Navier-Stokes equations, you might forget an interesting fact: that you happen to live in London. The best city in the world. The home of super-amazing-fantastic cultural experiences (theatre, cinema), culinary experiences (restaurants, pubs) and shopping experiences (Westfield, high streets).
At the end of last year (after basically doing absolutely zero “cultural stuff” all year) I promised myself that this year would be different. I wanted to go to places and do “Londoner” things like eating a burger or watching a play on West End. Yeah, well, I had some burgers (mainly from the King type…).
But last week, I finally managed to watch a play. And it was of the classic student-budget-friendly type: free 😀 The story is, that I started following this theatre on Facebook a while ago for some reason but I kind of forgot about it. But then one day I woke up, checked my feed, and suddenly this post appeared: Are you under 25? Book your free ticket now!
And you, dear reader, might say: ok, but like this is probably some dodgy theatre’s dodgy play to which they couldn’t sell all tickets. Well… This is London… Best city, remember?
So this is how I attended Hamlet in the Almeida Theatre for free. Title role played by [drumrolllllll] Andrew Scott! (Let me help: Moriarty from Sherlock :D) It was *supermegahiperamazinglyfantasticlyawesome* 😀
Hamlet. Wow.
And today I was scrolling through my feed again. Saw a post from a Hungarian website talking about a play here in London. It looked a bit odd, as they were describing the play to the Hungarian readers, who *obviously* cannot watch it live, as it is in London. But then I remembered: Ohh by the way I live in London…
So I went on the theatre’s website, checked some dates, found some empty seats for £10, booked a ticket, and tomorrow I am going to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead in the Old Vic. One of the title role played by [drumrolllll] Daniel Radcliffe! (Let me help: Harry Potter from Harry Potter :D).
So yeah. I love London. I love living here. I love everything about it.
Pro tip: never forget that you live in London even if you actually live in the Central Library! Just look up from Perry’s Chemical Engineering Bible and look outside: that’s LONDON out there waiting for YOU! <3
Last year, my average week looked something like this. This year has been *quite* different… So here is my average Spring Holiday, #revision, #messedupsleepingcycle day 🙂
04.30am Time to go to bed… 😀
01.00pm It’s always nice to wake up and realise that you’re already late for lunch, let alone for breakfast. But nevertheless, I had breakfast, a laaaarge coffee and some vitamins to boost my brain. Or for placebo-effect, who knows…
02.30pm Checking emails, writing emails, answering emails. I mean, if you work as the Comms Assistant for your Department you sometimes get random emails like a lecturer writing “Hi Dora, could you please do a photoshoot of my research group because I heard you are good at this” which just sort of… makes your day 🙂
03.00pm After much procrastination, it is time to start some actual revision. Thermodynamics, for example. Because binary phase diagrams are bae. My new study technique is using a set of colourful pens to make my notes nice and visually stimulating. Seriously, imagine Raoult’s law. Now imagine Raoult’s law with a huge pink exclamation mark… See? Much better 😀
05.00pm Having lunch at 5.00pm has the advantage that… Oh wait. No. It has absolutely no advantage at all. I was just hungry. I don’t even know why I call it lunch. It’s more like some random food event in between two revision sessions. Tesco meal deal, of course. Ain’t nobody got time for cooking…
05.30pm Let’s get back to revision. Honestly, my phase diagrams look amazing with all these colours. Such a shame I can’t use coloured pens on the exams…
10.30pm It’s so good that the small Tesco next to Woodward is open till midnight. You can always casually go down at 10.30pm to get dinner and there are at least 10 other people with Imperial swipe cards. I mean, it’s always good to know that you are not the only one with some seriously messed up sleeping cycle.
11.30pm I love how I sat down to have my dinner at almost midnight, and it was the daily peak time in the kitchen:
One flatmate came in to have a late night full roast chicken and do some washing up.
Another flatmate came in to eat 3 or 4 slices of bread with nutella (She spreaded the nutella on the bread with a fork. A fork. No questions there…)
Another flatmate came in to eat some leftover jacket potatoes. With two bottles of water and one large coffee.
00.30am Almost started another revision session but then decided scrolling through facebook back and forth is much better. 🙁
02.30am I decided to go to bed early today to restore my sleeping cycle to normal.
04.00am Woke up to write this blogpost because #whynot. Sleeping cycle is quietly crying in the distance…
The one thing which kind of describes how I feel right now is that I looked at the calendar and I realised it’s March. MARCH. MARCH?! I honestly don’t know what happened in the past 5 months. I was trying to think of things I did, but I just feel like I procrastinated away 5 months and now I am so behind with everything that even my to-do-list making apps want to cry… So what happened in the past 5 months?
Labs. We started and finished second year labs. This year we were only doing 1 experiment for 3 weeks. I mean, at least by the end of the third week I finally understood what we were doing all along, so it’s good, right? 😀 We then had to do a presentation about it, and an industrial report as well. If you would like to know what’s an industrial report, well, me too… But we did it, we finished, and we survived. So it’s all good, I guess…
Hall senioring. I am a hall senior at Woodward. And it’s amazing! I mean, I get to take pictures of dirty dishes and than rage in our group chat that “could you please WASH UP?”… Who wouldn’t want to do that, right? But no, seriously, helping with events, helping freshers getting into the Imperial community, staying in Woodward, it’s all such fun. And I will be a hall senior next year as well, YAY!
Work. I am still working at my Department as Communications Assistant, and right now I don’t have a boss (the previous one left, the new one hasn’t arrived) so… I’m the boss *.* Sometimes it’s a bit tricky to find 10 hours of free time every week, but designing posters and writing articles about research is just awww. Like seriously, when you sit down with absolutely zero knowledge about pyrolysis bio-oil and 2 hours later you feel like an expert in the field… So good.
Tutoring. Hmmm. Even though I only do tutoring once a week for like 1.5 hours, I totally feel like a teacher now. (And I totally love it…) I feel like I’m making a change, I feel like they understand what I’m explaining (hopefully…), I feel like they get actual knowledge and actual systematic understanding of certain topics after the sessions. Or they might just think “what is going on” and forget everything I explained in like an hour. Who knows…
Horizons. So if you check out the Global Challenges Yr2 courses, you can see that there are 4 streams: 3 about a random small village in the middle of nowhere (business-stream, engineering-stream and art-stream) and 1 about our South Kensington campus (business/engineering-stream). So of course, I managed to make a “mix” of two streams and I am doing the art-stream about South Kensington. I designed a communications campaign to raise awareness about sustainability… Because why not 😀
So yeah, that’s about everything I’ve been doing in the past 5 months. Ohh wait, there is one more thing… Studying. Yeah, I’ve been sort-of/kind-of/sometimes/occasionally doing that too. [Fading away into crying about life and the too little time left before the exams…]
“Well, yes, I have nothing else to… Umm, I have loads of other things to do, but nothing which could be done at 1am on a Sunday night…”
– Actual conversation by actual people on an actual Sunday night. Actually.
So what happened since I last posted? Hmmm nothing really… Just second year started, I signed up to way too many things, my to-do list is so long that it doesn’t fit above my desk, my diet is something like McDonalds-Subway-Dominos-BurgerKing on an infinite loop, I don’t remember the last time I had 3 proper meals in a day, my sleeping cycle is starting to vaguely resemble that of a computing student, so yeah, nothing really… But let’s start from the beginning.
As you may know from previous posts, I am doing quite a few things this year, because #whynot and #sleepingisoverrated… Let’s see the list.
Course. People say second year is the most difficult year at uni. People also say ChemEng is the most difficult course at Imperial. Well, I am doing second-year ChemEng… What is difficult squared?
Work. I am still working at my department as the communications assistant (which started as a summer job, but I love it and don’t want to stop). I am not saying it takes up too much time (and I love it, so who cares) but I have seen my boss more times in the past two weeks than my Process Dynamics lecturer…
C13. My lovely floor in Woodward where I am a hall senior. I love my flatmates, C13 is obviously the best floor (as long as you don’t see the sink in the kitchen…).
The WoodWord. Yes, that is the Woodward newsletter, where I am main editor this year. I am doing this… because I get to see my face in the lifts every time I go somewhere… 😀
Tutoring. I signed up to be a volunteer tutor with Pimlico Connection this year (Imperial’s forty-something year old volunteer tutoring scheme, wow). I thought I would have to tutor 11-year olds to Maths, easy-peasy… Ahh well, I was allocated to 18-year old high-achievers. Ooops.
Horizons. Yeah, I am doing Horizons, too. Because why not. I will write a new post about it later, but let’s just say we had to invent a new course to match my interests…
So yeah, this year will be fun. I think. 😀
The new ChemEng departmental brochure. #mydesign <3
I was in the middle of exams, when I got an email back in May. The subject: “Summer communications work”. It was from the ChemEng Communications Officer… Ohh well, I thought it’s like a one-day something, some promotions, whatever. Then I read the email…
“…I am looking for someone to do some part-time work on departmental communications…”
“…The work would be quite varied, essentially assisting me and would consist of things such as writing short news stories, managing social media channels and putting together the newsletter…”
“…given your great work on the blog I thought I would approach you first…”
“…Please let me know if you’re interested…”
My first reaction was: OH MY GOD!!! Then my second reaction was: OH. MY. GOD. Me. Working. For the department. OHMYGOD. It took me an hour to write a reply, because every time I started, I used way too many exclamation marks, and I didn’t want the guy to have second thoughts. You know, he could realise I am actually terrible at English and the next email would be something like “Ahh well, sorry, I found someone else who doesn’t use exclamation mark as the only form of punctuation…” So I wrote back and the next thing I know, we are arranging a meeting to discuss the details…
Dora-June16.docx
My first day at work was… interesting. And scary. And I was super-nervous. And I didn’t know what would happen. I was expecting that by the end of the day my boss would realise I am quite terrible at English and he would say something like “Well, I think maybe you are not ready for this job yet. Please do not come in tomorrow.” But he didn’t say that 🙂
We went through my to-do list and I got access to things like the social media profiles of the department. A couple of months ago when I liked the departmental Facebook page, I thought “Oh wow, this is such a cool page, posts almost every day, interesting content, nice pictures…” And now I was suddenly in charge of it!!! OMG!
Originally we agreed that I would work 10 hours a week. On my second week, I realised 10hrs/week will be impossible to do… I wanna work at least 168! [It must be quite annoying to my boss that no matter how many times he says I should take the day off, I still show up. My family is actually worried that my boss will fire me because I am annoyingly crazy…]
The number of words you understand: 5. The number of words you have to write about it: 500.
Part of the job is to write about newly published papers written by members of the department. Ok, I am studying ChemEng and they are writing about ChemEng, so it can’t be that difficult, right? Well… When I opened the first review, I had to take a half-hour break after the first paragraph… 🙂 So how do I do these?
1. Read the paper. Translate the most-used word.
2. Read it again. Try to understand what the title means.
3. Copy it to Word. Decide how many paragraphs you want.
4. Read it again. Highlight the key bits with different colours according to which paragraph they are relevant to.
Apparently, those display screens around the department don’t fill themselves up with content. (How strange…) And apparently, the website headers are not magically generated, either. (Interesting, very interesting…) So I met with Adobe Photoshop… To those who think Photoshop is about “you have a spot on your face? just photoshop it out”, well, I thought that, too. When I opened it, I was like “haha, this is just some fancy version of Paint, right?” How bloody wrong… It took me an hour and two tutorial videos just to save a file… 😀
But when you see your work back on the website, it was worth every moment.
*endless happiness*
“Minor edits to your nice piece”
So how is my summer job after one and a half months?
I LOVE IT.
When I walk into the foyer and my powerpoint is on the display screens…
When I open the website and my headers are on the top, my articles are on the bottom…
When I open the facebook / twitter / instagram, and I remember when I scheduled the posts…
It’s just amazing.
One year ago, I was checking the ChemEng website every day, because I was desperately waiting for the “Imperial experience” to start.
And today, I am checking the ChemEng website every day, because I am working on it.
So, summer is here… Yes, London, 23ºC. Thank you, global warming.
And exams are over…
No more problem sheets, no more past papers, no more revision.
No more “do you think he will put absorption columns in it?”
No more “how many past papers have you done?”
No more “aaand pencils down!”
No more “what did you get for question 4?”
No more “ohh God I deserve it I just had a thermo exam” oreo milkshakes.
But the most important thing is of course the result. Our last exam was on the 6th June, but we had to wait until the 5th July – the Board of Examiners meeting – to find out the results. We got an email beforehand that we can expect a “Pass / Fail / Resit” email after 5pm on Tuesday. Ahh well…
At 16:05 I got a notification on my laptop. A small box in the top right corner just appeared suddenly. Subject: Results 2015/16.
OH MY GOD!!!
I took a deep breath and clicked on it.
Then screenshoted it, and sent it to all my friends.
I still can’t believe it. I did it. I passed the first year of MEng Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Oh my God.
I have never been to an Imperial Open Day before. When I was applying, I lived in Hungary, so I couldn’t just turn up on a random Wednesday at London… But yesterday, I finally attended one of these, and it was a-ma-zing. So let’s start from the beginning…
I got an email a couple of weeks ago. Perks of being a student blogger: when there is a marketing work, you’re the first to be asked 🙂 So they asked me if I liked speaking in front of a lot of people, because there will be a talk on the Open Day where they need students (i.e. student bloggers) to present. Well, I obviously signed up within 2 seconds 😀 Then we needed to choose a topic. Course? Societies? Halls? Other? I did what I usually do in these kind of situations: I asked my sister… Incidentally, she was also attending the Open Day, so I basically did a non-representative audience poll… 😀
[Side-note: in case you’re wondering about the contradictions in my family history. My father moved to London 3 years ago, my sister and brother also moved here half a year later. I stayed in Hungary with my mother because I had some unbelievably awesome teachers in high school whom I didn’t want to leave, so I finished the school there and applied to uni in the UK. My sister finishes sixth form next year, so she is currently in the application stage, going to open days and checking uni websites all the time…]
Anyway. So I choose to talk about Woodward Hall because my sister said she is not interested in my course, and I don’t do any societies (yeah, I know, I am kind of boring…). I submitted the powerpoint and then prepared for the day (meaning I put aside my favourite Imperial sweatshirt so it would be wearable on the talk…).
On the tube to South Ken, we saw three boys, who looked like “uni applying” age. Me and my sister started to make bids on whether they’re also going there or not. Then they started to pass around a paper with the Imperial logo and a big barcode… Ahh well, if the great and wonderful Imperial College London has an Open Day, suddenly everyone is going to South Ken…
To those who have never been to an Open Day (like me before yesterday…) here is how you can imagine the whole thing. There is a main registration tent on Queen’s Lawn, and also that’s where the Accommodation Tours start from. Yes, they do tours to Beit, Southside, Eastside, even Wilson. No, they don’t do tours to Woodward 😀 Then there is the Queen’s Tower Rooms (that big thing under the Sherfield Building) where all the departments and other things like Horizons and the Union have separate stalls with flyers and free pens and nice people from the departments who are happy to tell you all the nice things about the courses… Then there are the departmental talks: the Admission Tutors talking about what it requires to get an offer from Imperial. And then there are other talks like the “This is Imperial” talk, in which I took part 😀
When we arrived there was an awfully long queue to the registration where we got our goodie bags (I got one, too! #happiness) and some leaflets about the day. They were handing out last year’s Accommodation Guide, which reminded me…
… I did an email interview a few weeks ago about my hall. (Yes, marketing stuff: student bloggers first.) They said they’re doing the new Accommodation Guide and they needed some quotes about the halls. Well, I wrote a page 😀 But I never heard back, so I didn’t know if any of what I said got printed. I wanted to check though, so I walked around and found the accommodation stall. I asked if I could get the latest and newest Guide (they looked at me like “what are you talking about” but then they pointed me to the one person who knew what I was talking about and he gave me the shiny “fresh out of printing” flyer). And I quickly scrolled through until I found this:
#lifegoals
Woooooooooooooowww I am in the official Imperial Accommodation Guide! This day couldn’t have started any better… After I sent the picture to my mother and posted it to Facebook, I showed my sister where her first open day talk was, and I went to my “second home”, ACEX building. Because it’s one thing to choose the topic for the talk and do the powerpoint presentation, but writing a speech is also useful… So I sat down on my favourite sofa outside LT1 and started to write the speech. Or at least I was trying to write the speech. But there were two departmental talks in ACEX (ChemEng and MechEng) and I just couldn’t sit there and watch all those lost souls walking around in despair trying to find LT1 (even though there were arrows and signs all over the place…). So I started to play the usual “Can I help you?” which I already mastered at the Imperial Festival…
(Question to those who were 40 minutes late to a 1-hour presentation: just why bother?…)
So after the presentation started and everyone found their lecture theatre, I started to work on my speech again. I wrote down a couple of jokes and tried to memorise them, but if there is one thing I am terrible at, it’s rehearsing for a presentation. I am more of a “standing up there and improvising” kind of person…
Once my sister finished her departmental talk, we had lunch then went to my talk at the Pippard Lecture Theatre. When I got there, the other bloggers said we have 3 minutes each. Well, if there is one another thing I am terrible at, it’s keeping the time limit for a presentation…
The first speaker was the Head of Student Recruitment and Outreach who talked about how awesome place Imperial is, and showed some numbers and some general information about the College. Then the next one was the Deputy President of the Union, who talked about how awesome the Union is, and showed some numbers and some general information about the Union. Then Franz was the next, who talked about how big London is compared to St Martin. Then I was the next… And Harry after me, who talked about how he built a hovercraft and joined the gaming society.
So my presentation was about Woodward Hall. My favourite hall <3 I was talking about how far it is, how great the community is, how quiet the cemetery is, how many pizzas they ordered and how good the view is from the kitchen. I think the audience liked it (they laughed a lot, that’s a good sign, right?).
After that, we looked around in the Library then went back to ACEX where the last of the three departmental talks was just about to start. I asked Dr Kogelbauer if I could just sit in without registration, because I have never been to an open day talk before and… I was curious, you know 😀
So me (who already finished the first year of ChemEng) and my sister (who wants to apply to AeroEng) went to a lecture for students who are thinking about applying to ChemEng. Logical, right? But even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense, I loved every bit of it… Dr Kogelbauer talked about what chemical engineering means, what the course involves, what the different options in the later years are, and most importantly, what the entry requirements are.
It was the kind of talk after which I was like “OMG I want to apply to ChemEng immediately” and then I realised I am already here… Ohh I love our Department so much 😀
The last two was kind of ok, Thermo was a bit confusing sometimes and I couldn’t solve some bits in Process (that hydrogen recycle made me crazy…). But I survived, I am alive, and it’s done now!
The Process Analysis exam ended at 12:00 on Monday, and at 19:00 I was already at the airport heading back to Hungary to visit my old high school. (Kind of obsessed, I know…) But I can’t stay long, as I will start working next Thursday (more info later… 😀 ).
But for now, I am enjoying the holiday, complaining about the Hungarian weather and eating loads of ice-cream.
… And worrying about the first week of July when we find out if we failed or not.
1. Mastery. They said they will email us if we failed by the end of today. And they will not email us if we passed. It’s currently 19:03 and I haven’t got any email yet. Yet. Yet. Yet.
2. Properties of Matter. I actually studied quite a lot for this one, I did all the past papers and stuff. And I always had the exact same mistake in them. And of course there was a question on this topic in the exam. And of course I keep thinking about if I wrote the correct answer or not. (I crossed it out 3 times). Ahhh…
3. Fluid Mechanics + Heat & Mass Transfer. This is a combined 50-50 exam. Thank God. Fluid saved the day, I think I did ok on that one. HMT? Probably close to zero… (I don’t think the lecturer will appreciate that whenever I couldn’t solve an equation I just wrote a small essay about how would I continue the problem “but since I couldn’t derive this equation, I can’t give the actual numerical answers”. But at least my paper wasn’t empty. That’s something…)
4. Maths. It was actually easier than I expected, so I probably passed. But that feeling, when you are super nervous, and exam, and 3 hours, and 20% of the year, and then there is an equation like this: 5y = 6 + 10 (x-8) and you are like “What is x? What is x????? WHAT IS X????” And then “ohh whatever, let’s do it step by step…” Ahh well, good old exam conditions, when you use the calculator even for 1+1…
5. Chemistry. Let’s just say, I failed this one. I don’t want to go into details, I failed it. Resits in September, plenty of time in the summer to memorise that stupid differential method……………..
6. Separation Processes. This worths the least out of all the exams, this is only 1.5hrs, sounds easy, right? Well, I did 3 past papers. And they were “doable”. Then I opened the exam paper today, and looked at the question, and my first thought was “WHERE ARE THE NUMBERS???” Separations is usually about using process specifications to calculate other variables based on given equations. And drawing some fancy McCabe-Thiele diagrams. But not this time, noooo… This year, it was “Derive this” and “Derive that” and “Show that if you derive this out of that derivation, then you can also derive this, and combining all, the final derivation will only d(e)rive you a little bit crazy”…
So, only Thermo (in 2 days) and Process (in 6 days) are left now.
You can do it, Dora.
You can do it…
(Ahh yes, you could ask how I have time to blog… Well, it’s called “procrastination” 😀 )
Well, first of all, they’re difficult. Especially if you had no “revision strategy” at all, and you have a tendency for procrastination. Like me. They’re also difficult, because this is Imperial. And you know, it’s the best uni in the world… So let me tell you a few things about exams…
1. You can get used to sleeping on the tube. That precious 30 mins can’t be wasted, so you need to use it the best you can: put on sunglasses, sit on the end seat and relax. Don’t forget to display your ID card (or at least some Imperial badges) so people don’t think you were partying yesterday…
2. There is this urban legend about “taking a 20-min nap makes you more productive”. Well, I tried… I was about to fall asleep between two maths problem sheets yesterday, so I thought “why not try this”. I looked at my bed: full of opened folders, papers piled up everywhere, all sorts of data sheets and tables. Then I looked at my desk: laptop, maths problem sheet, refill pad, thousands of identical pens, post-its, a massive maths textbook… And I realised I can’t put the stuff on my desk onto my bed or vice versa, because they’re both full. So I chose the easiest option: putting my pillow on the floor… It worked! 🙂
3. Revision lectures are… supposed to be useful. And most of the time they are, but when you live in Woodward and it takes more time to just get to the lecture than the lecture itself, it’s just… AHH
4. The guys in Subway will learn your name. The guys in Domino’s will at least consistently misspell it the same way. But when it says “limited edition” in Burger King and you already had 3 of it, well, it’s time to think about your eating habits…
5. You want to cry. But you don’t have time for it…
6. You have 2 new best friends: Ibuprofen and Paracetamol. (Disclaimer: Taking medicine on a daily basis is definitely wrong! But having a 2-day headache nearly every week and having a terribly weak hand which basically needs to be constantly covered in Ibuprofen gel just to be able to move it, it’s even worse…)
7. You haven’t seen your flatmates in a month. Or two.
8. Your conversation with your friends looks something like this:
– How did you get pi/2 on the maths problem sheet 8 / question 7 / iii / b?
– Have you done the 2014 POM past paper? Do you think we will get something similar or more like the 2012?
– Why is heat&mass so bloody difficult????
– Hahahahahahaha I just managed to round 4.6508*10^-26 to 4.661…
– Do you know how to calculate the integral of (cos(x))^3? I don’t understand the Wolfram Alpha explanation… [To which my sister answered: don’t do maths at 22:40!!!]
9. Every time someone asks “how is revision” you just stare at the table. And pretend that you are not in this universe.
10. And the most important: the relativity of time has never been this true. You wake up, do 3 problem sheets and 2 past papers and it’s already 10pm. But when you think about when your exams will be over, it’s like they will never end. Seriously. Never. And then you look at your calendar and it says your last exam is in less than 3 weeks. Not that bad, huh? And then you realise you have 6 exams in between. [insert desperately crying emoji here]
