I’m alive! (Much thought the last few weeks have attempted to see otherwise…)
I haven’t been blogging because of the dreaded exam season, which lived up to all expectations. 10/10, Imperial. As such, I thought I’d give a nod to the less sexy side of your uni time: revision!
A Day in the Life: Revision
9am: You wake up, roll over once, contemplate the snooze button, realise you have too much to do today to waste even ten more minutes, waste half an hour snoozing anyway, consider your revision plans for the day, consider your life, consider a humanities degree or emigration to Barbados, and finally get up.
10am: I usually catch breakfast on the way to the library, which is where I head for most of my revision. Halls rooms at Imperial are well-equipped for private studying, with plenty of shelf and desk space, high-speed internet, etc, but I’ve always preferred to head to the library anyway. For one, it’s much more likely I’ll actually get work done there–it’s much more shameful to be caught laughing at kittens when you’re surrounded by stressed rocket scientists–and it’s also a great place to study with your friends, either for group study or just for the pleasant silent company. The library has different sections depending on your work ethic, ranging from ground floor group study, where people could almost get away with murder, to the vaulted silent sections, where you WILL be murdered if you so much as scuff your foot coming in. I usually go to the fourth floor intermediate, the quiet section, where there’s computers and a lot of table space.
(Revision: One of the things you’ll learn at uni is proper revision technique–this is personal. Part of the point of first year is to give you time and practice for exam preparation. You’ll find out how best to revise only when you’ve actually got exams to prepare for! I’ve been going over all the lecture powerpoints, taking notes, and going over all the past papers)
1pm: Lunch break. I usually go down to the library cafe; it’s tucked right into the ground floor, has hot and cold prepared food (and lots and lots and lots of energy drinks), and saves you from actually (god forbid) having to set foot outside the library. If the weather’s pleasant, there’s nothing nicer than popping out to the Queen’s Lawn for a bit of sun and chat. Then back to the library we go!
(Revision at uni is overwhelming and chaotic. Remember school, where in theory you knew exactly what you could be asked, you could expect certain questions, and you had a sheet of maybe five formulas to memorise? Here you’ve a half year’s worth–for non-life sciences courses more toward a year’s worth–and you have to pick and choose what to revise well. Focus on what you’re best at, get past papers from your department family, and make a plan!)
7pm: Finish for the day. Sometimes I head back after dinner, from about 10-2 or so, but generally it’s best to get as much rest as you do revision. And time to see friends, maintain your social life, and relax.
Protip: Deep sleep cycles have been shown necessary for the conversion of short to long term memory (totally butchering the research here, bear with me!) In other words, you can study all day and retain next to nothing if you don’t have enough sleep that night to let the memories set. This is also why alcohol can make you forget things–it interferes with the cycles of REM sleep and thus blocks this process. Sleep!
I must confess that before I cam to London I scoffed at people who bought water filters or, even worse, litres and litres and litres of bottled water. These were usually the people who complain about ‘water hardness’ and wax lyrical about ‘mineral-filtered groundwater’– the proselytising vegans of the aqueous world. Imagine my surprise when limescale turned out to actually be a thing, when the sinks cheerfully spat out bitter mineral-tasting water, and when I found myself ordering a filter from Amazon, much to the envy of my floormates. Plus, there’s something unbearably posh about pouring water from a carafe at dinner.
*internal screaming* Everything you own and keep in the kitchen will start to look like this.
So worth it.
9. Blender
This one I saw coming; at home, I used our trusty old blender almost every day. Milkshakes replaced meals. I didn’t expect there to be a blender in Halls, and of course there wasn’t (there’s nothing unless you bring it yourself!) The loss hit me hard and I spent months craving the perfect shakes of my past–until I finally snapped and ordered my blender. Peace and harmony have been restored to the universe. Amazon to the win again!
8. Food Shopping
Remember when you’d go to the supermarket with your parents and you could put anything you wanted in the cart? And then eat it later? Rinse, repeat? Well, unless you landed a massive budget (congratulations, and this blog accepts tips!) you’ll have to be a great deal more judicious and survivalist in the shops if you want to last. Häagen-Dazs is no longer viable at almost £6 a tub–your inevitable uni heartbroken binges will have to make do without. Try celery. Those nice, juicy, medium-rare steaks dripping with peppercorn sauce? Chicken. Cake? Reserved for birthdays. Rosemary-infused sun-baked focaccia? Warburton’s white bread. I’m convinced it’s a conspiracy to get you to go home as soon as the cravings get too bad.
But sometimes we make a special effort 🙂
7. Taxis
When my dad visited a few months and we, in running late for dinner, hailed a black cab, I realised I hadn’t been in a car for months. It’s a wholly different perspective of London. Taxis are scary, scary things for budget-bound uni students–the motor revs and and your bank account drains dry. I’ve been in four taxis since getting to uni: the traditional drunk Freshers’ Week 2am ride home (pro tip: you’ll never see the people you shared the cab with then again, let alone pay them back), one shameful five-minute lift back from the local Sainsbury’s (to be fair, we were all exhausted), that trip with my dad, and one the next night home from the Spring Ball (the bus took seven minutes too long to arrive). £££££££. Seriously, take the tube. Or walk. 3am hikes across large swathes of London proper are the ideal way of seeing the city. Plus you might almost get jumped within shouting distance of the Queen–that was fun.
£££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££Emma modelling the most tasteful clothing we’ve found in London so far…
6. Clothes Shopping
Another thing you must start rationing is your clothes shopping. I’m not a huge shopper myself, but some of my friends have found themselves hopelessly crippled by the harsh London clothing prices.Forget all the brands you’ve grown up with–the only affordable shop on Oxford Street (don’t even bother with Regent St) is Primark a.k.a heaven on earth. If you can deal with the rude employees (to be fair, they’re probably earning about four pence a decade) you can get anything your heart desires at a fraction of the reasonable price: clothes, home goods, onesies for every occasion…just beware Primark Withdrawal on the way home. Don’t enter any other shops until about four hours have passed and your definition of ‘reasonable price’ has recalibrated back up to the (regrettably) ‘reasonable’ London standard.
5. Travel
I hope you’ll really enjoy London, because travelling outside it from uni is both pointless and crazy expensive. Save it for holidays or for going home! As I live in America, travel home sets me (or rather my parents <3) back many hundreds of pounds each trip. It’s definitely been a factor in my decision to stay at Imperial this Easter break (3/10, do not recommend). Flying to Europe is just feasible, at around £100 a trip if you’re clever about the bookings, and trains like Eurostar are about the same. If you’ve a place to go in the UK, that’s anywhere from about £20 to £60, very roughly. So it’s more feasible to go home–as most of my friends have done now–if you live here. Spending holidays in Halls is basically just for the overseas students. At the same time, though you won’t be travelling often, going to uni in London is one of the best choices if you do like travel; the continent and more broadly the Northwestern world is at your fingertips, and your uni time will find you jetting (or taking crappy overnight buses, sob) to wherever you want. I have friends travelling to New York City, Florida, Dublin, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Vienna, and the far East this break alone!
And then sometimes you end up in Amsterdam for a week with your HallmatesPlus then you can have cocktails and feel proper posh, for once…thanks dad!
4. Restaurants
–Especially nice ones! Again, as with everything on this list, this depends on your budget, but for most us it’s safe to say we probably won’t be eating at too many nice restaurants. Sure, the occasional dinner out with mates (my next-year-housemates and I have a rather neglected tradition of eating out together on Sundays), especially for birthdays or for club/society dinners, will happen… but mostly just prepare leave the nice dining for family visits. It makes them so much more magical anyway 😉
p.s. Good sushi especially won’t be a thing any more. Unless your parents are so inclined, just prepare to say goodbye to it!
We can’t even afford moustache trims…
3. Haircuts
They used to be a fact of life, like the changing of the seasons, but now if you want your hurr did you’ll have to take care of it yourself–and your London options, of course, aren’t the cheapest, with some of the posher salons in South Kensington stretching up into a hundred quid for a simple cut. You have a ton of options, though! I recently took advantage of Headmasters’ walk-in cut and style for 20 quid and would highly recommend it… classy salon, cheap cut, and ultraconvenient. Otherwise, you could get a friend to cut your hair (some people are crazy like that) or you could cut it yourself (0/10, DO NOT RECOMMEND). You could also take advantage of your student status, either by obtaining a student discount, which most salons will offer in some form, or by heading to a training salon, where you can get your hair cut for free if you’re willing to put up with long and tortuous cuts by trainees.
Hall Christmas Dinner at Supperclub… usually over 100 quid for entrance, we got in for 20!
2. Event Tickets and Nights Out
Nights out, or entertainment in general, are of course not cheap in London. Tickets (usually bought online ahead of time, convenient for you if not for your wallet) for club nights, for example, can run up to 20 quid at London’s poshest clubs, yet still accessible, nightclubs. (e.g. Boujis, barely ten minutes’ walk from the college)! Ladies will often enjoy free entrance, on the other hand. For the cheaper (but no less bangin’) clubs, tickets might cost up to about six pounds, tops. Heaven, one of London’s biggest gay clubs, is almost always free if you know how to get in. Union events are a little easier on the wallet; they won’t cost you more than a few quid for the normal term nights at Beit HQ, and the bigger balls are quite generously subsidised as well. Lastly, your Hall might throw cheap events as well (more during Freshers’ week and then tapering off slowly).
This jagerbomb cost my friend ten quid.
1. Booze
Of course, like the events above, this list wouldn’t be complete without a mention of alcohol–yeah, you “don’t need alcohol to have fun at uni”, but it’s such a big part of uni culture here that it would be horrifyingly inaccurate to leave it off the list. All those club nights only start with you buying a ticket… to buy drinks in the club, even after fighting through some truly gargantuan queues, you’ll still often be faced with “London prices”, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. This is anywhere from 7 quid for a double (I’ve seen 10+ quid at the posher places!) Or imagine you’ve not got tickets for the night, but you’ll just be partying it up in your halls with your friends. If you want to avoid drinking turpentine-like Glens Vodka from Essentials, which is nevertheless quite drinkable with adequate preparations, you’ll need to dish out more money at a supermarket or liquor store. Classy bastard. Of course, you don’t need alcohol to survive, and yet it fuels some of the greatest nights uni can offer… so that’s why it’s rounding out this list as the ultimate luxury uni item.
At Imperial, almost everyone you meet has tangled with Oxbridge at some point. The students are Oxbridge rejects, the faculty is largely composed of Oxbridge old boys/girls, and the hall subwardens are imported directly with their shiny Oxbridge diplomas clenched in clever hands for some good old Imperial postgraduate work.
Oxbridge is the elephant in the Imperial room. Almost to a one, we were crushed by our rejections, and some of us felt we were “settling” for Imperial. So when I claim now that, were I to again have the choice before me, I would choose Imperial over Cambridge, it might sound slightly insincere and revisionist to the discerning ear–but I promise I’m telling the truth! Here’s why:
1) The reputation: Okay, so Oxbridge are collectively known as the best uni’s in the world, and to be frank, that speaks for itself. I’m not going to say that Imperial is better than either one, though others have made the case (boopboopOxford). What I can say, however, is that Imperial is basically as good, that the extra microdetails and minutiae will make next to no difference to your educational experience. Rankings matter far less than you might think–and I realize this might be “easy” for me to say, comfortably typing this on my Shiny Imperial Blog, on Superfast Imperial Internet, in my Luxurious Hall in the heart of the Regal Imperial Campus, but if you’re reading this with an offer from Imperial, rest assured you’ll come to understand my point wherever you end up. In the end, uni is about you, not the faculty; your intelligence is the limiting reactant, not the infinite resources you’ll receive here (or anywhere else world-class).
2) The location: Okay, so rankings don’t matter. Location matters a bloody hell of a lot more, though neither Oxbridge nor Imperial are anywhere near comparable. It’s more about how YOU feel in regard to either one. Oxbridge are both in small cities, Cambridge slightly more so than Oxford, while London is in one of the biggest metropoli in the Western World. I’d like to say world, but it’s only 29th by population. The fact remains, however, that London is one of the most exciting possible places to go to Uni. From Imperial, you’re on the doorstep of almost everything of import in the world. The city is loud, vibrant, massive, and teeming with people, sights, and experiences. The Imperial social calendar is the London social calendar; again, only your stamina is the limiting reactant. Oxbridge, on the other hand, are small cities with even smaller, ancient centres. Beautiful, beautiful places, steeped in hundreds of years of history and pedagogical tradition, in their own way every bit as exciting as the high streets of London. You will live, for at least a couple of years, in an absolutely beautiful and ancient fortress, growing ever closer with your fellow geniuses and college-mates. Which will you choose? Think wisely. I was blinded and lured in by Cambridge’s rating, which as I mentioned is a massively superficial approach; I can now see I’m much happier here in London than I could probably ever have been at Cambridge. South Kensington, the most expensive postcode in England, is nothing to sneeze at, and the nightlife here, which, may I remind you, is still half your degree time-wise, is absolutely brilliant. I think Cambridge has one dingy club. Do we have secluded private gardens with wandering punters straight from a Romantic’s painting? Nah. Your move, offer-holder. Close proximity to Buckingham Palace, Harrods, Hyde Park, London’s three biggest museums, dozens of embassies, and Essentials? Imperial. Cobbles? Cambridge.
3) Let’s be honest, Saturdays off are really nice. Natural Scientist at Cambridge? Your alarm is set six days a week. Anything-ist at Imperial? Your weekend starts at 6 on Friday. Boom.
There’s a ton more to be said, but I think you get the idea. Make sure you visit, if you’re torn, and consider the long-term implications of your course. And remember, you can probably make the most of wherever you end up going, and, even better, there’s no wrong decision possible!
Well, bloggies, here we went again. I’ve been a horrible blogger and quite neglected to share the sordid details of my March so far… let’s fix that. And if you’re in the (un?)enviable position of having to choose a uni, and Imperial is one of them, and for some strange, unusual reason you’re not already convinced Imperial is the best place on the planet, then you can read about my last week and see if it’s your thing.
[Author’s note: This was hell week. This was the lowest point. Work out the wazoo, serious lack of free afternoons, and mind-twisting lectures…usually uni is way better. It was still one of the best weeks of the year so far :)]
For the actual Anatomy of a Biochemist’s Week I alluded to in the title, here ya go:
Monday: The most difficult morning of the week, somehow even worse than whatever ends up passing for your morning on Saturday…but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as sitting in the lecture theatre at 9am knowing you’ve made it, that the week is go. This particular Monday was enzymology lectures three and four… or basically Double Potions with the Slytherins. Where in first term we had a pleasant and logical 1:1 ratio of module per day, the second term has seen the schedule spiralling uncontrollably into double lectures and even entire straight weeks of a single module. When this module is Molecular Biology with the godly Prof. Dave Hartley, your week will be perfect. When this module is Proteins and Enzymes and you spend every morning wondering if you’ve stumbled into a maths course lecture by accident, your week will not be perfect. This particular Monday was 120 minutes of being slapped around by constants and plots and manipulations with seemingly innocuous names like “Lineweaver-Burke” and “Michaelis-Menten” and “Hanes-Woolf” and “Hofstede-Eadie”. Biochemistry is a partner science… shape up!
Tuesday: Tuesday was… surprise, more maths! At this point, most of us have considered switching to biology, another university, or emigrating to somewhere warm and beachy and pursuing a whirlwind Spanish Literature degree. Our exam’s at the end of June, so almost unfathomably distant in Uni terms, and yet we have a closed-book (CLOSED-BOOK!) multiple-choise quiz at the end of this week, so we actually have to figure everything out in good time. The struggle is real.
Tuesday also has Horizons, which is a beautiful and amazing idea in theory (free high-level auxiliary pass-fail courses scheduled outside course time) but the actual worst thing every time 4pm rolls around on Tuesday. I’m taking Arabic, which looks really smooth and nice and is probably the most difficult and senseless language I’ve ever studied. It’s just the little things, right? Right to left reading, non-Latin letters, ten groups of verb conjugations, and about a dozen plural forms (…seriously. Where every other language has the tried-and-true “just add an ‘s'” approach to plurals, Arabic insists you push every word through a formulaic meat grinder which follows zero pattern: film–>aflam, tabaq–>atbaq, shamaa–>shumuaa). Exam next week, starting to strain the plausible deniability bubble of ignorant bliss…
Buuuuut, on the experimental side of things (and making everything worth it!) are the practicals we sacrifice our afternoons for. Last week, on both Monday and Tuesday, 1-4pm, we prepared for sequencing our mitochondrial DNA and analysed our D1S80 variable-number-tandem-repeat loci. Variable Number Tandem Repeats are sequences in the genetic code that consist of a variable number of repetitions of the same genetic sequence; this particular sequence has 16 alleles, so inheriting the same number of repeats in this sequence from both parents (e.g. eight repeats of the same sequence) is quite rare. Needless to say my experimentally-determined (boom) homozygosity conferred upon me an entirely unfounded smugness for the rest of the afternoon.
In real life (these labs are just fantasyyyy) this procedure is used in forensic trials to match suspect DNA to DNA samples found on the victim and/or crime scene. Because there are so many alleles and thus phenotypes, a quite accurate match can be made. If I can accurately analyse my own DNA after a botched cheek swab, two days’ worth of practical protocol insecurity, and using less than a thousandth of a millilitre of dilute DNA… imagine those swanky government labs 😉 No biochemist will ever commit a crime after this practical. Demonstrators: 1, C700: 0.
Wednesday: A lovely, peaceful day. Nothing happens Wednesday morning; you’ll have one or two lectures, possibly a personal tutorial every few months, and then you’re off by noon for the day. This is uni-wide: Wednesday is sports day. For those not sports-inclined, Wednesday is holiday. Zero complaints, 10/10, would recommend. Every Wednesday night is Sports Night at the union, ostensibly for the exhausted sports teams to grab a hard-earned team-building pint after practice and instead an opportunity for a horde of unfit leeches (code:me) to descend on the union for the unbeatable London prices and the rustic charm that is Metric at “Metric-full”. You will understand Metric-full when you come to Imperial. It will grow on you.
Thursday: Generally and understandably a bit rough (^) to begin with, but it’s the first part of the pre-weekend (though some would argue for Wednesday or even by the second Monday lecture. Academics disagree.) More enzymes, here, and a problem class in the afternoon. Problem classes are one of our non-assessed ways to test our knowledge; as a course group of up to 70 or so, you work through a sheet of problems with the help of the lecturer. It’s a more convivial way of realizing how much you don’t know than crying alone in your room with a textbook.
Friday: Friday is Friday! TGIF! The last push before you can catch up on sleep and partying (pick one, though). Lectures have proceeded from new material to summary, which is a worrying indicator of the times… we’ve never needed summary lectures before, let alone three full days of them… but oh well, we can’t be too fussed, it’s Friday. Friday is for surviving until Friday night. That is the purpose of Friday. To this end, we went out and bought animal onesies at Primark for the big Hall Disney party on Saturday. Jack Sparrow costume at fancy dress shop: 60 quid. Nondenominational tiger onesie at Primark: 12 quid. McDonald’s after: 3 quid. Student life? Priceless. Er, ful. Priceful. So priceful. Living in London on a student budget is quite a stretch. Word of fair warning.
Saturday: Your carte blanche for leisure, catching up with friends, exploring London, going out, and generally getting all the week’s pent-up stress out of your system. I headed to Hyde Park with Hugo to enjoy the wonderful weather we’ve been basking in lately. The weather turned out to be solely aesthetically nice, near freezing our faces off, but at least I got something done before the Disney party. I’ll probably write more about that soonish, once I figure out what actually happened. Was epic.
Sunday: You pledge yourself to your studies, sobriety, and the nearest monastery, as long as you get to sleep in. Sometimes Sunday evening features tearful regret of weekendus finitus. Sometimes Sunday doesn’t happen.
Last Monday found people raining from the Imperial sky instead of the usual drizzle. While initially alarmed (droughts are a serious issue), we settled down on Queen’s lawn for what my friend Lucy termed “the best day of Uni yet!” Although she did get to jump face-first off a giant crane, so I think she had a bit of a head start. Badum-pshh.
So, why was it raining men (and ladies)? RAG week! RAG is Imperial’s star charity society, and RAG week is their star week. It’s apparently as large a part of uni culture as ‘Greek life’ is in the United States, but also probably infinitely better because it’s British, raises money for charity, and actually condones kidnapping. I’m not actually in RAG, so if you want a better explanation it would behoove you to check out Mala’s post about RAG week. From what I understand, though, joining RAG basically gives you an excuse to do the craziest of things throughout London with your friends, all while raising money for lovely people such as the folks at Breakthrough Breast Cancer.
They’ve been pushing RAG week on Facebook for ages, but it’s one thing to scroll past a bunch of [entirely too many] pictures of happy people and flowery links–you tune it out–and another thing entirely to have your usual walk to the JCR punctuated by the unusual sounds of people screaming as they fall out of the sky. I knew what I had to do, and twenty minutes later we were all sitting on Queen’s Lawn, basking in the sun and the competing noise from IC Radio’s summer tunes, IC Big Band’s lovely but poorly planned Queen’s Tower concert (What’s funnier than a pianist’s face as he watches his sheet music flutter off the tower and land on the lawn far below? NOTHING! Seriously, it was a nice concert, though), and the sound of pure vertigo-fuelled terror. Also, JCR fried chicken.
I didn’t really get involved in the rest of the week, but one can’t really escape RAG when it gets proper going. Eating contests, three-legged bar crawls, Jailbreak, RAG collects, bubble football… although they probably won’t have that last one since someone managed to break his neck or something. I’m not sure what exactly happened, though…the Imperial grapevine is rough. He’s fine, however!
Also worth mentioning was the RAG Valentine’s Ball a few weeks ago. Nothing classier than sipping a ten-pound jagerbomb on the 31st floor of one of SoHo’s tallest buildings. The view was amazing, if your mask was lucky enough to have practical eyeholes.
Can you smell the class and/or the ten-pound jagerbomb? It smelled good.
Sorry I’ve gone so long without writing–I’d descended feetfirst into the rollercoaster of emotions that constitutes exams season. Just kidding, your emotions don’t really rocket around during exam week. You won’t have emotions. Everything you hold dear will melt, slosh around, and consolidate into a little ball of stress ricocheting around your head. Embrace this–this is good! Stress has been empirically proven to be more dense than airy emotional baggage. It’ll leave space in your head for an extra biochemical pathway. Take your pick: lipid beta oxidation? Reductive biosynthesis? Amino acid catabolism?
Just kidding, you have to know it all anyway.
The exams themselves were suprisingly un-horrific. Between the free week we’d had before them (revision week is your frieeeend) and the breakfast I’d had, I felt rather well prepared. I don’t usually have breakfast, much less a balanced breakfast (with a blueberry smoothie thingy no less), so I think I shocked my body into thinking I was heading into my last moments and it fired up all the engines. Breakfast is recommended, as our metabolism lecturer gleefully reminded us ever morning (to a resounding retort of 100 stomachs’ grumbling).
Two things to consider for exams:
1) Don’t be afraid to go out, have human contact, and generally maintain your relatively normal life. I think this is essential and often ignored in favour of spending 18 hours a day locked in one’s room, revising until your vision goes. Revision week is not a vector of stressed living and shouldn’t be– even if you just revise during “normal college hours”, 9am-6pm, that’s nine hours of revision a day. That’s way more than enough, at least for the first semester of biochemistry. No one I know actually revised that much. This leaves a great deal of time for you to keep seeing friends, going out to things, and even to take a day off here and there to go see things in the beautiful city you’re living in. Don’t make your room an island fortress. Go out to the sports night/ACC, head to the union for a pint with your friends, etc. I know people who stopped partying three weeks before exams. Why??? (They were also the most stressed ones!)
2) One of the main methods of revision I found very useful was taking the past papers the lecturers put up online. One caveat, though: If you go way back (e.g. I looked at the 2010 papers), some of the questions will very obviously be things you’ve not been lectured on (e.g. asking you to describe the mechanism of siRNA cleavage when you’ve not even seen nucleic acids). The course evolves quite a significant amount with time and this is reflected in the papers. Two points. One, this effect is less obvious (but just as crucial) when you look at papers only a year or two previous. There will be tiny differences in how a concept is taught that can lead you into thinking you know how to do the problem, realizing you’re missing a bit of knowledge, and getting more stressed because you “don’t know” something. Relax–this particular approach to the concept may very well not have been taught this year! Two, this means that the exam you actually have to sit will almost invariably be the easiest of the papers you see, since every problem on there is guaranteed to be something you’ve specifically seen in a lecture or tutorial.
Phew, enough with the exam stuff! Reading a course at Imperial isn’t about exams, as my new lecturer (more on him later) said, albeit rather less eloquently.
A group of us went to Chinatown during the Chinese New Year festival. London Chinatown proper is actually very small, only about six or so streets in a rough grid. It cannot accommodate the entire united urban population of greater London, as six harrowed and very surprised-looking volunteers and a policeman found out on Sunday.
If receptor-mediated endocytosis can concentrate signal molecules a thousandfold, so too can taiyaki-mediated meatpacking concentrate Londoners to sort of desperately shuffling mass. I got my youtiao, though, so zero [redacted] given.
In other news, we’ve started two new lectures, and I can’t decide which one’s more awesome. Proteins and Enzymes, lectured (unfortunately only for a few lectures) by the indomitable Dr. Byrne, will make you confront your uncomfortably intense feelings for nature’s very own, very perfect nanotechnology. Day two and I’ve already come to terms with the fact that I will probably one day marry an affinity chromatography column. In the other corner of the ring we have Molecular Biology, given by force of nature, born entertainer, and accidental molecular biologist Dave Hartley. I don’t think I’ve ever instantly liked anything or anyone as instantly and permanently as Dave Hartley (except of course affinity chromatography shh shhh baby I’m here for you). “Biochemistry is f***ing difficult.” That’s all, ladies and gentlemen, take it or leave it. Need I say more?
[He reads the molecular biology of the cell textbook on the beach in the Caribbean though]
Life has reached a sort of crazy equilibrium in the last week as I’ve started to truly grasp how much my course expects me to know for my exams (and I thought the twenty amino acids would be a lot…) and at the same time had some of the better nights out (and in) I can claim at Imperial. Unfortunately (and very aptly), in the beautiful world of bioenergetics, equilibrium means death. And so we beat on, biochemists against the biochemistry, borne back ceaselessly down the marking scale.
There was a surreal moment this week when we were told a practical we’d done ages ago (I hadn’t remembered doing it and certainly didn’t want it back) had been ‘marked and returned to our pigeonholes’. Prospective biochemists, you will come to know that phrase as at once the most exciting and horrifying of your Imperial careers (shortly followed by any of the several polite, apologetic variations of “Of couuuuurse!” in response to “Do we need to know this for the exam?” I’ve heard over the last few weeks). Anyway, after the lecture we all piled into the office to survey the damage. Lo and behold, carnage, devastation, comments along the lines of “Your drawing was so woefully unrelated to the practical that I can’t even mark this tripe.”
And so our course has been transformed, or rather beaten down, from a group of nervous and determined students, raised and honed in the best and most competitive secondary educations, buzzword being “first”, to a horde of anxious sheep shuffling to and from the library to the unforgiving pigeonholes to the mind-blowing lectures, buzzword being “pass”.
On the topic of lectures, they’ve been getting ruthlessly more difficult. Mid-term crisis brought to you by Metabolism with Maureen, weekday mornings at ten. It’s not that any individual thing she lectures is quite difficult in and of itself. Every individual question is quite answerable. (Unlike, say, physics, who recently were examined with gems like “Calculate the center of mass of an infinite spiral.”) It’s the sheer volume of biochemistry we have to know that will probably kill us.
Take, for example, the transamination reaction that occurs in the breakdown of amino acids in diet. Think on it for a few minutes and it’s crystal clear. On its own, it’s okay to memorise. Except that our lecturer covered it in about three minutes of an hour’s lecture of a series of about fifteen. That’s a lot of stuff to know and it’s just two weeks’ worth. Recently typed up every ‘learning objective’ in the cell biology course and there’s about 98.
The only real solution for this mess, if one wants to stay sane, is to party just as hard. Shoutouts to XOYO, Wilson House, mixer of the week: Fanta Twist, off-licenses in South Kensington, late-night buses that break down every three seconds, nine-AM lectures.
In other news, my friends are swaggier than yours…
Apparently we got a lot of weird looks for freaking out about this tube, but I just mourn their poor desensitized souls…
I’m nearing the end of my first ever uni vacation and I thought I’d share a few thoughts. Clearly you prospective applicants are basing your applications on the quality of the uni vacations.
For one thing, they’re ridiculously long and there’s a lot less build-up. I remember “the week before Christmas break” being a massive thing every year in secondary and elementary school–you’d start counting down the month before and fiiiiinally you’d get your break. The whole school cheers as the last bell rings, etc.
And for what? You get a miserable little week off, maybe two if you’re in a fancy, padded private school or indeed anywhere in civilised Europe, but then you’re back on the treadmill.
Uni’s a completely different kettle of fish. Building any sort of hype for the break is a massive nonstarter. People leave halfway through the week, jetting off to wherever after handing in the last coursework of the term, so the campus kind of slowly shrivels and evaporates. You fit all the partying you skipped during the week into the last weekend and then set out yourself. Pffffff.
But theeeeen you get an immense break, four weeks of rest and relaxation and detox and all that jazz. It’s really nice. I promise. You get to see family again and explain why you didn’t contact them at all and why you’re out of money and what bad choices you made RE alcohol and oyster card plans.
The big thing, though, is that you have exams AFTER break. Unless you’ve been a model student all year, you’ll probably have a great deal of revision to do–it really stacks up. Basically your course turns into Damocles’ Sword of Death and Despair. For biochemistry, that means memorising forty sheets of dense mechanisms (organic chem, metabolism, atp synthesis, all the pathways, etc) in addition to the rest of the course content.
All good fun, though. I guess this is when you decide if you really like your course, and luckily it’s worked out for me!
Happy New Year, and wishing you all a great 2014 (hopefully continuing or starting at Imperial!)
My mates and I put together this list of extra tips for Fresher’s week and also just in general:
MAKING FRIENDS: UNI EDITION
Don’t sit in your room, come to the kitchen.
If you have free time after moving in, go and bang on doors and introduce yourself.
Bring snacks. People love food. I fail to see how being remembered as “brownie girl” or “chips guy” could in any way ever be a bad thing. This is more of a life tip.
Be prepared to spend money on alcohol unless you don’t drink. Free drinks are rare, but spending a bit on drinks will help your social life in mysterious ways. Preferably, come with your own bottle of vodka already.
No matter how awkward things are, stay–this is how your social life will happen, and this is the only way
Get phone numbers, Facebook friend people, etc. Text and message people; invite people you’ve just met to do things. “Hey, want to go check out the prelash at Fisher?” “Hey, want to go grab dinner from Eastside bar?” Even just a simple “Where are you?” will sometimes do.
Buy food upon arrival. Let parents pay. Refer to number 3.
Tupperware. (General life tip.)
Cook with people! There’s nothing sadder than spending half an hour making yourself a meal just so you can sit in the kitchen alone. If you’re getting on with someone in your floor/hall, just text him/her to go to the kitchen when you’re cooking!
Go to the events, etc. Literally everything. Buy your tickets ahead of time. See if your parents will pay. If you can meet up with someone before the Mingle on the first night and stick with that person throughout the night, you probably have a new best friend.
Join every club. Sign up for things. Volunteer. Everything you do will come with a new set of people. Two case studies. 1) I signed up for Arabic as my Horizons course and through this bonded with a guy on my floor I’d never talked to before. 2) I applied for my blog and the people at the welcome-drinks (fellow bloggers) were fantastic. The list of examples goes on.
Lastly (for now), consider the sets of people I mentioned above. You’ll find that people who overlap between these different sets will be your closer friends: people in your course AND in your hall, people doing your course AND your sport, etc. Infinite combinations, permutations, etc. Or, as my friend reading over my shoulder put it, “You’re more likely to be friends with people you see the most.”
I think it’s fair to say you need a few of the following to make friends: physical proximity, like-minded people, shared interests, and a healthy dose of don’t-be-awkward.
Luckily, life at Imperial provides you with all of the above except, crucially, the don’t-be-awkward bit.
Physical proximity: you [should] live in halls with hundreds of
like-minded people: like I wrote before, basically anyone on campus
shares interests: join societies, clubs, sports, talk to people you live with about anime, gaming, random other things, etc.
What I mean by don’t be awkward is just to avoid reaction to the awkwardness of having to make friends. It’s really easy to introduce yourself to someone, exchange a few scripted questions (“Which Oxbridge were you rejected from?”), and to then make your excuses and move on (or worse, back into your room). While this action will give both of you quick, tangible relief, and may even make you feel like you’ve laid down the groundwork to a beautiful relationship, it isn’t worth the relief and you’ll find later that you’ve laid down zero groundwork (or worse, cauterised the potential of friendship).
What you need to do is to keep talking, to make awkward conversation, and to accept the inevitability of uncomfortable silences. If you do run into an insurmountable awkwardness, you may make an excuse leave. This isn’t a surrender if you follow up and hang out with the same person the next time you see him or her. Rinse, repeat– eventually both of you will just accept the friendship and that’s a great moment.
Of course, real life isn’t as scripted as that, but I did find the best friends I have here just by being physically around them a lot. Shameless friend exposition time!
Some of the best people you’ll ever meet, if you’re lucky. Thanksgiving 2013!More perks of Imperial life: you get to look classy!
…Sometimes.
Honorable mention to Hugo for managing to avoid being in every single picture I’ve taken in the last two months. I’d say he tried but he clearly didn’t.
