This may surprise you somewhat, but life outside of London does actually exist. After a long 8 weeks of autumn term (punctuated by one weekend back home with my family) it was brilliant to get away this weekend for the Christian Union-Christian Medical Fellowship weekend away in Surrey. We go away every year to spend some time relaxing, playing ridiculous game (read on for details), roaming around the countryside and of course reading the Bible together. The weekend away is one of my highlights of every year and I’m so sad that this was probably my last one!
The weekend began with trying to cram a sleeping bag, roll mat, pillow, towel, welly boots, clothes and the all important Tupperware of cookies into the smallest possible bag. Eventually I gave in and packed everything into a suitcase (Yes, I am the girl who takes a suitcase to a weekend away). I then met up with a couple of other CU buddies and we took the overground out to Clapham Junction where we met up with everyone else. It was a quick train ride to Farnham and then we walked over to the church where we were staying for the weekend. There were about 30 of us altogether and we enjoyed everyone’s homemade cakes and a cup of tea whilst waiting for the next trainload of people to get there. Introductions were made, songs were sung and beds were set up and then it was time for the traditional first night games. Admittedly, I was knackered by this point and so I skipped out but I am told that wheelbarrow races to collect marshmallows in your mouth occurred.
The next day we had a full English breakfast (many thanks to our cooks, friends from our churches in London who got up at 5am to come out for the day on Saturday and cook for the whole group!) and then settled in for a packed day of reading the Bible, thinking about how it applies to our lives as students at Imperial and of course, having cake and coffee breaks. On Saturday afternoon, we went for a lovely walk in Farnham, despite the wind and drizzle! It’s weird how much you appreciate something as simple as a brisk country walk when most of the time you are either at Imperial, at home or travelling between the two. We took plenty of photos and then bundled back to the church for another meeting and dinner. On Saturday night we played more games, including chubby bunnies (for anyone not in the know, this involves putting marshmallows in your mouth one by one and saying ‘chubby bunnies.’ Whoever has the most marshmallows in their mouth and is still able to say it clearly wins. It was fairly disgusting by the end), sinker/floater (A CU classic whereby various fruits and vegetables are dropped into a pan of water and each team can win points by correctly guessing whether it will sink or float – don’t ask me where this one originated from, I only know that it’s been played on the weekend away since way before my time!) and a quiz involving an Imperial trivia round. I always intend to get plenty of sleep in on these weekends but when you’ve got over 10 excited girls all sleeping in the same room and coming in at different times, that never happens. Sunday morning was a subdued affair, with pretty much everyone suitably sleep deprived and eating breakfast in a zombified state.
We concluded our weekend by spending some time in groups, reflecting on what we’d learnt and thinking a bit more about what it means to be a Christian and to study our respective subjects. A bunch of people hung around in Farnham for a pub lunch but I was one of the boring ones who took the early train home to fit in a nap and a shower before church that night.
London is one of the great loves of my life but it’s so refreshing to get out of the city every now and then and remember that fresh air and mud and green grass do exist. Now time to bash out the final weeks of term and hand in that last (enormous) piece of coursework before heading home for the hol. I can’t wait.
(By the way, thank you student blogs team for picking one of the less cringey photos of me to go on under my name – I assure you that I did a number of poses during the photoshoot which I’m glad did not end up on the internet!)
I had my Imperial interview almost exactly a year ago. It’s rather unbelievable that an entire year has just flown by… But it didn’t really hit me until the first admission day. About a month ago we got an email from the department that we can volunteer to help on the admission days, and I – of course – applied.
Admission day is a lot more than just interviews: the applicants are shown around the campus, they have lab tours and they visit the Pilot Plant, too. When I volunteered to help, I didn’t know that it would be this shockingly amazing experience. It was not only good because I could help make the interviewees less anxious but also because as I was taking them to the offices and watching them nervously chatting with each other, I remembered my admission day…
12th November 2014
I couldn’t really sleep, so I woke up at 7 am. Then I couldn’t really eat, so I only had a coffee. I had never been to the South Kensington campus before, so I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be late: I had to be there by 11.30, therefore I was already there at 10.30. Despite the common belief that the ACEX building is difficult to find, it took me less than 5 minutes. Nobody was there yet, so I sat down on the sofas and waited… Waited… Waited… Then the other interviewees started to arrive, and I realised everyone wears suits or formal clothes – except me. I read on some website that “on the interview day you should wear whatever you feel comfortable in” hence I was wearing a blue hoodie, jeans and red training shoes… It was soooo embarrassing! I tried to be as invisible as possible, but you can’t possibly disappear in red shoes…
When I was looking at the students this year, they were all wearing formal. I think I was the first and last one who thought red trainers are a good choice for an interview in Imperial…
After we got our “welcome packs” (a folder with all the useful information about Imperial, accommodation, the course and the admission day), we went into a lecture theatre to listen to a “welcome talk”. That lecture theatre was the most high-tech classroom I have ever been to: two projectors, six whiteboards, 150 chairs, audio system, everything was clean and white, it looked all professional, it all looked an “excellent place to study”.
This is the ACEX250 lecture theatre, where I spend 50% of my life these days. I still like it, I love to be the first one to enter the room in the morning, because the lights are motion sensing and it’s funny to be the one who illuminates the whole room… There is only one unfavourable thing about it: the temperature. Even if it’s warm outside I have to bring a coat, because I would freeze to death during four lectures. It’s so cold one could say it converges to 0K from below…
The welcome talk was very impressive. I wanted to study in Imperial more and more minute by minute. Finding out new things about the course, the department, Imperial, the opportunities after graduation – I was astonished. Suddenly I realised I can’t mess up my interview because this is where I want to belong, Imperial is the most awesome place I had ever come across. And that realisation made me even more nervous…
In the past couple of admission days, I was watching the faces of the interviewees when they left the lecture theatre after this welcome talk. They looked amused and nervous: just as I did last year. The only difference is that they were talking with each other, while I was just following the crowd in silence and embarrassment due to my red training shoes…
The next thing was the free food. Yes, there is free lunch on the admission day 🙂 We had about half an hour to eat some food and ask some questions from the first/second year students who were there. I talked with some of them and I got even more nervous… I looked around the room full of top students from all over the world, and I started to lose the faith that I would ever get an offer from any UK university. Everyone looked so much smarter than me (red trainers weren’t helping…) and they were all talking about super-intelligent stuff and I could only understand half of what they said because of my poor English. This was the first day when I had to speak English for longer than an hour. It was exhausting – I had to concentrate really hard to understand what others said and I had to ask them to repeat it again a thousand times. After a while I gave up: I was just smiling, nodding and hoping it was not a question…
Being on the other side is better than I thought. Now that I was that first year student who walked around, mingled and answered the questions, I could see how nervous I could have been last year. I was trying to tell jokes and make them loosen up but I knew that’s an impossible mission. Most of them asked about the interview, a few of them about studying and during the three admission days I took part in I only had one question asking about how much free time I have…
After the free lunch, we started the tours. First we had a campus tour: we saw the library, Beit Hall, Princess Gardens, Ethos, the usual stuff. Then we had the long-awaited Pilot Plant tour! I think I fell in love with Imperial definitely on that tour. Our lovely Pilot Plant is such an amazing place, it’s a state-of-the-art carbon capture plant where we can practice all the skills we will need in real life. It’s a very unique thing and a huge opportunity for Imperial students. And you can make amazing selfies in those hardhats 😀 After that we also had a lab tour where they demonstrated some experiments we would do in second year.
To be honest, Pilot Plant is still the coolest thing in Imperial. Every morning when I enter the ACEX building, the first thing I see is the super-modern control room with these huge screens and colourful charts. We will have a longer Pilot Plant project next year, but we have already had an introductory session when we had to find all the heat exchangers. And there was also a competition for the best selfies…
Pilot Plant <3
Finally, we had our interviews… My interview was on the 6th floor of the Roderic Hill building – in other words: at the end of the world. It took us 5 minutes to get there and my nervousness started to increase exponentially. When I entered the room I didn’t really know what will happen, I had never been in an interview before. And I was still in my red trainers! The professor was very friendly, he asked a few technical questions (I couldn’t answer the first one…) and then the rest was more personal: he asked me about my motivations, plans after graduation, my family, my high school, these kind of things. Overall, it was a very nice experience, and I shouldn’t have worried at all! When I went back to the common room (after getting lost in the building about three times), I asked the other interviewees about their interviews. I realised all interview was different, because every professor asked their own set of questions. Some of them were more maths-focused, others were physics-related. But everyone said it went terrible, and nobody was satisfied with their performance…
After one year, I see my interview from a different perspective. It was more about testing my motivations and that I am really as enthusiastic as I said in my personal statement and less about technical skills. So, for all those prospective interviewees out there: don’t worry! If you get an interview invitation, you are on the right track! The funniest experience on the admission days was when I had to take students to the exact same office where I had my interview, to the exact same professor who interviewed me and who is now my personal tutor. It was hilarious, because I could see myself in all those students, in all those worried faces, and also in all those relieved faces after the interviews.
After speaking with quite a few interviewees, I wanted to call my family. But when I switched on my phone, there were two new emails on it: one from the University of Birmingham giving me a conditional offer and another one from the University of Cambridge inviting me for an interview. I could have thought: OMG!!! But at that very moment there was only one thing in my mind: sleeping. I spent an awfully long day speaking solely in English (which gave me a decent headache) and I had my first ever interview, so many things happened, so many new experiences… I was so tired I almost took the tube in the other direction… On the way home I was trying not to think of the results, but it was really difficult. I wanted to get an offer from Imperial really badly, but I didn’t know if they found my interview and my personal statement good enough to give me one. Would I get one? Wouldn’t I? Before that day I was nervous because of the interview. But almost immediately after that, I started to worry about the offer…
Well, it’s quite obvious I indeed got an offer from Imperial after all… 😀 I will never forget that day: I just finished a terrible interview in Cambridge when I checked my phone and there was an email from Imperial, saying:
Dear Dora Petra!
Having met you and assessed your application, we are convinced that you would do well in our Chemical Engineering course. Admissions are extremely competitive and the course is oversubscribed by nearly a factor of ten. We are therefore delighted to be in a position to make you an offer and congratulate you.
Christmas holiday is coming up after two weeks! I’m feeling a bit excited 😛 I’m going to stay in London over the break and spend a week to travel to the North 😀 (And of course for boxing day shopping!) This week was all about plants. We had several lectures about plants like plants under stress, plants under attack, life as a tree and so on! It’s really amazing to see how plants have adapted/evolved to defend itself, feed itself, and so on! And it’s really awesome to have some lectures given by my personal tutor (though I’m still waiting for him to reply to my email) This school week was finished with a practical which is essentially to find 8 different characteristics (such as the number of stamen, the number of anther, ovary position…)in at least 8 different plants (such as fressia). I’m going to celebrate my birthday this weekend by making dumplings together with some high school friends at Imperial! It should be fun:D
Leave your questions in the comments and I’ll answer them in the next post.
“Hello, my name’s Lorna and I’m a final year medical student” I confidently announced to my husband Sam whilst checking for the hundredth time I had my stethoscope packed, searching for Sam’s smart work shoes and grabbing as many biros as I could before leaving. “Final year- I must remember that”. Off I went, striding hastily (yes, I was running later than expected) to catch the bus to my first day of my senior medical placement.
I imagine many of you may have had a slightly quieter, more relaxed start to term- perhaps more lie-ins, some sightseeing, making new friends, and all probably with less bodily fluids involved. However I wouldn’t swap mine any day! Term started in July (after a sunny 2 week break!), with helpful clinically orientated lectures and admin sessions- a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, receive a couple of free lunches (this is a big deal at medical school- we barely ever get free lunches!) and take part in the final year photo in front of Queen’s Tower. However, that was very quickly over, and the early mornings and dressing smart soon began.
In final year we rotate around a number of different placements- medicine, surgery, neurology, GP, A&E to name a few. The aim is to help you prepare to be a junior doctor; doing jobs such as writing in patient notes, updating ward lists, bloods, ordering tests, writing drug charts, writing discharge letters and clerking patients.
So off I went with my placement partner, armed with my stethoscope, notebook, ipad and mountain of black biros (these are very hard to keep hold of!) to the ward to ‘meet the team’. This sounds like an easy task, but if many years at medical school has taught me anything, it is that finding your team or medical notes on the wards is anything but simple most of the time.
On our ward there were 2 different medical teams- fortunately the first one we spied from a distance and approached was ours. Unfortunately we approached the male consultant and asked if he was ‘Dr …’ who is actually a female consultant. Then came the dreaded question… “What year are you in?”. “F… ff…final year” my placement partner quietly mumbled. “Great”, our consultant announced, “you should know lots then!” Note to self: remember to read around the subject before starting a placement on it!
Fortunately as the week went on, we slowly grew in confidence, discovered our team were very friendly, met lots of patients and dusted off our clinical medicine knowledge. Although unfortunately we still hadn’t grasped the hospital layout, so were continually asked by porters and patients if we were lost and needed help- a little embarrassing with your stethoscope on… especially when you later have to take blood from the patient who gave you directions!
The highlight, and scariest part of the week was being on call with the new team on ‘Black Wednesday’. This is the first Wednesday in August when the new junior doctors manage the patients alone for the first time. The team were magnificent and did a great job; staying calm and keeping patient’s safe.
However I spent the whole day thinking “This time next year it will be me…”, “What would I do with a patient like that?”, “What am I doing- next year this will be me…”.
Thankfully a chat with some of the new doctors reassured me that I would be fine and that final year would continue to prepare me… watch this space.
Number of pens lost: 3, Number of lives saved: 2 (okay… so not by myself!) Number of free lunches: 1
Welcome to my blog! Are you interested in Imperial? Or ChemEng? Or Woodward Hall? You are at the best place… I want to tell you everything from the moment of getting my @ic.ac.uk email address through the weekly Foundry Nights to my amazing Fluid Mechanics lectures. I hope you will enjoy it!
You might wonder what the categories mean at the side…
C12 – That’s where I live, the amazing Woodward Hall C block 12th floor! This category will include the ups and downs of living away from home and the joy when they introduce a new type of microwave food in tesco…
ChemEng – It is my course, MEng ChemEng 🙂 This will be all about the working bit of university life (who would have thought that going to Imperial actually involves studying?)
Last week it was exactly 100 years since Einstein officially presented his theory of general relativity. I’m studying course on it at the moment, and was so excited to go along to Imperial’s celebration of the event which Stephen Hawking was meant to be speaking at. Unfortunately he had to cancel at the last minute due to an illness, but there were other great speakers, including my lecturer Prof. Dowker who I’ve raved about before!
Here is the link to the recording of the event if you would like to watch it.
You’ll probably have seen articles about General Relativity everywhere last week, but this is one of my favourites by the author of the geeky web-comic xkcd. He uses the ten thousand most commonly spoken words to explain the theory and its history—here is the link to the article in the New Yorker.ty
I completely want to join in and write a bit about GR as well, but unfortunately I’m still halfway through the course and am still a few Christoffel symbols away from having a clue what’s going on! I’ll have to save that blog for when I’ve revised the course.
In other news the science budget wasn’t as completely demolished in the spending review as it could have been, which is better news than a lot of people were expecting. If you want to read more about that, here is a link to the Science Is Vital update page, a group that had been campaigning to stop the cuts to science funding.
Last week I was also part of a panel in a ‘town hall’ style meeting at Imperial with various members of staff and the other year reps to answer people’s questions. About 20 people came from years 3&4, who the meeting was for.
It was actually a pretty useful and interesting meeting. Some of the student’s questions were antagonistic (in some cases rightly so) and the staff reacted really calmly and well in response. I think it’s easy to feel like no one cares about your concerns at Imperial—we are such a big department for a start, however despite the many layers of bureaucracy and the difficulty in making changes, most of the staff do actually try to do what is best for the students and listen to them. Coming along to something like this, where anyone is invited to ask questions is a great chance to get to know who you can go to get your academic problems and injustices sorted out, even if you just sit at the back and feel reassured that some people in the department are trying to improve things.
On a completely different note, last night I went to a drinks reception in the houses of parliament as part of Scientists for Labour, which is a society associated with Labour who I have done a bit of blogging for in the past.
We got to have a bit of a snoop round the houses of parliament and see a House of Commons debate. We also confidently tried to make our way back to the entrance without our escort and got very very lost, ending up in a sort of boiler turret, passing by some really cool rooms, but which was a bit unnerving considering there were so many armed police about!
The reception was for all the Socialist Societies, which are societies affiliated with Labour. There were drinks and canapes Tom Watson as well as some Labour people from the House of Lords and it was fun.
I’m pretty new to it all, and certainly didn’t know as much about Scientists for Labour as my friend who I had gone with, so to start with I felt pretty nervous when people introduced themselves and started asking questions about the details of the society! However, the people were all really nice, coming from many interesting backgrounds, and I ended up having a good time them about their own societies and work. It turned out to be accidentally a pretty good ‘networking’ event for me in the end, just because I had a chance to show my genuine interest, and I’ve even got some offers of work experience from people, as well as the details of some new societies to get involved with.
In Year 3 you spend 3 x 10 week attachments at hospitals. I was at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital the last 10 weeks and I had such a fantastic time. I learnt a lot but also overcame a lot of anxiety!
Starting clinical placements was really tricky for me. I thought as a talkative happy person I would really enjoy being on the wards for the first proper time as a medical student. However, my first day was a disaster. I had my stethoscope round my neck and my medical student badge on, and I walked confidently up to my ward. It was ward round in the morning, the room was really warm. Really warm. A mixture of nerves, excitement and seeing a lot of blood made me get really faint. Yeah…10 minutes into my first day in the hospital and I was already on the floor. My consultant assured me that it happens to everyone…does it?!?!?!?! I didn’t see anyone else on the floor!!!!
Anyway, things picked up and I really enjoyed talking to patients…but then we had to examine them. Oh my gosh, it is so much harder than I imagined to feel comfortable to examine patients. I have been taught my whole life not to touch boys- at all. And then suddenly you are dumped into a situation when it’s absolutely fine to touch everyone, in fact people expect you to!!! Such a weird experience!!! Hospitals must be the only place in the world (apart from spas!) that this is normal.
Anyway, I got over this pretty quickly and started fully examining patients. By week 3 I was strutting around the wards loving life. But then, the consultants wanted to know what I had seen on examination. ARE YOU KIDDING!?!?! I had absolutely no clue. I just knew I was putting a stethoscope on a chest but I couldn’t really hear much it was all a muffle really. Oooh the learning curve was steep.
Anyway, I learnt. I started picking up a lot about what the diseases were, the treatments, the drugs and of course learning how to remember a patient’s name and not forget it a minute after asking.
I spent my last 2 days on Intensive Care Unit. It was intense. Just when I thought I was really confident after my first 10 weeks I came into a shocker of a situation when I had to deal with the really emotional side of working in healthcare. Patients were reaching their end of life and I was just a student. I couldn’t help anyone, in fact I am pretty sure I was just being a nuisance being there. But, I learnt a lot. The team work that went into the treatment in the Intensive Care Unit was immense to watch. In a fast paced environment the patient flow was fast too- patients were coming in and out of intensive care but I was just standing there on the side trying not to get in anyones way. Being a medical student has its fun perks, but also has its moments that you remember forever, and the first conversation about “turning off the machine” is one that I will never forget.
I am really looking forward to my next 10 week attachment and glad that we have a bit of a break in between to reflect and relax. I hope that the next 10 weeks are interesting, but not too interesting that I faint again with all that excitement.
It’s 9:56 am on Saturday and I just got up after some amazing-10-hour sleep 😀
Since this is my first post, I felt like some introduction should be in place. So HEY lads and girls/boys and lassies 😀 My name is Henry and I’m a first year Biologist at Imperial College. After spending nearly my entire life in this lovely city of Qingdao on China’s eastern coastline, I’ve started a new journey here in London. The little red dot below is Qingdao. (ever heard of Tsingtao Beer? Yep! That’s from Qingdao!) Seafood and German wursts are something you don’t want to miss out in Qingdao. And I have to say that it is really close to Seoul and Tokyo, about 1 hr and 1.5 hr flights respectively.
And here’s something else about me: I don’t eat dogs and cats. I love travelling and swimming.
(Courtesy of Panda Guides: http://www.pandaguides.com/features/qingdao_my_first_love.html)
Since English is not my native language, please don’t hesitate to point out any grammar mistake I made. (and no judgments! 😛 😛 :P) Chinese (Mandarin) is my first language and I’m still struggling to learn something new everyday from Chinese (Cantonese) which has been proved to be difficult! Also I’m learning German, provided by Horizons courses at Imperial. (Yes, I like languages :D)
Basically what I’m going to blog here is what I felt/saw/experienced/heard/tasted/smelled and … at Imperial. What you will see here is purely useful and unbiased information, that’s written by a man who’s truly new to this country and ready to adventure. Hopefully my blogs would bring something fresh to your minds and add some spicy stuff to your sad life xD. And more importantly to those who plan to study in London with particular attention on International students, I want to share my first-hand experience with you about what study feels like at Imperial and what life feels like in London.
Leave your questions in the comment box and I’ll try to answer them all in the next blog!
That’s pretty much it. Stay tuned for more blogs. and see y’alllll soooooon! 😀
After two poster presentations last week, this week’s #throwbackthursday is a timely look back at the first event I presented at, back in November 2013.
I started species identification of earthworms after attending a course in 2013 which proved very useful when I went on to sample earthworms and other soil animals during my MSc project. (more…)
