Blog posts

10 Cups of Coffee A Day | The Exam Life #2

MEng Civil Engineering

22 May 2019 Constantly in denial that I was sleep deprived, sleeping an average of 3 hours a day and surviving on ten cups of coffee a day. The perfectionism, the need for constantly being right and accurate at the same time, led me to this day. The lack of sleep simply put me somewhere between constantly making small mistakes that frustrates me and the paranoia that the one thing that I didn’t perfectly understood was the one thing that would fail me.

Structural Mechanics, a subject that in my opinion requires focus on details, something I admitted lack in this circumstances.

36 Hours at Imperial College | The Exam Life #1

MEng Civil Engineering

The first day I came to Imperial as a student I vividly remember being told not to spend 24 hours in the library, and yet I spent 36 hours in the library.

20 May 2019 Seconds after finishing my maths exam, I rushed myself to the third floor computer room in Skempton. After feeling like I just failed Maths, I can only fail one other subject, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t Computational Methods (the exam I had 2 days after Maths).

Somewhere between overdosing on caffeine and bankrupting over deliveroos, I was at the computer, frustrated and enraged that the codes didn’t made sense to me.

Part-time work

MSc Science Communication

Studying in one of the most expensive cities in the world is one factor that affects people’s decision to study at Imperial College. Rest assured it can be done, but particularly for students like myself who are undertaking a one year master’s course, the different funding options means that money can sometimes get tight. An upside of the course though, is its flexibility in allowing its students to have part-time jobs. Indeed, most students from the Science Communication Unit have part-time jobs, myself included.

I have previously mentioned my job as an Observatory Explainer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, but have not delved into many details.

Internship Applications: My Story

Mathematics and Statistics

Did I manage to get an Internship?

Here’s a timeline of how I finally secured my Second Year Summer Internship at one of my favourite companies.

August – It’s all about the CV

A year in advance I found myself sitting in the waiting area of an empty careers service getting my CV checked. I would throughly recommend using the service over summer before they become extremely busy in October again. The careers service was able to not only identify key experiences I should include in my CV but also suggested some structural ideas. Whilst I know loads of people who LaTeX their CVs (overkill IMO) I think that you can make a perfectly good CV on Word.

Internship Applications: Top Tips

Mathematics and Statistics

How to successfully navigate applications

One of the hardest parts of being a penultimate year student is juggling applications for internships alongside academic studies. Having just been through this process, I wanted to share my journey and also some top tips on how to survive this time-consuming task successfully! In this first post I will talk about the general process and my top tips!

The general steps in the application process
  1. Online Application – This usually involves providing your personal details, answering some questions about your motivations for this career, listing your previous work experiences. Sometimes you will be asked to provide a CV and cover letter
  2. Online Assessments – Either with your application or sometimes if you make it through the first round, you will be asked to complete some online assessments.

On the other side

Mathematics of Planet Earth

I can’t believe it’s already been a year since I participated in the Three Minute Thesis competition. According to tradition, the winner judges the contestants in the following year, so on Wednesday I had the honour to sit next to prominent science communicators and watch excellent young scientists explaining their research in… three minutes. 

This year the Graduate School replaced the Three Minute Thesis competition by the 4Cs Science Communication Competition. Although the idea is similar, there are some differences: 

  • Not only PhD, but also MRes students could participate. 
  • While Three Minute Thesis contestants could use only one static slides, this year almost everything was allowed: Power Point presentations, props and whatever else they were able to carry on stage. 

How did I end up at the WISE Conference 2019?

MSc Science Communication

There are many aspects of the science communication course at Imperial that make it so enjoyable, but perhaps the freedom we are given is the most rewarding part. In our assessments we are given an element of free choice in what we centre our arguments around, which allows for a great deal of creativity and expression. One of the most daunting free choices I’ve had to make in the last few months has been the topic for my dissertation.

The parameters were simply ‘choose anything that is related to science communication’. Having studied this area for the last 8 months I can confidently say that there is a lot that could be explored.

Harvard Med Placement

MBBS Medicine

Instagram: @malamawkin

In my final year as an Imperial Med Student I have been super fortunate to have the opportunity to join the Harvard/Boston Children’s Hospital Innovation and Digital Accelerator Team here in Boston. I was linked up to this placement by researchers at Imperial, and so far it has been fantastic!

I am working as a Digital Health intern looking at how we can use #bigdata to enhance healthcare delivery, especially when related to infectious diseases and health inequalities. I have also been looking at the differences in implementation of digital health strategies here in comparison to the UK.

It is worth

MEng Aeronautical Engineering

There is nothing wrong about giving yourself a break. Lately, I’ve been thinking that we shouldn’t get angry with ourselves after realising we’ve spent time without apparently getting profit out of it.

Five minutes ago, I was forcing myself to “one last mechanics past paper before dinner”, while I was having a crazy headache.

After attempting the first question and failing greatly I told myself that this didn’t make any sense. It was evident that I could not concentrate anymore and that I should stop studying.

I now lay down in bed and stare at the window. It is 8 pm and it is still bright.

A Little Bit Of Happiness

MSc Science Communication

At such a busy time of year, scrolling through the news doesn’t always seem to make things better. A 2018 study reported that over half of Americans find that the news causes them stress, anxiety, fatigue and sleep loss. Although it is important to stay informed, particularly on news stories that require urgent and collective action, sometimes a bit of good news is what we need.

This inspired Emily Coxhead to create ‘The Happy Newspaper’, an online and print publication to ‘share positive news and wonderful people’. Her newspapers are released quarterly and can be delivered or picked up in several locations across the UK.

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