So ironic. I honestly cannot believe the amount of times I have come down with something this year as a clinical student. Maybe it is to do with picking stuff up at hospitals, or perhaps it is due to my increase in trips to the dodgy takeaway places this year. Either way, I am not doing too well at the moment and it is SOOOOO FRUSTRATING.
I have had this minor cough for a few weeks, then on Monday morning I woke up ready for uni but I couldn’t speak. My throat was so swollen ( I actually cried because I couldn’t talk…that’s bad.). Had a look inside my mouth and saw some white bits at the back. Now I am no “top in the year” student but I did realise that those spots probably shouldn’t be there. I took myself down to the GP and was handed a prescription of penicillin for tonsillitis. Great.
Doctor: “What are your plans for the rest of the week?”
Me: “I am on attachment at Hillingdon Hospital, it is my last week of haematology…”
I watched how the doctor started typing on his computer a note saying “…I have advised her that she should avoid contact with haematology patients who may be immunocompromised. I have advised her to take time off for the next 5 days to recover”. OH DEAR.
I mean, I know it is the right thing that I am not infecting any patients in the hospital but being bedridden and ill is the most boring thing in the world. I thought I would enjoy this week off but nothing happens in the daytime at home. It is so boring!!!! I don’t even have the energy to get on with stuff at home.
Being ill at University is a big annoyance. It means I can’t go in to things like the scheduled exam preparation, go out with my friends (so much fomo), and get on with my extra-curricular stuff.
I have spent hours over the past few days on google trying to cure myself in weird and wonderful ways. I have looked into all textbooks assessing every symptom I have hoping there is a magical cure. There is none.
Being ill as a medical student is so hard- you have bits of knowledge about what you are taking and what is going on but not enough to just fix yourself instantaneously. The waiting game is real, and I just want to get back to normal student life again. Sigh.
I will be accepting sympathy all week long. And any cures. Any anything that breaks this boredom.
This week I completed my final placement of medical school- my GP placement. As if this wasn’t scary enough, the placement was outside of London…
I am not a native Londoner, but having been at Imperial for 6 years feel quite at home here- I have the commuter walk, grumpy sigh and tube stare. Having completed all of my clinical placements so far in London, I was apprehensive to be taken to Boscombe, near Bournemouth for my final placement.
How do people travel without the tube? I mused the night before. What about shops, they all close at 5pm? Do they even have big hospitals? Will I be able to understand how people speak? What if they all have strong accents?
Although I argued… there will be fresh air, there will even be a beach. Imagine that, the sea and sand- far from London’s Southbank. And things will be cheaper than London. I might be near enough to walk to placement. And everyone is supposed to be more friendly out of London too.
After a night of worry I arrived at my placement and was very pleasantly surprised.
Boscombe is a small town along from Bournemouth, with a pier and a huge beach. Along with the beauty of the area, it is a relatively deprived area, with many facing large social, financial and medical challenges. This pocket of Boscombe sits within a very affluent area, and as a result the placement was very different to my expectations.
I had expected GP to be filled by checking older patients blood pressures, adjusting medications, doing home visits to nursing homes and screening lots of children with coughs and colds. However, this placement was very different with huge extremes- some patients were seriously unwell, there was a range of mental health issues and I could see the impact of a really hard life on many. These patients were interspersed with sporting injuries of local footballers, worried affluent individuals and private minor surgeries such as botox.
I was struck by the dedication of the team to ensure that all patients, regardless of their background had the best possible access to medical services and care. They invested in technology beyond the usual scope of GP- including MRI machines and ultrasounds, made difficult prescribing decisions for the best health of their patients and supported community projects.
Not only were the team incredibly friendly and welcoming, but during my time I saw incredible clinical signs, medical conditions and procedures that I had not seen in London. It turns out there is Medicine outside of the M25!
As well as the surgeries, I experienced life in a sea-side town. Staying with a friend of the GP’s I enjoyed exploring the local area, walking to work and many meals of fish and chips! People were very welcoming and friendly, although this was a struggle to adapt to- I found myself vigorously guarding my pockets when a local struck up conversation in the queue for a coffee… turns out he didn’t want to mug me, but just have a chat whilst waiting for his drink…
Everyone has questions about accommodation, so here’s another cheesy helpful extract answering questions you may or may not care about the answers to. For background: I currently live in Beit hall, in a single without en suite. I pay £192 a week, £2 of which are for hall activities, like karaoke, Netflix & chill nights and Beitan’s got talent.
So here are questions stolen from places, provided by the union and invented by my brain.
Every hall has a different atmosphere; how would you describe the atmosphere in your hall?
Beit is probably the party hall, if anything just because it’s attached to the union. No, the union is not too loud, because the windows have two layers and when both are closed, the screams of happy students are only a distant nightmare. Then again, if you wish to join and scream along, you know you’re not pissing off your hall-mates and it’s not like you have far to go. It’s generally nice and friendly, though I assume all halls are going to be like that.
What’s been the best event at your hall so far this year?
Beitan’s got talent was really fun, but unfortunately under advertised in my opinion. It was a great night nonetheless. The karaoke nights were a particular hit with me, as a brave soul joined me in singing some Slipknot and, I would like to add, knew all the words and put me to shame. Free breakfast on Sunday mornings is an absolute saviour for those days when both our cupboards and fridge are hungry.
What’s your top tip for new students applying for accommodation?
Don’t panic, you’ll be happy anywhere. No hall is perfect and each has it’s advantages. For example, Beit is great, but my bank account is crying.
What do now know about living in your hall that you wish you had known before you moved in?
People will be messy, loud and annoying, but you’ll love it anyway. From time to time, you’ll realise that you’re being the messy, loud, annoying one and you’ll suddenly forgive everyone for everything!
What the best thing about living in your hall, and the worst?
Best: It’s just so damn close to everything! The union, sci fi library and club stores are all right there. The physics building (the building you want to be in) is on the other side of the road and you can see any red carpet events held at the Royal Albert Hall. Bam.
Worst: It is expensive. It’s the third most expensive hall for a single room, after Eastside and Southside. Along with those two, it’s located right on campus, so bearing in mind that it’s close to stuff, the price is alright. It is also rather loud, but as mentioned previously, one can deal with that.
How do I apply for accommodation?
You fill out a form online before you come, where you list the 5 you fancy the most. You unfortunately can’t give them any priority and they are allocated almost randomly, maybe based on some of the extra information you give. Who knows? I heard rumour that if you apply for any double room, you’re likely to get it.
What options of contract length are there?
All contracts are however many weeks means you’re there all year, other that the summer holidays. Obviously, yes you can leave during Christmas and Easter, but you still pay.
When and how do I pay for my accommodation?
You receive an invoice well in advance and pay online. The payment is due the day after student finance comes in. I had a problem with my Santander account, as the overdraft can take up to a year to increase from £250 to £1500. My loan is small and my fee is big, so I was really just ending up with -£600, hence really needed that overdraft. I basically had to ask to pay later and wait until Santander let me use the overdraft the account actually came with!
What do I need to do before moving in?
Make sure you know what to bring. You don’t need lamps, a laundry basket or a mattress, but you do need pillows, duvets and sheets. There will be a list of what is already provided. I suppose that’s really it. Pack your stuff, don’t forget documents of sorts.
Features of Beit
There is no closed and locked bike storage area, but there is one just behind the Physics building (i.e. not far). There is a bike shelter, but it’s in the outdoor land of the quad.
As in all halls, to my understanding, there is a laundry room, which has recently been equipped with Circuit machines. This means no change and online top up.
Aaand the single rooms have sinks in them. What else must one know?
The Spring Term lasted from the 11th of January to the 23rd of March, which fell on a Wednesday. This was a bit odd, as I would have expected the term to end on Friday, but apparently Easter came early this year.
On that note, happy belated Easter! I hope you spent some quality time with your family and loved ones, and that your celebrations for the resurrection of Jesus Christ were lovely.
As for me, I spent Easter with my family. I am very glad to have come back home after 6 months. If you don’t know, my home is Sint Maarten, a beautiful, tiny island in the Caribbean. Having arrived back made me realize that while I study in one of the best cities in the world, I live in paradise.
Anyway, to the topic of this blog post: Spring Term. As the term progressed, I gained more knowledge about my different modules and the Bioengineering field, and I got to work on an electrical engineering project that I am very proud of. Because a lot has occurred, in this post I will only cover what impacted me most:
1 – Electronic Stethoscope
Prototype
As part of our Electrical Engineering Labs module, we got to the opportunity to design and implement a device that is meant to amplify the sound of the human heartbeat – all with simple resistors, capacitors and operational amplifiers (op-amps)! We didn’t jump on to work on the stethoscope at once, however. We began by designing and simulating different circuits based on op-amps on LT spice IV, a software that facilitated the process.
After getting some experience using the software and truly understanding how the op-amp-based circuits operated, we moved on to design the stethoscope. The module was then moved from the computer to the laboratory, in which groups of students started off by building the simple circuits we designed at first (to get a grasp of the building units) and finally our stethoscope design. I worked in a pair, as most of us did, so my lab partner and I divided tasks to make things easier. At the end of the project, we managed to get the whole circuit to work!
2 – Programming language C
Coming to Imperial, I had basic programming knowledge – input/output, loops, if-statements, arrays. But through the Programming 1 module, I expanded my knowledge of programming and learned a completely new language (C), with more interesting codes to use in my programs! The module included the aforementioned topics, but also using different datatypes, casting data, errors such as truncation and overflow, selection statements (if-else & switch), iteration statements (for, while, & do-while), using functions to return one or more results, arrays, memory allocation, pointers, and using streams to read data from a .txt file and create another with the results.
The module was assessed in two ways. The first were 20 questions asking about what programming achieves and how. The next involved correcting or writing 8 short programs with the different codes that we had learned in the term. It lasted 2 hours long and one of the programs was quite challenging to write! I am currently awaiting my grade, but I believe I did well.
3 – Fourier Series and Transforms
You may know about Taylor and Maclaurin series, which can represent any function by the sum of an infinite number of polynomials. But Fourier series are more interesting. This was one of the new things I learned in our Mathematics 1 module, and the concept is slightly different, as functions are represented by the sum of sinusoidal terms instead. This type of series can be further applied in the Fourier transforms, which are used to turn a function from one domain (say time, measured in seconds s) to its inverse domain (frequency, measured in hertz, Hz). This can be applied to investigate signals and differentiate the significant ones from the noise.
For example, as we were dealing with electronic signals – generated by a microphone picking up the heartbeat sound – in our stethoscope project, Fourier transforms could be used to figure out the frequencies of the subject’s heartbeat sounds. Knowing this, the filters can be designed such that more noise is attenuated, while amplifying the significant signal.
4 – Wet Labs
Back in high school, I really liked working in the laboratory. I appreciated the environment, its formalities and working with the apparatus in different experiments. Back then, I remember wanting to work in a university laboratory. I wondered what else would be available, if the formalities were similar or different, and most of all, what bacteria I could play with.
And I got to play with some bacteria alright.
Ok, not necessarily play with, but worked with and investigated under a microscope after testing if they were gram positive or negative.
Another one of our modules this term was Wet Labs Skills, in which we got the opportunity to access two labs that belonged to the Life Sciences and Chemistry departments.
What’s a good college if the departments don’t share labs, right? That makes Imperial a great college!
We had two lab sessions, and in the first one we used a Gilson pipette to transfer 0.000025 L of liquid, which is so insanely small! Our first experiment involved transferring small amounts of liquid from vial to vial for a suspenseful result. In our second experiment, we dealt with several bacteria colonies, and we had to determine if they were gram positive (indication of having a thick cell wall made of peptidoglycan) or gram negative (the opposite and having an additional lipid membrane). For this experiment, we also used a microscope, and had to identify the strain of bacteria with a dichotomous key. Honestly, it was very exciting, especially working with a lab partner to divide tasks with.
This was taken from our lab sheet. Credits to the one who prepared it: Dr David Hartley, Dept. of Life Sciences.
Other modules that we had this term were: Electromagnetics 1, Heat and Mass Transport 1, Molecules Cells and Processes and Mechanics 1. They each enlightened me with new and interesting knowledge, but I enjoyed the 4 things I listed most.
Thinking about what I shall write next, it will probably be on something more personal, if not an upcoming race with the Cross Country team in the Netherlands! Stay tuned for more 😀
Remember to write any comments if there’s anything you’re wondering about. I try to answer asap.
I promise I don’t bite.
At Imperial we are really lucky that everyone gets a guaranteed place on an intercalated BSc course, hence why we are here for a hefty 6 years.
During an intercalated BSc all medical students take a step away from the normal day-to-day life of a medical student and enter the realm of essays and deadlines for a year in 4th year. At the end of year 4 we all gain a BSc in the course of our choice. Pretty cool. We spend September-Feb in lectures and then have our exams, and then we get to complete a research project (or a short course) for a few months. Very cool.
So a few weeks ago it all really kicked off with choosing what we want to study next year. We had a BSc fair, spoke to loads of students about their experiences and had a roam around online about what it was we really wanted to get a degree in. It was like UCAS all over again.
So what were the options? Cardiovascular sciences, endocrinology, gastroenterology & hepatology, global health, haematology, immunity & infection, neuroscience & mental health, pharmacology, reproductive & developmental sciences, respiratory science or surgery & anaesthesia! You could even apply to other universities (but why would you want to leave Imperial??!)
I went through the courses and ranked the different modules, then eliminated the lowest scoring courses to give me my top 5. I then worked out my order and submitted my application of my top 5 choices.
My top 5 were:
Global Health
Endocrinology
Reproductive and Developmental sciences
Immunity & Infection
Respiratory Science
I am soo happy to say that I got my first choice and will be studying Global Health next year!
I am really, really excited to get stuck into a BSc course for a year. Will be a nice change! For now, I have only got a few weeks left in the hospitals…and then…3rd year exams. Back to revision I go!
Every year the Natural History Museum Student Association organises a conference held for Museum-based students to present their research. This year I am on the Student Association Committee so was involved in helping with the conference, and also presented a poster and a talk.
Organising a conference is hard work! There are sponsors to find, speakers to invite, programmes to produce, catering to arrange, and things you might not even consider such as booking porters for the tables and ensuring Museum security procedures are kept to. Organisation began before Christmas but the last few weeks leading up to the event were the busiest, and thankfully it all went well.
Our keynote speakers were Ross Piper, Zoologist, Entomologist, Author and Presenter and Iain Stewart, BBC Natural History Unit and Plymouth University. Over the two days 14 students gave oral presentations on their research at the Museum and we also had a presentation by Dr Mary Henes on the Brilliant Club – a charity which widens access to universities. There were also poster presentations by students and stands from some of our sponsors.
This week called for celebration as after 6 years at Imperial we sat our last ever (hopefully) medical school exams!
Six years preparing for one exam?
Yep! Six years of preparation- no pressure!
It’s not that bad; every year has end-of-year exams which you need to pass before entering the next year. Thankfully therefore finals tests you on useful clinical knowledge that you will need to start work, not the details of the Kreb’s cycle or minor anatomical details.
How do they test you on everything?
Exams take a few formats which cover practical and clinical skills, as well as theory. For us this year this was a practical exam with clinical stations: in each you needed to examine/ talk to a patient, and then discuss the clinical findings and management with the examiner. We also sat two theory exams- for me this was in the same exam hall as my first exam at med school- very poetic! And finally we sat a national practical prescribing exam on the computer (no you can’t internet search the answers!)
So now you are done with exams forever?
Unfortunately not quite! We continue to sit exams through the rest of our working lives. Fortunately Imperial set up their finals to mirror our exams in the future, so I’m a little less apprehensive about them after all the practice we’ve had.
Celebration?
Yes! After the exam a huge cheer went up and many bottles of champagne were popped! Just waiting for the sun to come out now too…
I’ve mentioned the rig building project already, but let’s refresh the basics again:
“Construction of a closed system rig to independently control level and flow rate of water between two tanks. Water must be delivered from one tank to the other tank while maintaining levels. No by pass or recirculation in only one tank will be allowed.”
We had a week to come up with a design, and then 7 hours to build it. It sounds manageable, but we had a couple other deadlines, so it was terribly exhausting and most of the time I was happy to be able to stand straight and not fall asleep…
First of all, the design. As I mentioned, my father and I drew a very creative and cool design, but the team decided that it’s not practicable because of the lot of calibrations and several types of flexible tube requirements… So we ended up with a very-very-very simple design: one tube up, one tube down with 1 valve. I just called it the “boring” design, but since we had to do a presentation about the “features” of the rig before the demonstration, the “boring” was changed to “simple, cheap and easy to use”… Power of the language 🙂
The benefit of a simple design is that you don’t need a fancy P&ID (piping and instrumentation diagram), you don’t have a long inventory and the description is 2 paragraphs. So, after we submitted our design on Tuesday, we could almost forget about the whole thing till the next Monday… Of course, just almost… The funniest thing about the rig building project was how the entire class worked together: as we did it in two cycles, the first already finished it by the time we, the second, started. So, we could ask them about everything and exchange ideas… Therefore, we ended up collecting bits and pieces like “one valve is not enough” or “be there early to get the best aluminium struts” or “do the calibration excel beforehand” or “use gate valve instead of ball valve”. It was hilarious when the weekend before the construction, I got a message from my teammates in almost every hour, starting with “one of my friends from Cycle 1 said…”.
So, when we went there on Monday, we already changed our design quite a lot, based on “friend-informations”. We ended up having two outlets with two valves and a float switch in the upper tank. So, time to build it! The first 3 hours were mainly about the aluminium strut: who would have thought that screwing together 10 pieces of aluminium with 18 angle brackets using 3 allen keys is so difficult? Our team was allocated a space at the end of the lab – the furthest away from the workshop where all the pipes, screws or angle brackets were. So my job was to run back and forth between the workshop and our rig, finding the right lengths of copper pipes with the perfectly fitting nuts…
On the afternoon session we finished the piping and we were the first to pour water into our system! It felt so good, we were so “ahead”. And then, the float switch happened… When we tried to test it, it didn’t work! Firstly, we changed how the circuit was connected together. Then changed the float switch. Four times. Then asked a GTA. And 2 other GTAs as well. So after 1.5 hours of trial and error, we finally made it work, but we couldn’t start the calibration, because the session ended.
So we had to do all the calibration on Wednesday, in the remaining 1 hour. One hour!!!! We were there super early so that we could start at 09:00:00 🙂 In the first 15 minutes we quickly did the flow rate calibration, then in the remaining 45 minutes we did the flow level. It was terrible! After adjusting the valves, we had to look at the flow level and from the very little changes determine if it is constant or going somewhere. I thought we will run out of time when we only had 3 measurements done from the 15 and 20 minutes left, but somehow, magically, we finished all the calibration, did the documentation by 10:05 and even laminated it 🙂
The last half an hour was terrible but then the demonstration went very-very well: we had to do 10 and 20 L/min and 20, 50 and 70% flow level. The funny thing is that we only calibrated it for even levels (20,40,60 and 80), so the 50/70 were quite an improvisation 😀 But apparently the professors liked it because they gave us 20 As and 8 Bs which is awesome! So overall I was quite happy and despite the difficulties, I think this rig building was one of the best experiences in Imperial so far. And I made a picture before we took apart our system (in about 15 mins…), so here it is:
Our beautiful rig 🙂
I recently heard that despite my initial belief that only my parents read my blog, there are actual real people out there who are interested in my stories… Thank you guys, I hope you like it! 🙂 And if you have any comments/questions, just post it down here and I’ll try and answer them 🙂
I’ve lost all control and can’t stop going on trips. It was was meant to be to Devon, but ended up heading to Wales almost last minute. This worked out pretty well as we got lovely, all be it expensive, accommodation with a cute old couple that gave us food and actual real beds with actual real pillows! Bam.
A few experienced people went off to paddle some nice grade 4, called Nantygwyryd…or so we thought. They returned displeased and it turned out to be a lovely grade 4 scrape. Apparently they actually had to exit the boats and walk a few times. Once we reached put in, pretended to be a rollercoaster, pretended to be Gazolphins and generally had some great merry times, we met a lovely lady, who warned us about angry farmers and gave the whole group a rather unimpressed glare when we mentioned what the morning mission consisted of.
The river Seiont (usually a grade III with a pleasant grade IV rapid, but more a III-(III+)) was initially just pleasantly bouncy and contained a few nice drops, but ended up presenting us with a damn good view of Caernarfon Castle. Due to the flat water at the end and the fact that paddled 11km, we were rather ready for chili. Taking boats out by climbing out of them directly onto a ladder and then heaving them up with a throw line was also oddly fun. I think an important addition to the level of pure funbags was the fact that my typhoon drysuit was still functional and kept me pretty warm.
dang pretty
We were off the water with plenty of light left and popped for a quick shop, because apparently we didn’t have enough mushrooms. The evening was the usual blur of chili, card games and *hot chocolate*.
The next morning was slow for most of us, as the two experienced ones went off to lose their glenginity i.e. paddle the Fairy Glen (a grade V(V+)). A few exciting things did occur while packing up though, as the owners locked the drying room with a bunch of kit still contained within it and promptly left. There is absolutely no way that we had to open a window and gently climb into the drying room. We decided to meet the glenginity losers at the Betws y Coed train station, where we found them enjoying some proper breakfast. One of them managed to obtain a mildly impressive cut on his eyebrow, which had luckily stopped bleeding before they ate food and met us.
Eventually, we decided to paddle the Ceirw, which began with a death gorge i.e. a compulsory portage. We decided to get on the river after it, so we got a lovely look from a bridge and path alongside the river. It looked like pure, never ending, beautiful death. After finding the appropriate put in, we made the decision that 2 miles is a ridiculously short paddle, despite the fact that we were 2+ hours later than we really should have be. Hence, we decided to paddle past the confluence with the Alwen. This was also a short paddle, but contained a pretty fun weir adventure. We approached a rather smooth looking weir, though remembered the guide book mentioning one to portage. Luckily, we did get out and look at it, which allowed us to see the disgusting tow back on the second drop and the fact that getting out in between the two drops was not likely to be easy.
It was overall a really good trip, as it contained 5 rivers and the ones I got to paddle were just lovely. Unfortunately, the next trip was cancelled, but not only was it okay to leave paddling for the term on such a high, but it was also replaced by a half-trip to Lee Valley. This means that I will finally get a Legacy assessment in two days, making me less incompetent 🙂
Living in London is busy. Studying at Imperial is manic. Resting does not come easily.
This week I found myself challenged to rest. Everyone works better when they take breaks as well as study, but I have recently found that this is easier said than done! I find it takes a lot of confidence to be able to take a good break without worrying about work. This is particularly true in the run up to exams.
Everywhere I seem to look people are working. I try to be disciplined and take breaks, but find it hard to relax. I start thinking about work, worrying about things I need to do or I simply cannot sit still!
Alas, after six years of battling I have still not fully conquered the balance of rest and worry and work. If you feel similar there are many resources at Imperial that can offer a great help. I’m sure this won’t be the last week I am challenged by this, but with each that passes I improve!
I had expected GP to be filled by checking older patients blood pressures, adjusting medications, doing home visits to nursing homes and screening lots of children with coughs and colds. However, this placement was very different with huge extremes- some patients were seriously unwell, there was a range of mental health issues and I could see the impact of a really hard life on many. These patients were interspersed with sporting injuries of local footballers, worried affluent individuals and private minor surgeries such as botox.
