Sunday was Valentine’s Day, and this year I managed to visit home to spend some time with my boyfriend, Andrew. We had an earthworm hunt! and then the more classic takeaway and movie.
Andrew digging the hole for earthwormsEarthworms under an old bag of compost = lazy earthworm hunting!Happy Valentine’s Day!
I also enjoyed some of the entomological Valentine posts on Twitter, which I gathered into a Storify:
Everyone knows that Imperial is (mainly) a STEM university. Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (and a bit of Medicine and Business): all the good stuff. The average Imperial student knows pi to the 40th decimal places by heart but probably couldn’t name 3 Shakespeare plays… That’s why the Horizons program is such a good idea: it brings a little bit of humanities into our STEMy world. How little? Well, exactly 2 hours a week 🙂
In the first term I signed up for The World Today (I chose this over Spanish because I realised Spanish can be learnt anywhere, but this course is quite a unique thing…). We were divided into small groups and each group had a different global problem to focus on. Our group got “Religious Extremism”. I wouldn’t say it was bad… it’s just not my type of interest. Of course, religious extremism is a serious issue with all those wars and terrorist attacks, but… I just wasn’t so keen on the topic. Our task was to collect data and information from the internet, and produce a so-called “Wiki” on Blackboard which contained all our research. We got to learn how to properly reference things, how to structure an article, how to use graphs and pictures. It was quite useful, and at the end I was very glad I didn’t drop it, because it was an excellent opportunity to get to know people from other courses. (Seriously, I practically commute between C12 and ACEX, my only contact with the “outside world” is this Horizons course…)
The World Today course is part of the Global Challenges topic, and it has a straight sequel in the spring term called “Sustaining our Future”. I signed up for this one because I hoped I could get a better research area this time. I missed the first session because I had flu, but I wrote an email to the course leader asking her to put me in any group which deals with either Education or Renewable Energy. Yeah, very stereotypical “save the world” type of problems, but after all this is what this course is about… 🙂 And I got an answer that I was put into Education… YESSSS!
Education and improving the quality of education is one of my favourite topics. I could talk about it for hours, I have numerous ideas about the solutions and I would love to act immediately and help everyone and solve everything and… You get the idea, I’m over keen on this one… 🙂
We subdivided the tasks among ourselves in the group, so my focus are become the “social factor”. I put two questions in front of me:
– Why teachers lose motivation?
– Why are students not motivated to become teachers?
And I tried to answer them…
Questions and answers…
In the next few weeks my task is to come up with several distinct solutions with detailed analysis (cost, benefit, involvement, etc) and choose the best one. The truth is, in the past few days I spent more time working on my Horizons course than on my main course… But who cares? It’s about EDUCATION!!!
Having finally finished the lab cycles, I can talk about them in a much less bitter manner. They are split into three sections and there is a lab guide flying around the internet if you wish to see what actually goes on, but I’ll just go over them briefly through the filter of my opinions.
Measurement and Uncertainty
This isn’t really a lab cycle, just an introduction to the pain of error propagation. It’s an unfortunately useful pain and actually clears up some confusion from A-level. I always asked why we calculated errors in one certain way, when more than one appeared to make sense and heard “because they are all valid, but OCR only accepts this one”. Everything now makes sense and you realize pretty soon just how useful this all is as you already feel the burn of it after 4 hours of labs.
Experiments in Optics and Electromagnetism
I rate this section as the worst of the three, but only because it coincides with A-level experiments a bit. This won’t be the case with everyone and there is also no problem with it, so the word ‘worst’ implies bad things that I don’t want it too. There is also only a certain level of accuracy you can achieve during an electromagnetism experiment which involves small magnetic fields, when your desk, the cabinet under it, the whole room, the building, the general area of South Kensington and by this point even your soul are full of metallic objects and mysterious electronic devices.
Demonstration Experiments
These were actually quite cool. The problem of a limited accuracy is and will remain to be an issue, but the experiments were ones I had never seen in school and that involve constants that we use all the time, such as the speed of light. You also get to work with equipment that sounds and looks cool, like grating spectrometers.
Computing
This one was just really interesting as if you have a problem, you can always fix it. You may want to kill something fluffy and cute along the way, but you can theoretically fix it. The introduction to this was very well structured and provided a perfect background for those who were new to Python and a pleasant reminder for those who have delved into it before.
Lab Reports
Ew ew ew. Annoyingly useful to learnt to write well, but also ew ew ew. I secretly enjoyed them once they were done and I could just sit back and feel a bit smug that I wrote something that looks like a real report. Each lab cycle comes with its own lab report at the end, so you get three of these utter joys to look forward to.
Waffles and faff
Difficult and sad things sometimes happen, but I have honestly been overwhelmed by the amount of support and general loveliness I have encountered in the past week. I can honestly say that some people have balanced out actual tears with tears of joy (potentially because matching socks are enough to make me cry when particularly emotional, but still). I doubt these people will read this, but if they happen to, then hey, you’re great, thank you. On a more general note and on a note that it makes more sense to talk about in a blog, these people include members of staff. One said “If you want to get a cup of tea and talk (*cry) to me, feel free”, which is insanely lovely, since I think this is the busiest person in the department anyway. Sorry for being soppy, but I am really grateful to have nice people exist.
JUGGLING VARSITY HAPPENED
and it was great fun. I finally learned to juggle (only 3) the day before, so I felt not entirely out of place. Even though a rolla bolla board was broken, I was hit in the lip with a bouncy juggling ball, so solid rubber, and I crashed into solid floor with my knee and am now still in pain, it was awesome! Cambridge won, but I manged to suppress my competitive side and accepted these people nonetheless. I also confirmed for the second time, both of which were due to juggling, that Nandos has rather lovely and very edible veggie food. Whoop.
Taking clear and well-organised lecture notes is not only important for later revision, but also helps to keep up with the lecture pace. Here are some things that you need to know about lecture notes taking.
1> Straight copy from lecture PPT is pointless: Really, why would you even bother going to lectures if you are just gonna copy stuff from PPT. In University lectures, most lecturers don’t just read stuff he wrote in PPT, instead he talks about stuff that’s elaborated based on the slides. Focus more on what the lecturer says and writes in the lecture 😛
2> Get enough sleep before lecture: A good night sleep will definitely help you concentrate on the lectures (especially during the lectures that you find boring). This is especially important for Biologists as first year Biology students will always have double lectures in the morning starting from 9am. If you just had a 2 or 3 hour sleep after clubbing at ministry the night before the lecture, you might as well sleep in and skip those lectures. You won’t be able to focus on the lectures and coming to lectures ‘half-sober’ is a waste of time. Watch panopto recordings of the lectures instead. 😛
3> Prepare for lectures beforehand: Normally lecture PPT will be uploaded long before actually beginning the lecture. I usually use Microsoft onenotes to take notes and therefore what I like to do before lectures is to copy and paste PPT slides into the onenote page. So that during the lectures, you’d simply writing around or in the PPT slides without having to copy what’s already given in the PPT. (Saves a lot of time) And make sure you read through the PPT slides in order to get a general idea about how this lecture is structured and what you will expect to see in the lecture. 😛
4> Immediately go through the lecture notes afterwards: It is very likely that things you wrote in the lecture notes might get unrecognizable after the lectures whether it’s due to fast-writing or whatever the reason is. Usually 1-2 hour time after the lectures is the ‘golden time’ to re-call the squiggles and doddles you made in the lecture notes and can convert back to normal revision notes! 😛
5> Find your favorite seat in the lecture theater: Sitting somewhere that makes you feeling uncomfortable is not gonna help you to take notes and concentrate on the lectures. Get there a bit early to secure your ‘Sheldon’s spot’ 😛
That’s all from this post. I might do a post on the food I made since I got in UK. And it’s nearly the time when everyone starts looking for next year’s accommodation and hall senior application season. I’ll also do a post about that later this month. 😛
When I first visited London one of the first things I noticed was the ridiculous amount of ads that plastered the walls of tube stations. As you stood on a crazy long escalator you were bombarded with things to buy, shows to see, online shopping sites to try… etc. But the thing that really interested me were the shows.
check out all those ads!
The theatre culture in London is awesome, there are a huge variety of shows from musicals, Shakespeare, the latest book adaptation, comedies and more. The musicals with never ending runs, like Billy Elliot, Lion King, Les Miserables and other ‘classics’ are more targeted at tourists who want to experience the theatre culture, rather than the ‘theatre connoisseur’ who enjoys frequenting more obscure productions. However, as a form of entertainment, theatre going is definitely considered more “classy” than most (probably because of the price of tickets) and typically attracts a certain demographic of older people. Lucky for me, this means there are a lot of offers around for students as theatres seek to encourage younger people to attend. Most shows have some kind of student discount or special ticket ranging from £5. It’s a good deal really and looking up these offers even got me cheap tickets to the sold out Hamlet, with Benedict Cumberbatch.
In Sydney, the theatre just wasn’t popular as a form of entertainment or a ‘night out’. Ok that and not many people are fans of sitting through renditions of Shakespeare. However, now that I’ve essentially entered theatre lovers wonderland, I’m taking full advantage regardless of whether I have company. No one judges a lone theatre goer… at all. Given I do go to Imperial where I’m sure Shakespeare fans don’t really abound… I’ve become rather good at putting aside the awkwardness of going to things alone (this is not limited to theatre, I went to a concert alone too = next level loner life). Once you get past it, it’s kind of freeing in that you aren’t letting anything get in the way of what you like and enjoying yourself. Friends are an added bonus, not a necessity.
That’s another thing having mainly hall friends, you share common geography not common interests and it does seem stupid not to go to things just because no one else you know is interested. Although you could argue part of the fun is the social experience. It does really develop your ability to speak to strangers though, you may not be forming deep relationships with small talk, but you get to meet all sorts of people, which at a theatre is really quite a variety. I met another lone theatre goer at Henry IV Part I who was Canadian, lived in London and spoke fluent Russian… That’s nothing if not interesting. I even stayed for the post show talk where with the depth of their questions, I was amazed by how seriously people took these adaptations of Shakespeare. Some detail about my recent Shakespeare exploits …
King and Country Cycle
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) are putting on a series of 4 of Shakespeare’s histories: Richard II, Henry IV Part I and II, and Henry V. They are linked in terms of their chronology and share characters, but were originally written to be performed as individual plays. This is similar to another attempt to make these 4 plays a series with the BBC’s Hollow Crown adaptation starring Ben Whishaw, Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston … Which I watched and really enjoyed, but having seen it live I must say the experience is very different.
The main sell of these plays for the popular audience was that David Tennant played Richard II and while tickets for Richard II sold out months in advance (seriously intense digging was necessary to procure my tickets), I was able to buy £5 student tickets to the other plays in the cycle and got great stalls seats. In recent times, British actors who have achieved success through film and television returning to theatre roles has brought mainstream media attention to productions that otherwise wouldn’t have interested the demographic of ‘crazy fans’. For example, the BBC is making a second Hollow Crown series of 4 different plays starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Judi Dench and Michael Gambon. Personally, I think its a great way to introduce Shakespeare to people who wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed or have been exposed to it. Hopefully people come for the actors, and stay for the story? I’m allowed to hope.
It was also the first time I’ve experienced the ‘stage door’ aspect of theatre, where the actors come out after the show to meet their ‘fans’. For the most part, its not really that crazy, but after Richard II it was nuts. People who weren’t watching the play waited outside for hours to be at the front. I came out after the show very confused as to what was going on and joined the crowd in curiosity. 20 minutes of waiting, a crazy crush and loud screaming when David Tennant came out and frantic programme waving later, I had an autograph and a lot of paparazzi style photos. But hey, it was an experience. When Benedict Cumberbatch was in Hamlet, they had to stop doing it because the crowds were just too crazy. By contrast, there was virtually no crowd after any of the other plays in the cycle… So much for people coming to the theatre for the Shakespeare eh?
look at that long hairpaparazzi style
Seriously, I had a hell of a good time watching people pounce about on stage in cool medieval costumes. My next Shakespearean exploit is As You Like It at the National Theatre (the first Shakespeare I’ll see not at the Barbican centre) as they have £5 student tickets and I’m also trying to find time to see Wicked, because I found a theatre project offering £5 tickets to that too! Its actually cheaper than clubbing and healthier for my liver. Woo! Now I just have to find some theatre keen buddies.
The Spring test is some kind of “preparation” for the final exams in May/June. A “taster”, where we can get to know what kind of problems to expect, how to deal with exam stress, how to use the calculator… It counts 5% in the end of year mark, which is lower than the Matlab test (6%). That’s where things went wrong…
Not every subject is “spring test subject”, only Fluid Mechanics, Properties of Matter, Mathematics, Thermodynamics and Process Analysis. And even from these, not every lecture is “spring test material”, just the previously specified ones… And we were told that we shouldn’t worry, it’s an easy test, we should spend about a week on revision, that is more than enough. Well…
The problems started when I realised I didn’t know where to start. I made this amazing list about the lecture notes I should re-read:
Spring test revision list
… and I started to re-read them. As I already mentioned in a previous post, I don’t really know how to study, so this re-reading was not very effective. I made some notes and I felt I understood the material. But then came the shock: I tried to solve a Spring test past paper. And I couldn’t answer a single question on it… Of course, this is a normal thing, you just need more revision and it’ll be fine, right? Except that the test was on Friday, and I realised I need more revision on Thursday at 3pm…
So I spent the rest of my Thursday desperately trying to figure out how to quickly squeeze as much knowledge as possible into my poor little brain… I made a few summary sheets, because I love colours and I love summaries, but they were just hopeless attempts to save the day.
Colours, colours everywhere…
The next day I woke up very early, and I went through a past paper for some final bits of information… And then at 10am I went into the room knowing full well that I would fail this exam. In the morning we had 3 hours for 3 subjects, and then another 3 hours in the afternoon for the remaining 2.
I don’t know the results, and I didn’t want to discuss my performance with my classmates, so I will wait and see what the markers think about my “work”. But I know that I am satisfied with only one out of the 5 subjects, and you can imagine what that means in terms of marks…
To sum up, I was too light-minded. I thought 5% is just not worth revising that much. And then, when it hit me that I should’ve studied much more (because there is always this “moment” when it hits you, sooner or later…) it was already too late. I made a mistake which I hope I won’t make again and the only good thing is that it was “just” the spring test, not the actual summer exams. I’ve written about the emails we get if we do particularly well on an exam, but there is this other type of email, too, for those who did particularly badly… And it’s just a matter of time when I will get a notification from the Outlook app about an email with the subject “Spring test results – you have an urgent appointment with the director of course operations”…
So, what have I learnt from this?
1. Don’t wait till the very last minute with revision. Take a deep breath and stop procrastinating.
2. Focus on what will be asked on the exam. Start with doing a past paper.
3. After you messed up, don’t expect others to understand. It was all your fault…
And what’s the good news? (Because everything should end with some positive thoughts…)
We got an email yesterday with a nice little Excel containing the summer exam timetable.
Let’s try this revision thing again, this time for 73% of the year!
A day late for #wormwednesday this post looks back on the earthworms I identifying during my volunteer work on the Natural History Museum Soil Biodiversity Group BESS Earthworm Project.
Over the last year I have started to understand how non-medical students view medical students. This has been very interesting, enlightening and somewhat frustrating at times, in the form of debates over the dinner table to overhearing conversations about medical students in SAFB (I mean if you are going to voice your opinion you could pick a better building to sit in than the medics building!).
So as I prepare to spend some time with non-medics, I thought I would write a blog to dispel any myths about Imperial medical students.
“Medics never do any work”
This was the first opinion that I heard about medics and started a long dinner table discussion. To put this into context the week before I heard this an average day had been:
Leave the house by 5:45am (looking presentable and smartly dressed!) in order to get the tube to Northwick Park Hospital, where at 7:15am I started clerking pre-surgery patients before their operations. I then needed to change into scrubs, find suitable surgical shoes (always a tough task) and scrub in (help out the surgeon) or observe in theatre for the rest of the morning (desperately hoping my tummy wouldn’t rumble!). I then ate lunch whilst in a tutorial, before attending afternoon clinic (seeing patients on my own, helping out the staff and answering quiz questions from the consultant!). I would get home about 6:30-7pm when I then needed to cook dinner, eat and read up on topics before the next day’s teaching at activities.
It was one of the best placements I had (don’t worry, other placements are more relaxed!), but very tiring as you can see! I’m sure you can imagine how a very exhausted me reacted to this statement!
“Okay, so older years do work, but first and second year medics do nothing”
This is a common misbelief. The main reason for this is that at imperial first and second years have very few assignments to hand in compared to other years. I think during both years I had to hand in one piece, compared to the large number other subjects have every term. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t work to be done however, it just means that many people aren’t seen doing it.
There is a lot of content to cover in second year especially, but it is mostly assessed in exams, so obviously medics will be working the hardest during study leave when many will not be at Imperial to be seen! Similar applies for first year, plus the first term is designed to allow time to build friendships, which are so important in a long course like ours (6 years is a long time to not have any friends!) and also brush up basic knowledge as every student has a slightly different background before coming to Imperial.
“Medics are elitist- they have their own sports teams, bar and union”
We are not all elitist! We are all busy doing different hours and commuting to different hospitals though, so having sports teams/clubs designed to take this into account is quite useful. I was part of many IC clubs but found after a while that getting to South Kensington for a 6pm start was tough, especially without any dinner. Medic clubs simply meet at more convenient times for placements, nearer where most medics live and allow you to miss more rehearsals/training sessions because of placement. The bar and union are for very similar reasons, just convenience and suitability to our needs.
Also non-medics can use these too- clubs/societies and the bar would welcome you in if that’s more convenient for you too!
“I haven’t spotted a medic since I was in halls; they don’t like me”
Oh dear, we don’t go round avoiding non medics! In first and second year medics are split between two campuses, so obviously won’t be around South Kensington as much, and after second year it’s quite rare to have anything scheduled at South Kensington. It’s not that we don’t like non medics though- I used to quite often bump into old friends from halls in Reynolds library (until they graduated and got a job!). Obviously a lot of the medics are also older than your average imperial student, with graduate entry, direct entry students from Oxbridge and our course being twice the length of most other degree courses!
“Medics are rich and get lots of bursaries and free stuff”
Well, medics may be rich in qualities and maybe knowledge, but pocket isn’t one of them for most of us! We have been very fortunate to receive a stethoscope and IPad from imperial to help us with our studies over the last few years. Unfortunately there are few private companies who wish to sponsor medical events, as recruitment out of the NHS is low and pharmaceutical companies cannot advertise to students, so this means few reduced events, free lunches or gifts like other courses.
Medics are supported by NHS bursary in their final two years, but this simply replaces student loan and for many needs to be topped up with additional loans to cover living and transport costs. Plus we will leave with 4-6 years of debt compared to everyone else’s 3-4 years, to start on a lower average salary!
“Medics are boring and don’t have any fun”
This could not be further than the truth! Although at times we might get on a rant about how non medics do not understand us (sorry about that), we do ‘work hard, play hard’. There seems to be a ball for every event at medical school, and studying alongside each other for 6 years, facing unique challenges and some highly stressful situations bonds us as friends for life!
This discussion is dedicated for the prospective Biologists at Imperial. Here is what you are going to have in a Biology exam at Imperial. We have four modules during the first year and each module will have an exam eventually. So there are four exams each year. In every exam, there will be three sections.
1> 40 Multiple (5) choices questions:
Negative marking system is something you should be aware of. Don’t guess the answers and only answer what you are most confident with is the whole point of this system. (And I’m not a big fan of this tbh :P) Most multiple choice questions in the mock paper (only a mock paper provided for each term) of the first two modules (BCM and OB) are unchanged for the last two years, so there really isn’t much you can get from the MCQ in mock paper. Getting familiarized with the exam paper format seems to be the only purpose 😛 It is still a good practice to some extant.
You will be given a question booklet and answer sheet. Use HB pencil to mark answers on the worksheet 😛 Mark the cancel on the answer below if you wish to change the answer in the first time. Avoid using erasers as the machine is sensitive enough to detect even the slightest trace of lead.
2> Data interpretation question: You will be given a set of data or diagrams or graphs… and followed by some short answer questions. Use short and concise languages (I can’t seem to emphasis more on the importance of using concise and accurate scientific languages:P) to answer them. For OB, this year we had a question about the phylogeny of aminiotes, grouping turtles into the tree depending on whether it’s diapsid or anapsid. You will observe the picture of the turtle skull and group it into the phylogeny tree accordingly. You would then make justifications based on your observations and critical evaluation skills. (So Cliche) For BCM, this year we had a question on drug resistance and bacterial mutation (an evolutionary race between the mutations in bacteria and new antibiotics development essentially). Some short answer questions follows and that’s it. Answer the question straightforward is necessary. 😛
3> Essay question: You will be given five essay questions and you are allowed to choose one of them and begin your essay. Before actually writing the essay, write a general plan with some keywords jotted down. This allows a better coherence and cohesion of the essay in general. Drawing diagrams to facilitate your words is encouraged and make sure to draw them LARGE. And double-spaced writing is always a good habit 😛 Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: This book might help you with academic writing 😛
That would be all. As always, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you over the next post 😛
By the courtesy of Imperial student blogger platform, I would like to express my sincerest wishes to all the Chinese overseas students studying abroad a very happy Chinese new year! (Try not to get too homesick! 😛 )
Now quite a few of my Chinese readers have requested for a post about the Chinese experience in London. And in response to your request, I will make this post in short time. I can assure you that it’s never too boring to be a Chinese in London 😛 😛 😛 (Enough said, you’ll see more from this special post later this month)