Blog posts

3 Months of Hall Living Later…

Amanda Koh profile

BEng Computing

Sometimes the excitement of a new environment, new people and generally a new life can be overpowering. Its easy to be carried away in the wave of new experiences, so when an inevitable crash comes its completely unexpected and hits you much harder than normal. Speaking to my hall mates, I think the most problem we’ve all been facing is loneliness. Its not as though we aren’t surrounded by friendly people, but when compared to the tight-knit friendships we all have back home or back in high school, the transcient nature of friendships at university is a whole new dynamic takes time to get used to.

Ally Pally LCL (27/01/16)

Franz profile

MEng Biomedical Engineering

On Wednesday (it’s Friday today) I participated in another London Colleges League race. This time, it took place in Alexandra Palace, or as others call it (myself included now), Ally Pally.

This was the fourth and penultimate LCL race of the yearly series, but third for me.

The journey there from South Kensington campus took about 50 minutes, including tube, national rail train and walking. Upon arrival I noticed that the course already had red and yellow markers used to border the track. But what stood out most to me was the mud and slope of the terrain.

The run consisted of 3 laps around the marked course, each lap 2.2km long.

An honest confession…

Dora profile

MEng Chemical Engineering

When I was in high school, I never really had a problem with studying. Because, to be honest, I never really actually studied. I went to the lessons, paid attention to the teacher, more or less did the homework. But – except before the final exams – I didn’t really study. I never sat down with a textbook and read it three-four times, never made notes, never did practise exercises or past papers. And I got away with it quite well: I had outstanding final marks, perfect tests and all these strange awards for being the best in random years… I have never felt I have worked enough, because I knew I didn’t.

10 Things I learnt on A&E

MBBS Medicine

So after just finishing a manic 3 week attachment at one of the busiest A&Es in London I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learnt.

1. Always look before crossing the road After seeing a number of patients hit by cars/lorries/buses/bikes I have realised the damage they can do and just how common incidents are. Obviously not all of them were avoidable but taking the time to look properly before crossing the road could save you a lot of trouble. If you are from the rest of Europe remember to look the other way (we drive on the other side!) I spent all three weeks being obsessively extra careful when crossing the road, knowing that my consultant would really not appreciate me being the trauma patient!

BAH fest 2016 – WHOOP

Ksenia profile

MSci Physics with a year in Europe

BAH stands for Bad ad Hoc Hypotheses, which is rather self-explanatory and already promising, but the host was a comedian and the improvised key note speaker used paint for his presentation. Perfection. It was a really good laugh and probably the best source of nerdgasms, other than the SciFi library.

The event was spread over two days and consisted of Evolution on Friday and Big Science on Saturday. I was busy on Saturday, leading to increased appreciation of the live stream on Youtube. Speaking of

Evolution: You want to watch this a lot

Big Science: You want to watch this a lot too

If you haven’t seen it, your’e silly.

Refreshers’ flu…

Dora profile

MEng Chemical Engineering

It’s a well-known fact that freshers’ flu hits universities every autumn. It has to do with the lot of people from lot of different countries, as we were told. Another well-known fact is that the first week of the Spring Term is the Refreshers’ week, a thing I still don’t really understand, but this might just be due to my narrow-mindedness (Seriously, refreshers? Just why??) But I unfortunately got to know a not-so-well-know aspect of Refreshers’ week: the refreshers’ flu.

Friday

I started to feel something on Friday afternoon. I can’t remember when was the last time I had flu, so at first I thought I have a cold.

Internship Craze

Amanda Koh profile

BEng Computing

3 months into a Computing degree and I soon realised, internships were a real obsession. Having just started learning to code properly, the prospect of trying to make a valid contribution at some major company over the summer seemed completely premature. I definitely wouldn’t have the adequate skills not to feel completely useless and I definitely wasn’t an intern worth paying for. Yet despite that, I was surrounded by people frantically scurrying for an internship in their first year, applying left right and centre for a position. Its a frightening environment, because if you remain idle, you suddenly feel like you’re being left behind.

A very busy January

Victoria Burton profile

Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Programme (PhD)

Three weeks into 2016 and I am only just writing my first post – tsh! My excuse is that I rather rashly booked two training courses back-to-back, and have only just got back to my desk(s) at the Natural History Museum this week. The first week of the year I was in Bristol on a Software Carpentry course, followed by a course on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in Newcastle the week after. I am planning to blog both of these courses next week but this week I have been frantically catching up with work (PhD and personal) so have not managed to do so.

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