Random update. Canoe club had a curry night and particular highlights included stealing hats, millions of selfies while people left their phones unattended and a table of people even more obnoxious than us. Also now have a new favourite phrase:
“The bread you shoved down my back still itches”
“You shouldn’t have thrown it at me”
“I didn’t, I just gave it to you at a trajectory. It’s called projectile feeding”
Love it.
Also had a dentist appointment today and found out that although i’ve been transferred to a dental hospital in London, they don’t currently have someone qualified to deal with the amount of mess going on with my teeth. GRR. I’m going to enjoy complaining about that in another post, which will be likely to contain too much information.
Yes. Yes it is stupid to go on a kayaking trip in late November with nothing to keep you either warm or dry. As wonderful as club wetsuits are, they’re not fantastic if there’s a massive rip on the backside. So mistake number one was really just agreeing to go at all.
Bearing in mind the outcome of the trip, I would call the first day a success. We arrived at around 2am and did the sensible thing and went to bed. This still didn’t leave me with a lot of sleep, since I decided that the words ‘morning mission’ were enticing enough to wake up at 6.30 and go do something with five people who actually knew what they were doing. ‘Something’ entailed getting cold while getting changed and then remaining cold while paddling and becoming colder than cold while waiting for the shuttle. The river Kent was objectively fun, but had me terrified approximately twice. First I went down part of a rapid backwards…again (See trip gone good), but this time managed to survive. Then I listened carefully to the words ‘go down the left’ and promptly went down the middle.
Reasons along the lines of being parked in and not finding a lift left us shivering for 45 minutes, during which I was becoming more and more enticed by the idea of giving up and getting changed the second the bus arrived. When it did decide to grace us with its presence, I decided to man up and tough it out until later, but then the clumsy tall one broke the back window and I happily entered the land of dry clothing.
“Minibus appreciation at its finest” – not my phrase, but it’s golly accurate
The next river of the day, the Crake, had exactly one advantage: it ended at the hut. It was described as boring and covered it trees, so I opted to do some of the dishes, write my German coursework and then make a nest out of chairs and everyone’s sleeping bags. There was a feature towards the end that I may have been interested in running, but then I went out to look at it and opted for sleep. Good choice. Obviously I missed everything, but I heard tales of wonderful trees and people getting stuck in them.
That evening seemed to be considerably less sensible, as we played a few casual drinking games, ate dinner and played with the glass from the minibus window. It turned out to be more sensible than the previous, as phrases such as ‘it’s getting late’ were being thrown around before 10pm.
My wakeup call consisted of an odd silhouette whispering the now hated words of ‘morning mission’. For the first time since we left, I was warm and comfortable, so that was a firm no. I’d heard some good stories about the Leven and Backbarrow Bridge, so I probably should have done it, but I decided to do the club run instead. Massive mistake number 2. There was no club run. There was another hard run, which began with the two most experienced paddlers running an extreme rapid on a trib, getting stuck on rocks and all that joy.
This is funnily enough NOT a picture of someone falling in. That green spec is still alive.
The three lesser experienced of us joined in at the actual river (NB: only 5 out of 12 people ran this one at all – that says it all). This one was called the Lune and it decided to terrify me.
Unnecessary back story explaining why I was probably terrified: at the pool session three weeks prior, I perfected my roll and paddled around gleaming with joy. Two weeks prior I decided to try rolling on my bad side, hence breaking down the movements into constituent parts and ruining the motor memory that my good roll relied on. The pool session before the trip, I managed to just about get back to a comfortable roll, but I still had the nagging thought that I wouldn’t be able to get up if I needed to.
Back to the Lune. It was objectively not that bad, the waves weren’t that big and the eddies were almost existent. Nonetheless, I tensed up and was not comfortable for a moment. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I followed the tall clumsy one, who didn’t realise I was following him, into holes and went in twice. I failed to roll, almost failed to get T-rescued, failed to breathe and frankly just failed at life. I also almost went down the single grade 4 rapid (constriction) upside down, so by take out, I was ready for a lovely bus ride home. And then it hit the fan.
The bus thought that take out was a bridge down and by the time we got them to us, I was so cold I opted to stand in a nearby port-a-loo. But we can deal with a little extra standing around. Then my shoes mysteriously obtained water, hence refusing to warm my feet. But we can maybe deal with only being mostly warm. Then I got travel sick. We can’t deal with throwing up in the bus. Displaying my love for beans on the steps by the door would have been good enough, but the feeling of relief that tends to come after travel sickness didn’t really happen and I continued to feel icky, even while on the front row and asleep. I honestly don’t know how to describe anything after that other that with the words ‘chunder dragon’. Lovely.
In the end, we decided that the cause of my joyous experience was a combination of not eating or drinking since breakfast, really stressing on the last river, being cold, maybe swallowing some river water or eating with dirty cutlery/hands/-minded company or a knock on the head and all with a layer of travel on top. I was luckily taken care of by the people around me and everyone was lovely, but I am not entering a cold river until I re-learn how to actually roll and buy a dry suit. Lesson learned.
Update: two days later, two more people joined me in the chunder dragon realm. Hmm…
Two years ago I was volunteering on yet another week of earthworm sampling on the NERC BESS project, this time in Leicestershire and Dorset. This week features farty mustard solution and an exciting day in an active quarry!
Another county, another field… Last Monday and Tuesday I was again away with the Natural History MuseumSoil Biodiversity Group, this time heading up to Leicestershire, for more earthworm sampling. Not as scenic as Somerset, we were sampling in a research farm near Loddington, in addition to myself, Sholto was again volunteering, I also met for the first time Salma and we were joined by Irfaan on Tuesday.
Another earthworm is sampled by Irfaan, with Salma and Sholto
Salma is trained in the correct way to retract the tape measure
In the previous week there was a problem with the mustard solution, which had developed a pungent smell of hydrogen sulphide (egg-fart gas). This was a concern because the smell was so strong it could be killing the worms in their burrows before they could emerge. Could the change be because of a faulty batch of mustard powder, or change to the ingredients? This week different batch numbers of mustard powder were purchased to test this.
David checks the bouquet of the mustard solution
Sniffing the mustard solution before pouring was now a necessary step, after the first mixing the smell was promising but by the morning some bottles had deteriorated. A new hypothesis was proposed that some sort of bacterial contamination was causing the smell and then it was realised the problem started after the mustard solution was made up using water from the soil laboratory back at the the Museum. The water in the labs comes from the museum’s own borehole and often has a slightly sulphurous smell, could some sulphur-reducing bacteria dwelling in the supply have caused the problem? It was decided to use fresh water bottles on the next trip.
Tuesday evening we travelled back to London and on Wednesday I spent the afternoon helping in the soil laboratory preparing the kit for Thursday and Friday and changing the alcohol in the earthworm samples. Earthworms have a high water content and this dilutes the alcohol, if the liquid is not replaced with fresh spirit the earthworms can start to decompose which makes identification difficult (and stinky). Then Wednesday evening we left for Dorset – the final county being sampled in.
That’s a lot of earthworms!
Living in just the next county I have had many family holidays in Dorset and it was a pleasure to be back in beautiful Purbeck. Our site was near a quarry were limestone (Purbeck ‘marble’) is extracted and on Friday we got to view a blasting, which was very exciting.
Quarry manager Simon discusses the site with David
Quarry blasting (guess who made the excited squeal!)
The shallow soil did not yield many big anecic worms but large numbers of smaller species, since earthworms have a preference for areas of high pH. As might be expected there were also large numbers of snail shells which I tried my best not to be distracted by, although I think I may sneak a few specimens when we return next week!
Off for a well-earned meal after a hard day’s earthworm sampling
Analysis of the NERC BESS Earthworm project is still on going, and a paper is in progress. The Dorset site had particularly high earthworm numbers, with over 200 found in one pit! I will discuss that in another #throwbackthursday. I also plan to use the NERC BESS data to compare with my PhD data so taking time out to volunteer on the project is paying off well!
I actually am not keen on Christmas or parties, but do try to go along to a few to try and get in the spirit of things, chat with people I haven’t seen for a while and eat free/cheap food and drink. Between the Museum and and various Imperial College departments I have been overwhelmed with invitations and have only been able to attend a few, but I thought I would list some of the others so you can see all the different opportunities for partying at Imperial.
Parties at the Natural History Museum
The Museum has a reputation for boozy parties (although we have to be careful not to upset security and neighbours). This Monday I attended the Student Christmas party, which was organised by the Natural History Museum Student Committee, but not just for students but anyone who wanted to come along. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long as I had to finish a presentation for the next day but enjoyed chatting to some of the other students who work in other parts of the building and that I don’t speak to very often.
Natural History Museum Student Christmas Party
Today there is a Christmas get-together with the Natural History Museum Soil Biodiversity Group, which is traditionally held as a thank you for the hard work of our volunteers over the year. I enjoy the chance to chat over some food and drink without loud music playing, but those that want too often continue the party in the pub.
Tomorrow Purvis Lab are having a Christmas meal and then it will be time for the Life Science department Christmas Party which has a Stars in Their Eyes theme! Some people will be performing dressed as their favourite stars and there is a prize for the best. I am not dressing up but looking forward to seeing everyone else and hoping my supervisor will be there doing his famous karaoke! Other departments put on parties too, there are posters up for the Core Laboratories and Earth Sciences parties, but one is enough for me!
Parties at Imperial College London
I have had a number of party invites from Imperial College too, although am not able to attend, but to give you an idea of what’s going on here they are:
Department of Life Sciences (DoLS) Grown-ups party – with quizzes and live music
Department of Life Sciences (DoLS) family friendly party – with children’s activities etc. (what a great idea!)
Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) DTP party – which unfortunately clashes with the NHM Life Sciences party
Imperial College Silwood Park party – for those doing research at Imperial’s campus near Ascot
and probably lots of others I don’t know about!
Whatever gatherings you are attending this year, have a great time!
Before I got here, I was stressing about money considerably more than I’m stressing about it now, which is worrying in itself. So for anyone in the same situation, I’m going to break down how I survive.
Background: I receive a student finance loan, as a home student. I also happen to recieve the minimum student loan there is and no grants or bursaries. At the same time, the financial situation at home is such that I wouldn’t nag for money unless I need it, although of course they take care of me and are prepared to be a safety net, so I never end up selling my own kidney. My parents basically bought all my uni stuff, paid for my first food shop and then gave me a couple of super handy installments. Since then I appear to be surviving on my own. That’s probably not even going to be true by the time real human eyes read this, but we can all pretend.
Survival methods:
1. Get a job
2. Get another job
3. Don’t lose the jobs
I highly recommend tutoring or teaching of some kind, as it provides really useful experience, as well as paying pretty well. There are a bunch of tutoring sites that can help get you clients, but you can also just try and find them independantly. Family friends or posting in facebook groups such as “Russian children’s education in London” are always a good start.
I currently work Saturdays at a Russian school as a teaching assistant in the mathematics department. I was rather lucky to even get such a job, but the process involved me actually attending the school as a student for 5 years, so it does add up. I also tutor students aged 5-17, so my week fluctuates between a-level help and being drawn on with Hamley magic markers.
Here we see my sister being adorable with a scarf on her face.
Finally, as a tiny back up, there are always little jobs around the department such as interview tours or putting together brochures. These are sort of paid, as in you get food vouchers valid in all Imperial canteen outlets. That’s way better than real money, let’s face it.
My maintenance loan doesn’t cover my accomodation by £30 a week, but I tend to earn more than that, so life can at least continue. Warning: this is not a usual situation. I was just stupid enough to apply only for single bedrooms and to the accomodation directly across the road from my building, despite not really being able to afford them. If you are at all nicer or less lazy than I am, this is unlikely to be the case.
I’m also an idiot, because I just bought a ticket to Download. I now have no money minus another £200, but I saw that Rammstein was playing and seeing them live is worth being poor.
One of the highlights of societies so far was the kayaking freshers trip to Wales. We stayed in the Imperial Mountain Hut somewhere in Snowdonia.
Standard start with superhero-resembling poses atop a minibus, because there is no mundane way to get 12 kayaks on a rack. I don’t know how to describe a long bus journey, other than with the confession that I now know what the worst radio stations of London sound like.
The hut is cool. It’s a hut and it’s cold, so it’s cool. The evening consisted of the intellectually fulfilling creation of architecture on the ceiling beams using the many cans of *hot chocolate* we emptied. The human to human-sleeping-space ratio may have seemed questionable, but no deaths occurred (to my knowledge), so it couldn’t have been too bad. Or we were all too *chocolatey warm* to care.
I woke up to people following the smell of food like zombies, so thought I’d join their ranks. We packed ourselves and drove to a good bank of The Conwy. There was totally not a man who shouted at the president and we definitely didn’t ignore him and get on in the wrong place anyway. Why would we be such beasts?
If that river was a person, it would be the kind that throws rocks at you, whips you with twigs and then laughs. I think I acquired the main message of the day, which was to love the rocks and shun the trees, which seemed counterintuitive until you did it wrong and realised why. The most memorable section was one that most groups didn’t run, since no one really knew what it entailed. Luckily for our group, someone highly experiences checked it out for us and emerged alive, so we thought it would be fine. At take out, our group and Team Redbeard were the only ones not to run the second half, which was apparently harder, but I really wouldn’t know. This mildly sucked, since we were only late because we had to wait for out leader to do the shuttle. (No, I’m not complaining (yes, I am (a little)))
By the time we had all gotten changed and were hurling boats around, the darkness had encompassed us and we may have dropped a boat off the top of the minibus and almost hit someone. No comment. The evening was a blur of chilli, cheese and *hot chocolate*. Being students of such a wondrous university, we once again needed to fulfil our intellectual needs and achieved a state of mental bliss by climbing a ladder.
I feel that a morning mission of some kind may have occurred the next morning, but I was busy being unconscious wedged between two people, whose identities are not entirely clear to me. The packing was naturally *incredibly* organised and we were all ready in *minutes*.
The Dee was honestly brilliant, at least to a wee little fresher like yours truly. There were two features which I found awesome, probably because of lack of experience, but also because they were DAMN FUN. So I ran them both twice. The first time down Serpent’s tail, someone’s boat got wedged into a rock, so I got the joy of waiting in an eddy. The second time down Town Falls, I ended up stuck and spinning on ‘the rock’, as in ‘see that rock? Do not go near it’ and mysteriously ended up slightly upside down. Having initially failed miserably to roll or at least breathe in while my face had the chance, I emerged producing a prolonged Scottish grunt and gleaming with the sparkly joy of not dying.
Welcome to my musings. As a tad of background, hi. I’m Ksenia and I study Physics with theoretical physics with a year in Europe, which isn’t an existing course. However, I’m refusing to let go of the theoretical part of the title, so will be sticking vigourously to the maths until it becomes a course.
I’m originally from Russia, but have lived in England long enough to have no accent and went to school in Salisbury (i.e. that city near Stonehenge).
Have a bunch of random facts about me, because why not?
I have a super cute sister, a massive dog and just discovered that I have photos rollerblading with them.
I play with things that glow or burn and that can be spun.
I play guitar and sing, but only well enough to do so in front of a camp fire with people I know well enough to judge them back. Please note highly stylish father-daughter fleeces.
I have a tendency to attack cute cats in the street and pretend they’re mine for as long as I can get away with it.
My favourite film is The Breakfast Club and if you didn’t watch it at the perfect age to love it, you’ll just have to force yourself to love it now.
I pretend not to judge people who listen to what I consider bad music, but we can’t all be perfect. The current favourites, in case anyone cares at least a little. 10 points for each band you recognise.
It’s official, advent has started, Christmas is nearly here!
I’m sure those of you who live in London are well aware of this: Harrods have got their Christmas lights on, the streets are crammed with Christmas Shoppers, Winter Wonderland is lighting up Hyde Park, coffee shops have got their Christmas drinks on the go (I have tried so many!) and the Christmas adverts have started! If that isn’t enough evidence, I actually saw someone today carrying a sledge!
One of my favourite parts of Christmas is the carol services. Yes food is good, presents are great and spending time with family is nice, but I don’t think you can beat a good carol service. I’m guessing that most of imperial would agree with me looking at the large number of carol services that are available!
Not only is this a great opportunity to get into the festive mood, eat lots of yummy food and belt out some old classic carols. It’s also a great time to relax and have a break in the midst of Christmas meals and events at the end of a busy term, and hear why Christmas is important to so many around the world. International students can find out more about a traditional British Christmas, and Brits can enjoy the Christmas story as an adult. So why not head along to one of the many carol services around or near campus? Take a group of friends, your sports team, or just go alone for some space!
Over my five years at imperial I have had the joy of sampling many a Christmas Carol service, so here are some of my top choices that you could try this year. All are free and will offer a very warm welcome.
Within Imperial: 1. Imperial Christian societies Carol Service Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road. 11th December, 6:30pm (doors open at 6:15)
If you are going to have a Christmas Carol service Imperials Christian societies are probably the best people to ask. Here a range of student Christian societies across Imperial come together to run a great Carol service on campus aimed at students, straight after lectures.
Come along for a convenient location, lots of good old carols, Bible Christmas readings and a short talk. Lots of opportunities to think about what Christmas means and find out more if you want, or just to sit and enjoy the candlelight Church. Imperial College Gospel Choir will also perform during the service. The event is followed by lots of mince pies and festive hot drinks!
Also bonus fact- Last year the speaker had done the Carol service in Chelsea for many celebrities including the made in Chelsea cast- if it’s good enough for them…
2. Imperial chaplaincy carol service Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road. 14th December, 6pm
Once again in the busy end to term this service offers a space and time to reflect, as well as sing some favourite carols and enjoy the Church in candlelight. Once again all are welcome, regardless of background, and refreshments (mince pies!) will be served afterwards. Imperial College Chamber Choir will be performing during the service.
Organised by the medical school, this carol service features ICSM societies, student volunteers, lecturers and teachers perform a variety of readings/prayers/pieces. Again, lots of carols, festive cheer and A popular choice for sports teams to come along to as a group, everyone is welcome, feels like a family event!
There are also a range of carol services at local churches, which should be very welcoming to visitors, and often have really good mulled wine and mince pies!
1. Christ Church Mayfair Down Street, London, W1J 7AN (just by Hyde Park Corner)
Traditional and Family Carols (10.15am, Sunday the 13th and 20th of December respectively), Carols by Candlelight, (6pm on Sunday the 13th and 20th, and 7.30pm on Wednesday the 16th)
Minced pies, mulled wine, a warm welcome, a candlelit church, a fun Church choir and lots of carols and readings. Perfect ingredients for a carol service! Many visitors come along to the carol service so you will not be alone. Is located near to Winter Wonderland, so might be nice to combine with a Christmas trip! Also have a service on Christmas day if you are stuck in London and fancy doing something to celebrate Christmas.
As one of London’s largest churches, and on the doorstep of Imperial, this offers a massive range of carol services- really- have a look! I’m sure there would be something here to suit everyone’s tastes. The Church is used to having lots of visitors so should be super welcoming! They also have a free community lunch on Christmas day which might be worth looking into if you are in halls over Christmas.
Just next-door to Charing Cross Hospital, this Church is perfectly located for medics (or anyone else who lives near Hammersmith!) to pop along to a carol service.
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.
