-I\u2019ve decided to drop quantum field theory even though it\u2019s one of the courses I have been really excited about studying ever since first year.\u00a0It is heavily linked to another course that I don\u2019t have enough space to take for a start, I find the lecturer very confusing, and it seems like we won\u2019t actually get to do any of the interesting features of quantum field theory and will just end up deriving very basic results. At this point it just seems better to take an easier course and get out a couple of books on this topic.<\/p>\n
I guess this wouldn\u2019t be as bad if I hadn\u2019t attended half the lectures before I decided this! Be warned anyone at Imperial who is thinking about taking this course without also taking Unification or who doesn\u2019t definitely want to go on to study quantum field stuff.<\/p>\n
-Although I was initially quite optimistic about Research Interfaces (the business course) it is now turning out more how I feared. The main problem is that it is really hard to think of a completely original invention\/idea that can make money\u2014everything you think of has already been done by someone or the idea has been patented or someone has done something similar!<\/p>\n
Also something about phrases like \u2018you\u2019ve got to become the de facto standard in the market as quickly as possible\u2019 still make me cringe. I really don\u2019t feel like I do have to, actually.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a problem for anyone in younger years by the way\u2014they are restructuring the course and putting it into third year which makes so much more sense, as most of the people who want to go into business type things don\u2019t stay on for the Masters anyway. I don\u2019t know if it will be better\u2014you\u2019ll have to look at a younger physicist\u2019s blog!<\/p>\n
-The main problem at the moment however is still my Master\u2019s project. I am finding it very hard to communicate with my supervisors and the meetings we have had so far have made me very upset.<\/p>\n
This is a large problem, both because my project is worth a big proportion of my degree mark, but mainly because the reason I am at Imperial this year is to do this project, find out if I want to do research and to continue learning and enjoying physics. At the moment, none of this is happening and it has been a very difficult term so far.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to go into too much more detail\u2014I\u2019ve spoken to my tutor as well as the head of projects and hopefully things are going to move in the right direction from now on.<\/p>\n
Now on to the good things list!<\/strong><\/p>\n – I have been elected year representative for my year!<\/p>\n This means that I am now in charge of helping to deal with people\u2019s academic problems and generally making sure student concerns are passed on to the staff. It also means I get to go to all sorts of meetings, which has been an interesting insight into how the department is run and the network of people who are there to support the undergraduates. It was a surprise to me that most of these people exist to be honest, so I will definitely mention in a blog the structure of behind-the-scenes people at physics who we are all meant to know about if we need them. (Once I\u2019ve figured it out who is who myself!)<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been to a training session in the union which was again interesting to find out more about the college-wide structure of reps.<\/p>\n – General Relativity is the best course ever.<\/p>\n If you are do physics and get a chance to be lectured by Professor Fay Dowker do it. She is an amazing lecturer. Also this general relativity course is exactly what I would put in my ideal physics degree\u2014it is full of statements like \u2018this star is closer to you than breakfast\u2019 and it messes up how you see the universe. It also has a lot of really rigorous maths in. Take this course\u2014 or at least go to the first couple of lectures and just bask in the joy of how good a lecturer and decent a person Prof. Dowker is.<\/p>\n – My grandparents came down to see me in London for the first time!<\/p>\n – My flat is 999999999 times better this year than last year. (No rats for a start.)<\/p>\n -Imperial Gym is still great, and free and their exercise classes are like \u00a33.<\/p>\n -Fireworks!<\/p>\n I feel a bit better for having now written down a bit about the difficulties of this term. Now that this is over with, I hope I can get down to writing more interesting things like about why a star is closer to you than breakfast, what I\u2019ve got out of being an Independent Visitor, and the Science is Vital campaign and things.<\/p>\n I hope everyone else\u2019s term is going better than mine!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In which a lot of both good and less good stuff has happened and there are lists like in some kind of awful buzzfeed article, except with a bit more physics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1040,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126043,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fourth-year","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1040"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1924,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"fireworks\"](\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/files\/2015\/11\/fireworks.jpg\")
<\/a>Today is also the last day you can send a postcard to George Osbourne through the campaign Science is Vital <\/a>to explain why he shouldn\u2019t cut science funding.<\/p>\n