![\"Victoria](\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/files\/2014\/12\/Image00001.jpg\")
<\/a>It\u2019s been six months since I was offered a scholarship on the training programme and during that time I have often felt like I am a) dreaming or b) having a huge practical joke played on me. Now I have arrived back in London, reality is setting in and my emotions are careering between the excitement of adding to the pool of human knowledge of my topic; and trepidation, both academic (am I ever going to fully understand statistics?) and mundane (how do I look after myself now I do not live at home?).<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure such feelings are normal at the start of university, but perhaps are more acute for me, since I have a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome – a \u2018higher functioning\u2019 form of autism. This affects how a person makes sense of the world, processes information and relates to other people; in particular I find social situations, and noisy crowds very difficult to cope with (yes, London is strange choice of city to study in!).<\/p>\n But I\u2019m not on my own; Imperial College has an excellent Disability Advisory Service with their own Autism and Asperger Syndrome Support Facilitator. Together with support from Disabled Student Allowance and my supervisors, these are difficulties I can learn to overcome in the same way I can learn statistics or computer coding.<\/p>\n For me disclosure is the key to success, and I would advise any prospective students \u2018on the spectrum\u2019 or for that matter with other conditions, to consider doing so. Just knowing that I have the option to take a break from activities and hide in the toilet<\/span> if I need to boosts my confidence, and if I\u2019d realised this earlier my undergraduate studies may have been less traumatic.<\/p>\n Given my difficulties, you would not have found me checking out the Fresher\u2019s Fair and bars during my first few weeks but that\u2019s not to say I wasn\u2019t busy getting back into student life at Imperial. At the Grantham Institute I was treated to lunch (free lunches are one of the best parts of being a student) and met the rest of the SSCP students to begin our first joint activity. One of the strengths of the training programme is that it brings together students from diverse disciplines – my group also comprises engineers and earth scientists \u2013 and, although I may feel a little out of my comfort zone the expansion of my world view is sure to be a positive thing.<\/p>\n I felt more at home at my induction at the Natural History Museum, especially when given a tour of the \u2018tank room\u2019 where the largest fluid preserved specimens are stored. Feeling quite like \u2018a fish out of water\u2019 myself over the last few days, I felt an odd sympathy with them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThis is Victoria\u201d, the now familiar recorded message says as I step off the train at my namesake station. \u201cYes. Yes, it is\u201d, I think to myself. I am one of 28 students starting PhD research at Imperial College\u2019s new Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) Doctoral Training Programme. This is hosted by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1033,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","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\/1033"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2031,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/2031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>