Category: First Year Funsies

Adventures of a Year Rep

Abigael Bamgboye profile

MEng Materials Science and Engineering

One of my highlights this year at Imperial has been the honour of holding the role of Year Representative. All in all, it has been a lot of work. But it has been immensely rewarding nonetheless.

Here’s the actual job description for a Year Representative:

  • Act as a voice for your Year Group in Staff-Student Committee Meetings
    • Collect feedback from your year group
    • Inform your year group of the department’s response
  • Liaise with lecturers about tutorials and any other matters
  • Organise summer revision sessions

Your reward: Free Lunch during Staff Student Committee Meetings (Twice a Term)

Here’s what I’ve got up to, with the help of my fellow Year Rep, Anthony (AKA A Bold Ant):

  • The actual roles stipulated above and…
    • Setting up in an informal events committee
    • Starting a Weekly Update (newsletter featuring tutorial work, exam dates, social opportunities, puns + a fun picture showing what members of our year have got up to that week)
    • Obtaining content for the weekly update
    • Emailing the Student Office
    • Visiting lecturers officers if they haven’t replied to an email
    • Messaging MatSoc Committee members to check when events will be happening
    • Creating polls to help MatSoc know which events our year are interested in
    • Promoting said events via the Weekly Update

The truth is, you put in as much as you get out.

A New Found Relationship: YOU and IMPERIAL

Mwana Hussein

MEng Electronic and Information Engineering

Imperial is like dating.

Initially, it’s a great new experience you are totally infatuated with it! You can’t believe out of all the other schools out there, Imperial decided to reciprocate the feelings you had when you applied!

So you decided to take the leap of faith and move from home to live in halls and be a FRESHER!

Ohh! You are so excited about this!

Most people call this stage the HONEYMOON phase but we’ll just call it AUTUMN TERM. And just like those midnight messages you cherish with you and bae nothing will feel more amazing than walking around campus with that red lanyard you receive during your 1st week..

Throwback Thursday

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Going through my sent box today I came across the piece I submitted to the student blogger search back in October 2013, when I had been in London for about a week and was still bright-eyed and excited about arriving in the Greatest City Of All Time. I still love London because why wouldn’t you, but life is very busy at the moment and I’m feeling so tired and worn out by work and revision! It was fun to relive my freshers week through reading this old post, which I don’t think made it on to this blog originally, and I thought I’d share it with you today.

Finishing my Finals!

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

I have finally FINALLY reached the end of the academic year here at Imperial and it feels A M A Z I N G. I sat my cell biology and genetics exam exactly one week ago today and despite it being a fair bit harder than the ecology and evolution exam we sat the Thursday before, it went very well and I’m very pleased. In comparison with my January exams (which were a complete and utter train wreck) I really could not be happier with how they have gone 🙂

There’s been a lot going on this week as I’ve finished uni and had a ridiculous amount of time on my hands!

Izzie and the CFS journey

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

So, some people might think it’s weird for me to post about this on a blog that anyone can read but meh, to me it’s not something I feel I need to keep a secret and it could probably be helpful for me to talk about as I’m sure there are some amongst you lucky offer holders who do or will experience similar circumstances. So this blog is about my year leading up to my CFS/ME diagnosis.

What is CFS/ME I hear you ask? CFS/ME stands for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. They are two names for the same condition and it’s up to the sufferer which one they use… I personally prefer to say that I have CFS as it’s less confusing and it makes it easier for other people to understand.

A Week in the Life

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

This is the weirdest time to be a student. Everyone has exams going on at different times, some people are finished already and starting projects, we’ve finished lectures but there’s still stuff going on, I don’t know quite what to do with myself! I thought I’d give you an insight to what I’m doing in a typical pre-finals week.

Monday

Study study study. Realise I have no food. Buy approximately 5 tons of vegetables to make for the fact that I haven’t done any proper cooking in God knows how long.

Tuesday

Wake up at 7.30. Snooze for 40 minutes. Roll out of bed, get ready and pack lunch because it’s FIELD TRIP DAY.

Izzie the Biologist, Izzie the Christian

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

So I’ve mentioned my involvement with the Christian Union before in this blog and the fact I go to week long Christian conferences in my spare time and stuff like that but I’ve never blogged specifically about what being a Christian and studying biology at university means to me. I’m going to (attempt) to do that today. WOOP.

So here’s the thing which I think is pretty cool about biology. It’s actually Biblical! People in the Bible were biologists! In Genesis (which is the first book of the Bible) it talks about God bringing all the creatures He created to Adam and Adam deciding what they should be called (Genesis 2:19-20).

Revison Antics

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Exams are only five weeks-ish away. The year is enarly over (HOW. HOW HAVE I BEEN HERE FOR A YEAR?!) The weather has (of course) improved drastically just as I chain myself to my desk. Courses are drawing to a close. Oh wow.

So revision. I am terrible at revising, I’ll put my hands up and say it. I just find it very very hard to get started and I inevitably end up taking a lot of tea breaks. And biscuit breaks. And food breaks in general. And of course I need an appropriate spotify playlist for my mood. And the temperature of the room has to be just right – is the window open too wide?

I know I said I wasn’t blogging over Easter buuut…

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

I just can’t stay away. I received a really good comment on an old post recently which I wanted to give a decent, long answer to publicly as I think it asks some great questions which will be relevant to many people thinking about choosing their firm and insurance universities very soon! The comment was thus:

Hi, I’ve got an offer to come to Imperial this year to study Biology, I’ve already got my grades because I took a gap year, but I am torn between choosing York and Imperial primarily because York has been ranked higher for student satisfaction and I’m worried going to Imperial I may slightly miss out on the ‘student experience’ living in London.

partying partying HARD

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Ok I didn’t actually party that hard buuuuut TERM IS OVER! I’m making use of this time before an incredibly busy 4 weeks of holiday where I won’t be able to blog much, if at all, to spam all of you with the thrilling details of my life. So what happened this week.

On Monday I handed in my final essay of the term which was on the origin of HIV/AIDS in humans. It was actually very interesting to write but maaan was I glad to submit that. I had to read a lot of papers to understand this particular topic and I still find reading journals quite difficult!

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