Blog posts

Social Life Part III: Appendices

Jelle profile

BSc Biochemistry

My mates and I put together this list of extra tips for Fresher’s week and also just in general:

MAKING FRIENDS: UNI EDITION

  1. Don’t sit in your room, come to the kitchen.

  2. If you have free time after moving in, go and bang on doors and introduce yourself.

  3. Bring snacks. People love food. I fail to see how being remembered as “brownie girl” or “chips guy” could in any way ever be a bad thing. This is more of a life tip.

  4. Be prepared to spend money on alcohol unless you don’t drink. Free drinks are rare, but spending a bit on drinks will help your social life in mysterious ways.  

Social Life part II: Friends!!!

Jelle profile

BSc Biochemistry

I think it’s fair to say you need a few of the following to make friends: physical proximity, like-minded people, shared interests, and a healthy dose of don’t-be-awkward.

Luckily, life at Imperial provides you with all of the above except, crucially, the don’t-be-awkward bit.

  1. Physical proximity: you [should] live in halls with hundreds of
  2. like-minded people: like I wrote before, basically anyone on campus
  3. shares interests:  join societies, clubs, sports, talk to people you live with about anime, gaming, random other things, etc.

What I mean by don’t be awkward is just to avoid reaction to the awkwardness of having to make friends.

Social life part I: People at Imperial

Jelle profile

BSc Biochemistry

First a nominal post about social life at Imperial– it’s not at all what the rumours suggest! In fact, you will never make any friends and I’m still crying alone in my room most days. On rare other days, I make it to lectures and cry there.

Just kidding! Social life here is incredible, varied, and a completely different experience than high school. Everyone at Imperial came here for more or less the same reasons, and that counts for more than I expected when you’re making friends with people. We’re not all massive geeks, though we have those too, but being at Imperial means you’re down with talking science over lunch, will inevitably get excited over something in your lectures, and don’t have to pretend you find learning boring.

Hello, all!

Jelle profile

BSc Biochemistry

Hello, all!

Let me just introduce myself– I’m Jelle, a first-year biochemist. It’s pronounced kind of like ‘yellow’ but if you forgot what you were saying halfway through, like “yell-uh?”.

You’re probably reading this, if you’re a prospective applicant or offer holder (congratulations!) for the same reason I read the blogs last year (and the reason I’m so excited to be writing one this year!) : it’s just really nice to have someone give that frank, real-talk account of what life is actually like here. The Imperial website can tell you, for example, which modules you’ll be expected to take as a first-year biochemist, but it won’t tell you that should work on the first cell-biology essay far in advance.

What Type of Imperial Medic Fresher are you?

MBBS Medicine

For most of us that came to Imperial we were the geeks of our schools- the hardworking “sciency” ones. Our individualities and personal quirks were built around this fact. However because everyone has passed the same interview to get into here it means that everyone is a hardworking, science geek with lots of hobbies.  So how can we stand out and become individual all over again? What are the new stereotypes you can choose from as an Imperial Medic Fresher? (Note: You may be more than one!)

Bollywood Back Row- You know who you are. We know who you are. You will either catch them asleep in the back row after a late night out at PI or discussing an event happening at another London University.

IT’S THE MOST! WONDERFUL TIME! OF THE YEEEAR!

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

You guessed it folks, the festive season is upon us. The massive Christmas lights are up in Westfields, the red cups are back in Starbucks and Oxford street is heaving with tourists. (On a side note, I frequently find myself getting angry with tourists despite the fact that I have literally lived in London for nine weeks so I basically still am one. Is this allowed??)

I like a good list so thus commences the first list of the blog:

Reasons Why London at Christmas is Aces

Christmas lights everywhere. I was in Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush today and there are some seriously impressive Christmas lights up in there. 

Imperial FAQ

MSCi Physics

Blog 2, Imperial FAQ

Hey. Since this blog is probably mostly read by prospective students trying to figure out if Imperial is for them, I thought I’d answer some of the questions people ask me about Imperial.

What is it like living with ‘The Ratio’?

For any of you that don’t know, The Ratio is the ridiculously high number of boys to girls at Imperial. It’s different in different subjects- I think medicine and biology don’t really have problems with this for instance, but it is hugely noticeable when you first move in. There may very well be only one or two girls on your floor in halls for example, which can be odd, especially for the girls.

10 ways my life has changed at university in my first term

MBBS Medicine

1)      Friends– I finally have some.

2)      Family– My family hasn’t really changed to be fair, but the amount of time I see them has increased a lot. Before university I would sit in my room, alone. Most of the time in the dark. Now I see them about once a week. Result!

3)      Food– Oh gosh food is amazing. I have really fallen in love with big meals.  My cooking “buddy” makes me eat a lot of vegetables which is a nice change from the lunchtime £1.43 chips at the union. Some of the meals I have had have been full of imagination and creativity with favourites including burgers on waffles with nutella.

An Intro to Izzie

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Welcome to my shiny new Imperial College Student Blog!  I guess I’ll start by elaborating on my About Me page.

So HI *waves frantically* I’m Izzie and I’m a first year biology student. So far, this means I spend quite a lot of time pippetting stuff from Universal tubes into test tubes and hacking up  dissecting unusual things like squids. When I’m not in labs, I’m learning about cool stuff such as primate evolution and how everything you learnt about electrons in A Level chemistry was a lie. That’s one of the hardest things about science… the deeper you go, the more you realise that everything you learnt at a previous level does not quite work as you think it does.

Hello Second Year

MSCi Physics

What does a drowning mathematician say?

Log, log log, log, log log, log…

Top tip for starting conversations at the start of a new year: type ‘tell me a joke’ into Wolfram Alpha. Oh Wolfram. How you amuse me and help me integrate things that should never be integrated.

Hi, potential readers of this blog. I’m Emma, a second year physicist- as you’ve probably gathered, who is hopefully going to be blogging here for the next year.  I thought I’d start by telling you a bit about the start of my term.

This year I am renting a house with four other lovely people from halls last year, so I started the term carting down boxes of stuff that (now almost at the end of term) I still haven’t unpacked one of.

Learn more about life at Imperial

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