Blog posts

Congratulations to the Imperial Fresher Class 2014!!

MBBS Medicine

CONGRATULATIONS to everyone that has received A level/ AS results today (including my sister!).

And an even bigger WELCOME to everyone that is going to be joining us at Imperial School of Medicine / Imperial in general next year. You must all be super happy- I remember the pure relief i had when I saw my UCAS track update.

To those of you that missed your grades, do not give up today. Talk to relevant staff at universities and explain your circumstances clearly- fingers crossed. Remember: you always have options.

What now? Well once you have secured that place its like a month of joy and fun.

So you got into Imperial… (Pre-freshers FAQ)

MSCi Physics

Congratulations! Sooo…. what happens now?

A lot of anticipation. There is still a month and a bit to go until freshers, so do you look at work? Do you try and contact people from your course? Do you go out and buy lots of crockery and bath mats? Do you simply try to pretend this big scary life event isn’t going to happen?

The simple answers are no, no, yes and no! Now to the more complicated questions.

Will I fit in?

Everyone you will be around is having the same unnerving experience as you. You would have to try pretty hard not to fit in.

Dealing with stress at university

MSCi Physics

Hi. 🙂 This is me (finally) following up on mentioning that I was stressed and depressed in second term this year. I am not anymore!

A period when you feel like you can’t quite cope with things (or perhaps a rather more extreme version of that feeling) seems to be common at university, so I thought I would share with you what helped me when I was in a similar situation and might help you prevent some sadness.

Firstly though, two things:

1)      You might be thinking: ‘lol stressed?! Why would I be stressed at uni? No parents, lots of friends and activities and university is all about having fun.’

Dr. Joff Lacey Interview

MSCi Physics

Hello everyone 🙂

I have just got back from a glorious week in Tenerife where I went in a submarine (!) and also found out that I did well in second year. I hope everyone reading this is having a similarly fun summer and is awaiting/has received good results too!

This week is a bit of a different blog— as you might know, I am in the process of discovering what sorts of careers are involved in science communication. To this end, I am hopefully (if I can find more willing volunteers) going to be asking a few questions to some of the people I talk to about their jobs and experiences for this blog.

My Imperial Summer so far!

Isobel profile

BSc Biology with a year in Europe

Hi friends!

I’m about a month in to my long summer holiday and to be quite honest, I don’t know what I’ve been doing all this time O_o I feel like I should be as busy as I usually am at uni but to be honest it’s been nice to kick back a bit and chill at home. The novelty of free food and laundry is starting to wear off a little but once I move in to my new place in September I expect I will sorely miss it! More on that a bit later though.

This might sound a bit sad but I decided I needed to start a new hobby over the summer since now I’m not thinking solely about biology and CU committee 24/7 and my life seems to have lost it’s meaning.

Scientists might be wrong?!?

MSCi Physics

This March, the media was sparked into a frenzy by reports of the first sightings of gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background. There was talk of ‘breakthroughs’, ‘new frontiers of Physics’, ‘smoking guns’ and, of course, Nobel Prizes. The announcement was made by a team working on data from the BICEP2 telescope, who claimed to have discovered signals in the first ever light emitted in the universe. These signals hint at a time even earlier than that, a time that we will never be able to measure directly and that has teased scientists since its proposal in 1980: inflation.

Inflation is an idea put forward to explain why the universe appears to be at such an even temperature.

How NOT to rent a house in London

MSCi Physics

Hello dear blog readers…

I wrote blithely a couple of weeks ago about ‘how much of an expert’ at renting and moving houses in London I should be by about now. It is now now, however, and that was very very very very wrong. To demonstrate how much of a non-expert I am here is a list of some things that you should NOT do when moving house:

(If I sound exasperated [by which I mean I definitely do sound exasperated], that is because I AM. Brush off the sarcasm and my obvious inability to let things go and hopefully there are some genuinely helpful points here somewhere…)

1)    Don’t wait until right at the end of term when everyone has gone back to their actual homes or their actual other countries.

Teddington

MBBS Medicine

It has been all hush hush and rumours for a while about the Teddington situation. For those of you that don’t know, Teddington is the home of the Imperial Medical School’s sports teams for almost a century. It is a sports ground that is historic and means a great deal to the Imperial Medics past and present.

Having talked to many alumni and students it seems that everyone has been devastated by the news that all student activity will be suspended at Teddington after Imperial purchased a new sports site.

Dariush Hassanzadeh-Baboli – President of the Imperial Medics Union (ICSMSU) and Maredudd Harris the Clubs and Socs Officer sent the entire medical school an email earlier in the week …”The first time ICSMSU heard about the news was the same time as the rest of the students at Imperial College.

Making a planet cake….

MSCi Physics

Here is the previously promised planet cake video 🙂

The pictures you can’t quite see in the background are a plan of the cake (in the picture below) and that classic photo of Earth seen through Saturn’s rings as the little tiny blue dot.

Frustratingly, the side we cut into the green (metallic hydrogen) layer was a bit mixed in with the outer atmosphere of Saturn! It actually came out much better the other side, but we ate that so you’ll have to take my word for it…

If anyone is thinking of doing this themselves please (please!) cook the core completely then fill the edges of the molds with the next layer’s mixture and place the cooked core inside it to cook again and continue this way.

SUMMER

MBBS Medicine

Exams are over, summer has started and I have stepped back into the working world again. I am doing a summer internship currently with a business set up by some Imperial Medic alumni- Touch Surgery. I am loving it and highly recommend any medic to download the free app to practice your surgical skills.

The office has the coolest gadgets which, of course, I have tried my hardest to play with as much as I possibly can…:

Getting an insight into the #healthtech world has been so interesting so far. Virtual simulation and surgical training compliments each other so well and I am so excited for what the rest of the summer at Touch Surgery will have in store for me.

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