Month: March 2012

The controversial importance of failure

There is a very interesting article in the Times Higher Education magazine today on the knotty subject of failure — something that anyone who wishes to succeed will inevitably encounter.

To quote just one small snippet:

“It’s entirely understandable; parents want their children to succeed. Unfortunately, they may be ensuring just the opposite. As Tough notes, protecting students from experiencing failure also prevents them from gaining the self-confidence that comes from overcoming it. There are no safe routes to success. If we want to prepare our students for life’s inevitable slings and arrows, then, for their own sake, we must let them fail.”

Prize winning Biochemistry Students

We were rather late getting around to this but would nevertheless like to celebrate the achievements of the top three biochemistry students from the 1st and 2nd year classes in the academic year 2010-2011.

First up are the highest-scoring first years, Yong Zi Tan, Hung En Lai and Kam Pou Ha.

The top three students from the second year were Michael Anderson Burley, Benedict Turner and Thomas Wood. Unfortuately, Thomas wasn’t around on the day we handed out the prizes so we didn’t get a chance to take a photo.

Congratulations to all six students — and good luck to this year’s cohorts!

NSS Enterprise Needed from Final Year Students

Through the National Student Survey, our final year students have the opportunity now to give their views on their entire experience of being a student at Imperial College and we would very much like to encourage them to do so.

The organisation of the NSS means that unless at least 50% our our students complete the survey, the results from our department will not be included in the published report and so will be disregarded. So it’s crucial that we at least cross that threshold. But even more importantly, we would very much like to have the views of every single student in the final year.